wrought havoc on the opening stage<\/a> of his Tour de France prep race.<\/p>\n\u201cIt was a really hard day, we managed really well with the team getting in the breakaway,\u201d Gr\u00e9goire said in his winner\u2019s interview. \u201cWe\u2019re really happy with this victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gr\u00e9goire got into the early break of 14 along with his teammate Ewen Costiou.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Frenchman held strong all day and survived a chaotic finale that saw Poga\u010dar chasing down the leaders in the final 5km.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t do anything when we knew Poga\u010dar was behind \u2013 we just went full gas,\u201d Gr\u00e9goire said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t accelerate, we just had to wait and hope he wouldn\u2019t be able to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar found himself caught behind Gr\u00e9goire\u2019s group after he tried to set up his Tour de France and monument superdomestique Jhonatan Narv\u00e1ez.<\/p>\n
However, when Narv\u00e1ez lost his attacking punch at the key moment, Poga\u010dar was caught in no-man\u2019s land and without enough time to catch the winning group.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar races distracted after \u017digart\u2019s crash<\/p>\n
Racing wasn\u2019t the only thing on Poga\u010dar\u2019s mind on Thursday. His partner Ur\u0161ka \u017digart broke her jaw in a heavy crash in the women\u2019s Tour de Suisse on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar could be seen face-timing \u017digart while he cooled down on the rollers after the stage. He rushed to see her at the nearby hospital soon afterward.<\/p>\n
UAE team manager Mauro Gianetti said after the stage that Poga\u010dar was understandably distracted when he clipped in on Thursday lunchtime.<\/p>\n
\u201cTadej got the bad news before the start,\u201d Gianetti said. \u201cI reassured him well \u2013 I saw Ur\u0161ka before the start. There\u2019s nothing serious. But he really didn\u2019t have the mindset to be racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw Tadej a bit upset. He wasn\u2019t like usual.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar\u2019s plan fails
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2282213012.jpg\"\/)
Poga\u010dar didn\u2019t seem too downbeat when his plan to set up his teammates came unstuck. (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Gr\u00e9goire and the break of 14 got away in the hilly opening of Thursday\u2019s stage and profited from UAE Emirates-XRG being left to control the race.<\/p>\n
At 20km to go, the attackers looked guaranteed the win. Their 2+ minute lead seemed more than sufficient.<\/p>\n
But Poga\u010dar had other plans.<\/p>\n
He had a gift to deliver.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar said Wednesday after his teammates set him up for victory on stage 1 that he wanted to repay them the favor later this week. They\u2019d be pulling for him all July at the Tour de France, after all.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar piled on at the front along with his teammates on the first of two back-to-back climbs, and the UAE pain-train trimmed the gap to within 30 seconds.<\/p>\n
But when Poga\u010dar gave Narv\u00e1ez the pass to attack with around 9km to go, the Ecuadorian lost his legs.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar didn\u2019t give up on the stage when Narv\u00e1ez melted away.<\/p>\n
He chased the 6 remaining breakaway riders along with Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) and Afonso Eul\u00e1lio (Bahrain-Victorious), but they ran out of road.<\/p>\n
Tour de Suisse stage 2 results<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gr\u00e9goire wins breakaway sprint, Poga\u010dar attempts to gift stage to Tour de France teammate after receiving concerning news…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,54263,82,266633,70574,54266,62850,266634,54267],"class_list":["post-747073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-parent_category-road","tag-sports","tag-tag-richard-carapaz","tag-tag-romain-gregoire","tag-tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tag-tour-de-france","tag-tag-tour-de-suisse","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747073","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=747073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Tour](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2282212171.jpg\")
<\/p>\n