Tour 2026 stage 6: Pogačar blows the race apart on the Tourmalet
Forty kilometres solo, the stage win in Gavarnie-Gèdre and yellow back on his shoulders: on Thursday Tadej Pogačar made it brutally clear who's boss. And Torstein Træen's fairy tale? It ended on the descent.
The waiting is over
For five days UAE and Visma mostly watched each other. They let 39 riders sail away in Foix, they let Torstein Træen take nearly eight minutes, and on Wednesday in Pau they were mainly busy surviving the crash chaos. On Thursday all of that ended. Stage 6, 186 kilometres from Pau to Gavarnie-Gèdre over the Col d'Aspin and the Tourmalet, was the first real appointment between the favourites — and Pogačar was up for it. As he put it afterwards: "Today I woke up at seven in the morning and my mind was going crazy. I was really, really excited for today."
Ben O'Connor gave it a go the old-fashioned way: the Australian rode clear almost a hundred kilometres from the line and stayed out front for a long time. But this was no day for breakaways. This was a day when one team decided it was done waiting.
The lights went out 4.1 km below the summit
On the Tourmalet — 19 kilometres of climbing, hors catégorie, the giant of the Pyrenees — UAE launched the endgame. Isaac del Toro buried himself on the front, the peloton thinned to a handful, and 4.1 kilometres from the summit Pogačar accelerated. Once. That was all it took. Vingegaard had to let go, and the world champion crested alone, taking the Souvenir Jacques Goddet (and the €5,000 and 20 mountain points that come with it).
What followed was forty kilometres of solitary power display, down the descent and along the false flat to Gavarnie-Gèdre. The gap grew and grew, and at the line it read 2'38". "We just committed. We were going like there was nothing to lose," Pogačar said. "It's a really incredible victory — one of the sweetest."
Træen's fairy tale ends on the tarmac
"Tadej is Tadej, and I think if he goes full gas on the Tourmalet, maybe I will be behind," Træen had said that morning. It ended more cruelly than he feared. The Norwegian — the best story of this Tour for two days running — was already losing ground when he clipped the wheel of teammate Anders Halland Johannessen on the Tourmalet descent and hit the tarmac hard. He remounted, but ultimately lost almost thirteen minutes. Yellow jersey gone, dream gone. Cycling can be brutal.
He wasn't the day's only casualty: Cian Uijtdebroeks and sprinter Arne De Kleijn both climbed off. The Tour is six days old and already thinning out.
The new standings: Pogačar in yellow, everyone at minutes
Behind Pogačar, Vingegaard crossed second in Gavarnie-Gèdre at 2'38". Del Toro completed UAE's party in third (2'57"), Evenepoel took fourth, and 19-year-old Paul Seixas confirmed with fifth place that he hasn't come to play a bit part. Egan Bernal, sixth at 4'48", rode his best mountain stage in years.
On GC, Pogačar now leads Vingegaard by 2'42" and Del Toro by 3'27". Then: Evenepoel at 3'30", Ayuso at 3'34", Seixas at 3'55" and Lipowitz at 4'00". Mads Pedersen, meanwhile, keeps the green jersey comfortably on 168 points, Del Toro takes over white, and Pogačar tops the mountains classification too — though Vingegaard will wear the polka dots. One day of attacking, three jerseys. It can be that simple.
Is the Tour already over?
That's the question everyone is asking on Friday morning. 2'42" after six days is a world of difference — but this Tour still has to cross the Alps, and the double ascent of Alpe d'Huez in the final week can still turn everything upside down. Vingegaard can console himself with one thought: in 2022 he was worse off and still won.
Today the peloton gets to catch its breath: stage 7 runs from Hagetmau to Bordeaux, where Olav Kooij, after his win in Pau, will no doubt fancy number two. Philipsen, Merlier and Milan will, of course, have their own opinions about that.
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