{"id":547941,"date":"2026-07-18T18:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T18:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/547941\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T18:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T18:10:11","slug":"pogacar-attacks-%e2%81%a0on-steepest-climb-to-clinch-fourth-%e2%81%a0tour-de-france-stage-win-tour-de-france-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/547941\/","title":{"rendered":"Pogacar attacks \u2060on steepest climb to clinch fourth \u2060Tour de France stage win | Tour de France 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tadej Pogacar\u2019s rapacious appetite for stage wins was in evidence yet again in the climbs of the Vosges on Saturday, as he raced to his fourth victory of this year\u2019s Tour de France<\/a> at Le Markstein.<\/p>\n

Pogacar\u2019s attack came 1.6 km from the summit of the final climb, the Col de Haag, and 7.5 km from the finish line and once again left Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>, Paul Seixas and Remco Evenepoel in his wake.<\/p>\n

It was the Slovene\u2019s 25th stage win in the Tour. \u201cWe knew today was one of the hardest mountain stages,\u201d the four-time Tour champion said, \u201cbut we grabbed the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made it hard and the other guys showed fight, so big respect to all the rivals, but I couldn\u2019t waste good legs.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a week\u2019s racing to come, Vingegaard is the only rider in the overall standings within five minutes of Pogacar, but despite that he insisted the race was far from over. \u201cIn 2023, I lost two minutes to Jonas in the time trial and the next day I lost eight minutes, so it\u2019s quite obvious anything can change in one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pogacar admitted that his mood had dipped a little towards the end of last week, but said his partner, Urska Zigart, a fellow professional rider, had called him on Saturday morning. \u201cI can say for now I\u2019m more confident. Morale is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems, too, that speculation linking the Tour leader to competing in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a in August is well-founded. The Spanish race is the only Grand Tour the Slovene has yet to win. The race stages its Gran Salida in Monaco and Prince Albert said on Friday: \u201cPogacar said he would be at the start, so I hope that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pogacar said: \u201cIf the Prince said, it\u2019s a high chance.\u201d A win in the Vuelta would achieve a grand slam of Europe\u2019s three Grand Tours.<\/p>\n

Paul Seixas celebrates on the podium with the best young rider\u2019s white jersey after the 14th stage. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

As Pogacar was enjoying another victory, Tom Pidcock was suffering, paying heavily, as some had predicted, for the efforts he made on the previous day\u2019s stage to Belfort<\/a>. The double Olympic champion\u2019s podium challenge came apart on the early slopes of the Col de Haag when Seixas\u2019s Decathlon CMA CGM shattered the main peloton by setting a relentless rhythm.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, Pidcock lost ground as Pogacar and Vingegaard rode on at the head of the group. The Briton tumbled from second overall, midway through the stage, to seventh at the finish.<\/p>\n

But the battle for the other podium positions is intensifying. Seixas, a discreet presence since the opening weekend in Montjuic, matched Vingegaard on the rolling descent to the finish line, before dropping the double Tour winner on the sprint to the finish and taking the lead in the young rider\u2019s classification.<\/p>\n

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Seixas is fourth overall and just 15 seconds away from third place, held by Evenepoel. His sports director, Luke Rowe, the former Team Sky road captain who is now working for the French rider\u2019s Decathlon team, struck a pragmatic note. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be optimistic, but sometimes you have to be realistic,\u201d he said. \u201cThe realistic situation is that there is one guy substantially better than the rest of the GC [general classification] leaders and the rest of the peloton.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowe, who started 10 Grand Tours, has been mentoring Seixas as the teenager adjusts to the demands of three weeks of racing. One of the biggest lessons has been reining in the breakneck descending style that led to Seixas\u2019s high-speed crash in June.<\/p>\n

Rowe described him as \u201ca 19-year-old kid, who was descending very fast for the first half of the year\u201d, and added that, during the Tour, Seixas had been \u201ca little bit more cautious\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re racing GC, then a lot of the days it\u2019s about getting from A to B, being patient and conservative, which some people think is boring,\u201d he said, \u201cbut that\u2019s what it takes to be on the podium in the Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadej Pogacar\u2019s rapacious appetite for stage wins was in evidence yet again in the climbs of the Vosges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-547941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}