{"id":693377,"date":"2026-07-15T17:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/693377\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T17:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:41:15","slug":"waerenskjold-wins-fastest-ever-tour-de-france-stage-in-frenzied-sprint-to-nevers-tour-de-france-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/693377\/","title":{"rendered":"W\u00e6renskjold wins fastest ever Tour de France stage in frenzied sprint to Nevers | Tour de France 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The records keep tumbling in the Tour de France<\/a>. After Tadej Pogacar shattered the record for the fastest climb of the Col du Tourmalet to become the race leader, the Norwegian sprinter S\u00f8ren W\u00e6renskjold won the fastest-ever road stage, in a frenzied sprint into Nevers.<\/p>\n

The Uno-X Mobility rider took the 11th stage five days after his teammate Torsten Tr\u00e6en crashed out of the Tour in the yellow jersey, on the Pyrenean stage to Gavarnie-G\u00e8dre.<\/p>\n

The afternoon following France\u2019s shock defeat to Spain at the World Cup, the sight of Julian Alaphilippe in the day\u2019s four-man breakaway was a reminder of happier times. But that only led to renewed disappointment for home fans when the former world road race champion, who became a national hero when he held the yellow jersey for 14 days in the 2019 Tour, was dropped on the C\u00f4te-de-Chevannes, 38km from the finish.<\/p>\n

That may have been 34-year-old Alaphilippe\u2019s last hurrah in the Tour de France, although you can never say Nevers again.<\/p>\n

With so few opportunities now remaining for the also-rans and sprinters in the peloton, the stage was raced at a furious pace, and once again the efforts of the breakaway came to nothing. With Alaphilippe long gone, the remaining trio were finally reeled in five kilometres from Nevers.<\/p>\n

The home nation wasn\u2019t the only one recovering from a rough night and Tom Pidcock\u2019s rollercoaster ride in his return to the Tour continues. Although he had crashed on Bastille Day, the double Olympic gold medallist was fit enough to continue and finished with the peloton in Nevers.<\/p>\n

Pidcock attributed his crash on the descent of the Puy Mary to efforts to stop the tarmac from melting in extreme heat. \u201cI don\u2019t know what they do with the roads here, [but] when they clean it, they put all this white shit all over it and it makes it really slippery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The peloton moves past a field of sunflowers en route to Nevers. Photograph: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

After another virtuoso display by Pogacar, in the stage to Le Lioran<\/a>, there was muted acceptance by his rivals the next day that they could not match the four-time winner. \u201cYou have to be realistic,\u201d Jonas Vingegaard\u2019s Visma\u2013Lease a Bike sport director, Marc Reef said. \u201cPogacar is currently the strongest. Bravo to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was little booing to be heard on the road from Vichy to Nevers and Pogacar appeared to have more fans than haters, despite the occasional presence of signs disparaging to the UAE team.<\/p>\n

Tadej Pogacar and the peloton cross a bridge on the dried-up riverbed of La Vieille Loire river. Photograph: Lo\u00efc Venance\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

He and his team have suffocated the peloton yet Pogacar has never hidden his disdain for his rivals, saying last summer that he will \u201cprobably not speak to 99% of the peloton when I finish my career. I will focus on my close friends and family.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sentiment, that he will not back off, if there are any chances for him and his team to control the race, is very much in evidence again this July. \u201cIn some ways, it pisses me off to see Pogacar win like that, because we too would also like to play at bike racing,\u201d K\u00e9vin Vauquelin of the Netcompany Ineos team said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough on the breakaways,\u201d the French rider said of the UAE Emirates XRG stranglehold, \u201cbut you also have to understand that when you have the strength to do it, then you might as well. What really discourages me is not having legs like Pogacar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The records keep tumbling in the Tour de France. After Tadej Pogacar shattered the record for the fastest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-693377","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\/693377","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=693377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}