{"id":680804,"date":"2026-07-08T17:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T17:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/680804\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T17:53:10","slug":"olav-kooij-claims-tour-de-france-stage-five-with-tourmalet-test-looming-large-tour-de-france-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/680804\/","title":{"rendered":"Olav Kooij claims Tour de France stage five with Tourmalet test looming large | Tour de France 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olav Kooij, teammate to Paul Seixas at Decathlon CMA CGM, emerged out of the heat haze in Pau to win stage five in the Place de Verdun. The first sprint finish in the 2026 Tour de France<\/a> saw Kooij, who won three stages in last year\u2019s Tour of Britain, win with ease from Max Kanter of XDA Astana.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a couple [of] hard days already, we had to wait to today to get this first chance to sprint in the Tour, and to immediately win is unbelievable,\u201d the Dutch rider said. \u201cIt means quite a lot. I had a pretty tough spring, and I think just to get back to this level and to keep believing in yourself \u2013 and just a few people who believe in you as well \u2013 is all you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one of the few sprint stages in this year\u2019s race, the fight for positioning was intense with crashes in the final kilometres delaying race leader, Torsten Tr\u00e6en. Despite his mishap, there was no change to the Norwegian rider\u2019s overall lead.<\/p>\n

On an other long, hot afternoon, characterised by ice vests, ice socks and plenty of water-cooled helmets, Baptiste Veistroffer was the sole aggressor. For the Tour debutant it was a baptism of fire, with the Breton ploughing a solitary furrow over the hot tarmac for almost 140km.<\/p>\n

Uno-X Mobility team\u2019s Norwegian rider Torstein Tr\u00e6en wearing the overall leader\u2019s yellow jersey cycles with the peloton past spectators in a paddling pool. Photograph: Jeff Pachoud\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

His lone break came to an end soon after he had hauled himself over the day\u2019s only climb, the Cote de Baleix, and the peloton swallowed him up, with just 14km to race.<\/p>\n

For the Olympic road race champion, Remco Evenepoel, Thursday\u2019s stage to Gavanie-Gedre marks a return to the Tourmalet, the long, steep climb that was the scene of his humiliating abandon from the Tour in 2025. The double gold medallist has made a solid start to the Tour but has not yet been discussed in the same breathless terms as Seixas or Isaac del Toro.<\/p>\n

Yet as a former third place finisher and winner of the Vuelta a Espana, he remains a strong contender for a podium place in Paris. The Belgian has lost four kilos while preparing for the Tour and expects a different outcome for his return to the Tourmalet.<\/p>\n

Now 26, Evenepoel, master of the punchy soundbite, leads the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team alongside his quietly spoken German teammate Florian Lipowitz, who finished third overall in 2025.<\/p>\n

It is a big money collaboration that has failed to set the sport on fire. Questions over whether he and Lipowitz can in fact work together have brought a prickly response from the often outspoken Evenepoel.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI know where you want to go,\u201d he said in response to one question. \u201cYou want to hear me say I want to be on the podium and hear Florian say he wants to be on the podium. Of course we want to be on the podium, but if we do it in a good way without this negative energy, it\u2019s good for both of us and for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, even his team doesn\u2019t seem clear on leadership duties. \u201cRemco is still the team leader and Florian Lipowitz is a bit of the second man but in terms of sporting performance, they are on equal footing,\u201d Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team manager Ralph Denk said, before adding that \u201cthey will have to fight it out between themselves on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Tr\u00e6en safely ensconced in the yellow jersey, any \u201cfighting it out\u201d looks to be on hold, at least for now. But the expectation is that, unless Tadej Pogacar is plotting another of his solo attacks on the slopes of the Tourmalet, the favourites will be happy to keep their powder dry on the 17km climb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olav Kooij, teammate to Paul Seixas at Decathlon CMA CGM, emerged out of the heat haze in Pau…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-680804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}