Stage winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) has beaten the climbing record for Alpe d’Huez, going faster than Marco Pantani did 30 years ago, on stage 19 of the 2026 Tour de France.
Pogačar’s exact time is not yet official, but he is estimated to have gone over a minute faster than Pantani’s record.
Tadej Pogačar caught and passed the breakaway on the Alpe to win Friday’s stage atop the legendary climb, with a new time of 35:26 according to Velon data.
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That was an incredible 1:14 faster than the widely-recognised time Pantani set in the 1995 Tour de France, when he ascended the time in what most record books agree was 36:40. Even if there is some room for a few seconds of difference across different historians, the time Pogačar did today was so much faster that there’s no doubt that he broke the record.
Not that he knew it, or so he claimed.
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“I actually don’t know what was the time of Pantani, to be honest,” Pogačar said in his yellow jersey press conference. I’m staying off the internet a lot the last weeks.
“I heard that I broke the record so I’m happy. I just wanted to do a good race and win today for the guys. But a 30-year-old or something record is finally broken, so that is good for us.”
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Pogačar was expected to try to win atop Alpe d’Huez and try to set a new record for the climb and he surged through the huge crowds on the famous hairpins of the climb.
L’Alpe d’Huez is categorised as an hors catégorie climb – the very hardest level. Strava measures the climb at 12.02km in length, with 1,047 metres of elevation gain and an average gradient of 8.8%. The Tour de France roadbook has a distance of 13.8km and a gradient of 8.1% due to the position of the finish line on the far side of the ski resort.
Despite some illness in UAE Team Emirates-XRG, the team rode to control the big breakways with other teams also helping the chase. Pogačar then accelerated on the lower slopes of the 13.8km Alpe d’Huez climb in pursuit of the remains of the break.
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He passed a number of riders, leaving them in shock, and eventually swept up Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious).
Carapaz tried to stay away but Pogačar caught him and kicked away alone inside the final kilometre to take a prestigious and record breaking victory.
“You’re insane, mate,” Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) told Pogačar after the finish line.
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