It is a fifth stage win for UAE during this year’s race, with Pogacar claiming the other four.<\/p>\n
“It is a very special victory,” said Wellens. “Everybody knows the Tour de France but not many people win in the Tour de France, so it was very beautiful.”<\/p>\n
After three gruelling days in the Pyrenees mountains, the 166 remaining riders faced a transitional stage before the second and final rest day of this year’s Tour.<\/p>\n
The stage looked set for a breakaway win and Wellens sensed his opportunity on the last of the three categorised climbs, up the Pas du Sant 55km from the line.<\/p>\n
Wellens emerged from a lead group of eight on the ascent, along with Michael Storer, Quinn Simmons and Victor Campeanaerts.<\/p>\n
The group briefly reformed on the long descent to Carcassone but moments later, Wellens attacked with 44 km to go and the chasers never looked like closing the gap.<\/p>\n
“I felt super good today,” Wellens added. “On the last climb of the day I felt really good. I knew the others felt really good but I knew I had to go solo. At the top of the climb I found my moment and I felt I had the legs to keep it to the end.<\/p>\n
“I knew I had to enjoy the moment and kept riding until the end so I had a big gap to enjoy it and maybe put my bike in the air after the finish – but I was so happy I forgot to do it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is a fifth stage win for UAE during this year’s race, with Pogacar claiming the other four.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-10828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}