What's left of the 2026 Tour: from Le Lioran to the double Alpe d'Huez

Where we stand: 2'42" and a lot of question marks

First, the state of play, for anyone who half-missed the weekend. Tadej Pogačar starts week two with a lead of 2'42" over Jonas Vingegaard and 3'27" over Isaac del Toro — the legacy of his solo over the Tourmalet. Behind them it's remarkably tight: Remco Evenepoel at 3'30", Juan Ayuso at 3'34", 19-year-old prodigy Paul Seixas at 3'55" and Florian Lipowitz at 4'00". One good day and you jump three places; one bad day and you're written off.

Sunday added one more storyline. In the heat-shortened stage to Ussel, Mathieu van der Poel did what he so often failed to do this spring: win. He dragged a four-man front group — with Tobias Halland Johannessen, Tom Pidcock and Pablo Castrillo — over the last climbs of the Corrèze and held the charging peloton at twenty seconds in Ussel. Pidcock consoled himself with KOM points on the Suc au May along the way, Mads Pedersen picked off the intermediate sprint and padded out his green jersey. And Monday? Monday, at last, was for resting.

Today: fireworks on quatorze juillet

The restart wastes no time. Stage 10, 166.6 kilometres from Aurillac to the ski resort of Le Lioran, falls on 14 July — and there's no law that says a Frenchman must win on quatorze juillet, but good luck explaining that to the French. The short, steep cols of the Cantal make this a stage with no room to breathe, and the vicious final climb is tailor-made for punchers. Seixas and David Gaudu race in front of their home crowd, Ben Healy lives for days like this, and after Sunday you never know where Van der Poel will turn up either.

For the favourites it's mostly a day not to lose. Although Le Lioran proved in 2024 — when Pogačar and Vingegaard fought each other all the way to the line there — that a national holiday in the Cantal rarely stays quiet.

The sprinters can smell exactly two more chances

If you love a bunch sprint, this is your week, because after it the well runs dry. Wednesday runs from Vichy to Nevers (161.3 km), Thursday from the Magny-Cours Formula 1 circuit to Châlon-sur-Saône (179.1 km): two pancake-flat days through Burgundy, unless the wind decides to get involved. For Tim Merlier, after his double in Bordeaux and Bergerac, these are days to run up the score; for Jasper Philipsen, the last chances to settle his own account.

Meanwhile the green jersey maths keeps ticking. Pedersen leads comfortably, but Girmay, Kanter, Merlier and Philipsen all sit within 75 points of each other — and after Thursday, points only come from intermediate sprints and hilly finishes. Which is exactly the terrain where Pedersen beats everybody. The rest need to strike this week, or green will be quietly decided.

The long weekend: Jura, Vosges and a climb with double digits

Friday brings the longest stage of this Tour: 205.8 kilometres from Dole to Belfort, straight through the hills of the Jura. A marathon day after two sprint stages is classic breakaway territory, and with the Alps looming the GC teams will probably be happy to loosen the reins. Saturday gets more serious: the Vosges stage to Le Markstein (155.3 km) is short, nervous and littered with steep cols — the stage set where a Tour already tipped over once, in 2023.

But circle Sunday above all. Stage 15 finishes on the Plateau de Solaison: a relatively unknown final climb above Lake Geneva with double-digit ramps, exactly the kind of uncharted ground that makes GC riders nervous. Crack there and you carry a hangover into the second rest day. Fly there — think Vingegaard, who has to claw that gap back somewhere — and the Tour is alive again before the Alps have even started.

The time trial that can shift everything

After the second rest day, Tuesday 21 July brings the only individual appointment with the clock: 26.1 kilometres along Lake Geneva, from Evian-les-Bains to Thonon-les-Bains. On paper this is Evenepoel's day — if anyone in this peloton can take three minutes out of everybody except Pogačar, it's him. But the rolling course is no enemy of Vingegaard either, and Pogačar has rarely lost a Tour time trial that mattered. After Thonon we'll know exactly who is still racing for the podium — and who is riding for honour alone.

And then: two days of Alpe d'Huez

The final act is, without exaggeration, historic. After the transition stage to Voiron and the first Alpine reckoning at Orcières-Merlette (Thursday 23 July), the Tour finishes on the mythical 21 hairpins two days in a row. Friday is short and explosive: 127.9 kilometres from Gap, a stage that can detonate inside ninety minutes of racing. Saturday is the queen stage: 170.9 kilometres from Bourg d'Oisans over a string of cols, with the rough slopes of the Col de Sarenne thrown in before the Alpe is climbed for the second time. We wrote before about why this double is unique — now we also know what it will be about: 2'42".

Can Vingegaard still do something there? History says: maybe. In 2022 his position at halfway looked poor too and he still won, and it's precisely on this kind of stacked climbing that he has broken Pogačar before. But that Pogačar didn't ride around with the calm of a man who knows he's the best. The 2026 version does.

Who can still win what?

In summary, by ambition. Yellow belongs to Pogačar as long as he doesn't crash or crack; Vingegaard has Solaison, the time trial and two goes at the Alpe to prove otherwise. The podium is its own story: between Del Toro at 3'27" and Lipowitz at 4'00", five men are fighting over two spots, and the time trial makes Evenepoel's the strongest hand. For white, Seixas only has to stay ahead of Del Toro — easier said than done. Green is Pedersen's to lose, but only until Thursday. And the stages? Count on Van der Poel and Pidcock in the hilly finales, the breakaway artists in the Jura, and the French today — if only because the calendar demands it.

Think you followed week one more closely than we did? Prove it: take the Big Rest Day Quiz — eleven questions on the results so far.