We’re only a night’s sleep on from the podiums in Paris, but the dust is already beginning to settle on the 2026 Tour de France, and no sooner is the race over than it’s time to reflect on what we just saw.
The start in Barcelona feels a long time ago now, and since then we’ve been witness to all sorts of drama, be it the stifling heat of the first week, the dramatic departure of Jonas Vingegaard, or the unstoppable force that propelled Tadej Pogačar to a record-equalling fifth overall victory.
These are some of the things that this edition of the Tour will be remembered for, but across 21 days of racing there’s been so much more than just that to talk about, and so much that this Tour has taught up about the future of the race – be that about the contenders, the route, or the existence of the race itself.
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As the Tour circus travels home – or some onto Lausanne for the start of the Tour de France Femmes on Saturday – the Cyclingnews team who were on the ground until Paris, Patrick Fletcher and Alasdair Fotheringham, have been dissecting the events of the last three weeks, and what we can conclude from this edition.
Here are seven things we learnt from this Tour de France, plus one big question about the race’s future.
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Tadej Pogacar’s glare part of a new look for five-time champion
One of the most striking images of this Tour de France for me was Tadej Pogačar turning to look at Nicolas Prodhomme on stage 20 and locking eyes for a good, awkward, few seconds. It wasn’t quite anger. You could perhaps put it somewhere between affronted and surprised. There were no words but the message was clear: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Call it a glare, call it a death stare, call it what you will, but it was a new look for the five-time champion.
How often have we really seen him like this? Pogačar is no stranger to laying down his law, but he usually does so with his legs, and with a smile. As well as being so superior to his opponents, he is always so nice to them. It’s a contrast to most of cycling’s greats, and it’s one of the most disarming things about him.
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So it felt slightly out of character to see him give another rider the ocular treatment, a moment that has already drawn comparisons with that most famous of cycling stares delivered by Lance Armstrong to Jan Ullrich, even if the contexts are very, very different.
But then again, Pogačar was riding out of character on stage 20 of the Tour de France, switching into domestique mode on behalf of his teammate Isaac del Toro. The yellow jersey pacing on the front of the group, over multiple high-mountain passes, in pure servitude, was an extraordinary sight to behold – perhaps never seen before in the rich history of the Tour de France. Except it was seen before, on stage 15 and on stage 2. Pogačar has done as much for his young teammate in this Tour as the other way around, passing up a shot at three stage wins in the process.
Pogačar has found someone else to work for this Tour de France (Image credit: Getty Images)
In a way, this was a refreshing antidote to the ‘cannibal’ comparisons that have only intensified as his palmarès has expanded towards Eddy Merckx proportions. Winning is clearly not the only thing that matters to Tadej Pogačar. There are various theories surrounding Pogačar’s motivations, from pure generosity of spirit, to a need to keep things interesting for himself, to a leadership flex designed instil loyalty in those around him. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between all of those things?
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Either way, what we’ve seen in this Tour de France is one rider utterly dictating the rules of engagement. Taking his own success is one thing, engineering it for someone else at the same time is quite another. It’s refreshing, and it’s classy, but if anything, it only enhances the scale of his personal domination of this Tour de France. [PF]
Runner-up Remco Evenepoel’s next Grand Tour GC test will still be more against Vingegaard than Pogačar
Minutes after finishing stage 20 of the Tour and wrapping up his second place overall, Remco Evenepoel was asked what it would take for him to win it outright. His answer was simple: “For Tadej Pogačar not to start.”
That feels like a very honest response. Pogačar finished nearly 6:30 ahead of Evenepoel on Sunday afternoon, a much smaller gap than the 9:14 difference between the two in 2024, and one which reflects how much the Belgian has improved since his last Grand Tour podium finish two years ago. But the gap is still a huge one, and Eddy Merckx rightly observed in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport that if Pogačar is in top form in the mountains, he remains in another league altogether and one that Evenepoel will, at least for now, find hard to equal.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
That said, though, Evenepoel’s huge progress means that Jonas Vingegaard – missing from the 2026 Tour’s final equation for reasons we all know but already finding it harder than previously at times to keep his rivals at bay in the first two weeks – could face a double duel in future editions of the Tour. From hereon, the Dane will be aiming both to keep as close as possible to Pogačar but equally, he’ll have to see how he can fend off the Belgian as well.
Of the many different contenders, the trial of strength between the new ‘best-of-the-rest’ behind Pogačar and the former rider to occupy that role promises to be an exceptionally fascinating one. It’ll be the a test of experience versus new ambition, of a rider determined to bounce back versus one who is yet to see how high he can set the bar. Cycling is a sport where fans (and media) have scarily short memories, and after he crashed out people have forgotten too quickly that Vingegaard been the most consistent challenger for Pogačar throughout these last five years. His colossal palmarès, with victories in all three Grand Tours as well as five runner-up spots across the Tour and Vuelta is one that – for now – Evenepoel can only dream of achieving.
Yet after his 2026 Tour, Evenepoel has every right to say his dream of Tour victories is much better-defined and more justified than ever before. Outpacing both Del Toro and Pogačar at the Plateau de Salaison is a result that has amply confirmed his climbing progress at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe – and which may not be his upper limit. If Vingegaard is essentially trying to keep on top of his game, Evenepoel has entered a new phase of exploration of how high he can go in the major mountain stages.
However, what clouds this issue – and therein lies the fascination – is that Vingegaard’s absence inevitably creates a huge question mark over how the race would have panned out if he hadn’t crashed out. There’s no knowing what he could have done.
Evenepoel will, rightly, say that he can only race against those riders who were still in the Tour, and it can’t be questioned that he did more than enough to warrant second, his team’s best ever result in the race to date. But Vingegaard remains the one rider who went into the Tour believing that Pogačar could be beaten, and who has actually done so.
Whatever happens, and even if Pogačar remains unreachable next July as he has been this summer, we now know the battle to come between the Dane and the Belgian promises to be harder-fought than in any previous Grand Tour. Roll on next summer. [AF]
The route: questionable choices but tied hands
Earlier in the Tour, I wrote a piece that was critical of the organisers’ design of the route for stage 6. I felt like they’d attempted to tone down the Col du Tourmalet by adding a long draggy climb to end the stage, but that this backfired and offered Tadej Pogačar the perfect terrain on which to inflict maximum early damage on Jonas Vingegaard.
With the dust settled on an incredibly one-sided Tour, it would be easy to criticise the route once again. In their bid for suspense, they hedged their bets on the final week and in particular the penultimate day, drawing up an infernal stage that Geraint Thomas described as “the hardest Tour stage ever”. But such a stage after three weeks of hot, hard racing is always likely to be a slug-fest, and takes the sting out of the stages that precede it. It also banks on the yellow jersey and the rest of the GC spots being open and up for grabs, which would have gone against the recent trend.
But it’s worth remembering that the route is just the paper, and the story is written by the riders themselves. The true reason for the lack of suspense was Pogačar’s overwhelming dominance. When you have someone who wins the yellow jersey by seven minutes while working for his teammate on three separate stages, there’s no route you can design that will make for an exciting race. The final nail in the coffin of suspense came with Jonas Vingegaard’s departure on stage 15. He was already well down but as illness ravaged Pogačar’s team in the final week, the only rider and team willing and capable of exploiting that hint of weakness and making something happen were not present.
The organisers may have been some questionable route choices but ultimately it was out of the their hands. [PF]
Paris is now perfect
I wrote the section above while on the train to Paris, and having just witnessed the final stage first-hand, I feel compelled to balance the books and give the organisers a whole heap of credit for making this one of the best stages of the entire race.
Paris offered up a thriller (Image credit: Getty Images)
I was far from convinced when the organisers introduced the Montmartre circuit last year. I get the need to modernise, but some things are sacrosanct, and I felt they were taking a huge risk of spoiling the vibe of what they already had, which was a special thing. I was wrong. I wasn’t in Paris last year but it was bouncing this year. The atmosphere on Rue Lepic was up there with the best at this Tour, and the racing matched it – a variety of the biggest names, including the yellow jersey, all knocking chunks out of each other. The tweak to create more flat between the final Montmartre climb and the finish line also worked perfectly, bringing the sprinters into the equation, making it a mini Milan-San Remo, and ultimately giving us one of the most exhilarating finishing straights the Champs-Élysées has ever seen.
One of the things I love about Paris is that it feels like a culmination – a celebration of simply getting here, to the end of a shared three-week journey. It still feels like that, but we also have one of the best hours of racing right in the middle. Paris is now perfect. [PF]
Paul Seixas was right to do the Tour de France
Even before it had been announced by his team in early May that he would be racing the Tour, the question of whether Paul Seixas, as the youngest participant in the race since Adrien Centro 1937, should or shouldn’t take part in 2026 had sparked a huge amount of debate.
Not only was Seixas’ extreme youth one issue, the pressure and hype of being France’s best hope for a top finish in years was so high that even race director Christian Prudhomme weighed in, hinting strongly that his presence would be no bad thing.
Part of the hope he inspires was precisely due to his making a Grand Tour debut so young that it seemed like anything was possible, and logically, nobody knew what his limit was when his previous longest race had been the Tour de l’Avenir. The “Bernard Hinault won the Tour on his first-ever participation line was rolled out” by some, keen to remember Le Blaireau was France’s last Tour winner, perhaps forgetting that Hinault’s debut was deliberately delayed until he was 24. Then there was the way he ran Pogačar the closest on the Côte de la Redoute in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Suddenly, putting two and two together made an awful lot more than five, even.
Hindsight is a great thing, and you can’t help wondering that for all the Decathlon self-congratulation over the weekend on their main man getting to a hugely admirable fourth place in Paris, what would have been said if, say, he’d stopped at the end of the first week looked exhausted and burned out at such a huge challenge. Yet in a sense, it didn’t matter, and that was precisely the value of getting Seixas to take part. As his teammate Oliver Naesen sagely pointed out, this would be the only year where no matter what the result was, it was all experience for the future and if the expectations were high, the pressure – barring whatever Seixas imposed on himself, of course – was lower.
Seixas dealt with his debut Tour with maturity and poise (Image credit: Getty Images)
On the plus side, Seixas himself has seemingly been able to handle the immense levels of expectation generated by his presence on the race. To judge by the number of roadside posters, face masks and fan clubs supporting Seixas, perhaps only Thibaut Pinot has achieved the same degree of mass adulation in his country since 2000. And for the future, fourth is arguably an ideal result. It offers more than enough reason to have high expectations of the young Frenchman, but it’s not got the same instant mainstream pressure as a third place and a white jersey win would have.
Given the limelight surrounding him, Seixas won’t be able to opt for a normal pathway of progress that any other teenage racer might enjoy. But at the same time, the only way forward in the Tour is onto the podium, and for at least a few years, it is hard to imagine the French public would be willing to see him head to the Giro d’Italia or Vuelta a España rather than return to the Tour each July. They have their man for yellow now, and while Thibaut Pinot, Romain Bardet and Lenny Martínez – the latter a more than respectable fifth this year – have all given the French fans plenty of reasons to cheer beforehand, at 19, Seixas still gives them plenty of reasons to go on dreaming. [AF]
An anti-doping wake-up call
When Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard revealed they had been shaken from their slumber to be subjected to anti-doping tests in the middle of the night ahead of stage 15, it sparked a storm. Multiple riders cried foul, most pundits backed them up, and public sentiment – at least by a glance at social media – seemed to be on their side too.
None of them seemed aware of the UCI rulebook, which provides for this kind of out-of-hours testing. Just because it has barely happened before, doesn’t make, as one pundit put it, a “borderline human rights violation”. As EF Education-EasyPost team boss Jonathan Vaughters, offering a refreshing point of view, argued, it’s one of the only currently possible ways to combat the potential for night-time micro-dosing, and generates a not-insignificant deterrent effect.
Apart from the lost sleep, one shame is the lack of clarity surrounding the reasons for the out-of-hours tests, the ITA rules stating they need a ‘serious and specific suspicion’ and permission from the French courts to collect samples in this way in France. We have no idea what the threshold for this actually is. In the same way as cycling fans long had to take a leap of faith in the riders, we have to take a leap of faith in the anti-doping authorities. But in the context of the history of this sport, and the ever-increasing levels of performance, can more robust testing ever be a bad thing?
Some would rather not mention the D word at all, but this incident has at least allowed us to engage with it in what might just be a helpful way. In one press conference, Pogačar himself spent several minutes discussing the topic in an open, measured, and nuanced manner. It was one of his most impressive performances of this Tour and showed that anti-doping, rather than being a memory or a taboo, is always a discussion worth having for the sake of the sport. [PF]
Is it time the Tour stopped being held in a month of peak heat?
Be it wildfires or high temperature alerts or riders (not to mention the rest of the Tour followers) suffering far more than they should do in soaring heat in this year’s race, when it came to climate change and the relentlessly increasing rise of the planet’s temperature, the Tour de France has had to walk a fine line this year.
First on stage 3, the final 40 kilometres to Les Angles had public access and spectators prohibited by local authorities due to wildfires in the eastern Pyrenees. Then on stage 9, the distance was reduced by 30 kilometres due to a high heat red alert in the Corrèze. Finally on stage 21, 44 kilometres were removed from the first part of the stage, as first responders had to head to Bordeaux to fight the wildfires ravaging parts of south west France, meaning the race was left bereft of part of its usual support.
The Tour was lucky, too: when temperatures soared to the high thirties in the first week, it seemed like all anybody could talk about was the blistering conditions out in the roads of France. Even Tadej Pogačar, seemingly operating in a league of one during most of the race, complained of a severe headache as a result. By the end of week two, the heat had dropped notably to much more comparable levels to previous years, and the second half even saw some torrential rain in the Vosges and showers in Paris.
Given his status as the world’s number one rider, Pogačar’s direct appeal for the entire calendar to be changed and the hot months to be avoided completely by all races in order to combat the increasingly difficult race conditions could hardly be ignored. But barring a few headlines, short-term it will likely fall on deaf ears. To hone in solely on the Tour, its cultural, social and historical links with the host country’s holiday month of July would be virtually impossible to break, you’d think, although it did happen in 2020 in the pandemic. Furthermore, despite the incredibly difficult conditions at certain points, during the Tour the peloton remained very divided over what their reaction should be to the very hot weather, some determined to soldier on despite losing up to four kilos in body weight each day, others far less so.
Heat was one of the biggest talking points of the whole race (Image credit: Getty Images)
Yet the question of much hotter weather won’t go away. At the risk of stating the very obvious, the planet’s relentless rise of temperatures isn’t going to pause for a month just because there’s a big bike race going on, and if there have been issues with the heat this year, it seems highly unlikely that the trend will stop in the Julys to come. Even the semi-official race newspaper, L’Équipe, pointed out in its main summary of the Tour in Monday’s edition that one of the main pressures the Tour will be subject to in future editions is “the disruption in the world that surrounds it and which it traverses every day, as has been witnessed by the extreme heat and the wildfires.”
Moving stages earlier is one proposed solution, but ycling’s commercial model is hugely dependent on sponsors, and as riders pointed out, viewing figures for the Tour and other races tend to be mainly in the late afternoon and early evening. To reduce the sport’s exposure in that time period feels like a risky policy. The problem is that long-term, not reducing that exposure of the peloton to the sun and heat in that exact same time slot, risks killing the goose that lays the golden eggs altogether: how much sponsor exposure time was lost, for example, in the 30 kilometres that weren’t raced through the Corrèze, or the 40 kilometres that were lopped off the final stage? And how much will be lost when one or more stages are cancelled, as they likely will be one day, because of extreme heat in the future?
Rather than simple hand-wringing, though, one practical solution could be to bring the race forward by an hour. It’s true that it’d mean finishing in the heat of the afternoon, but the riders would at least benefit with much cooler temperatures in the first past of the race. In any case, this year’s measures taken by the Tour and the UCI of allowing riders to receive bidons for more of the stage can’t resolve the problem in the long-term. The debate needs opening fast, before the problem becomes too hard to manage. [AF]
The fastest Tour – and the hardest?
We know for a fact that this was the fastest-ever Tour de France. From what we’re hearing, it was also one of the hardest.
This three-week race took place almost exclusively in a heatwave. And yet it did not stifle the racing one bit.
Almost all 21 days were fast and furious, with just a couple of the plan-flat sprint days passing by at an old-fashioned sedate pace. Otherwise, it was a Tour de France à une vitesse: full gas. We had the fastest-ever stage, an Alpe d’Huez record, and stages that were intense at the start and the end with not much time left in the middle.
“What really surprised me was the speed on the flats here,” Josh Tarling told me at Alpe d’Huez. “The climbing is the climbing, but on the flat here we’ve been going 70.” Tarling speculated that the increased number of motorobikes may have an effect, but it’s also, and more so, down to the attitude of the riders.
The speeds have been immense this Tour (Image credit: Getty Images)
This year, the 21 stage wins were shared between 10 teams, which meant that 13 teams went empty-handed. What’s more, the dominance of UAE – who won six stages – saw opportunities severely limited, especially for the breakaway hunters in the first and second weeks. In this respect, the intensity played out in a vicious cycle. The greater the desire to get into the breakaway, the longer it took to form, and the shorter UAE were left to control, which made it easier for them to shut down several breaks for Pogačar wins, which made the rest of the teams even more anxious to get in the next day’s break, and rinse, and repeat.
And when you do that for three weeks in intense heat, you end up with one of the most knackered bunch of riders we’ve ever seen at the Tour de France. [PF]
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