It was the first real mountain stage of this years Tour de France with a finish up the legendary Hautacam ascent where in past editions Bjarne Riis, Luc Leblanc, Miguel Indurain, Lance Armstrong, Jonas Vingegaard and other riders did high level performances.
The 181 kilometre stage was not particularly hard or challenging compared to previous ones that we saw in the last years Tour de France but over 33C temperature must have taken a big impact on today’s performances. Before Hautacam the GC group did Col du Soulor with 5.82 ᵉW/Kg for 33:34 min. In the middle of it Visma Lease a Bike stopped pacing hard as Matteo Jorgenson was not feeling well with one of the race favourites Remco Evenepoel dropping quite early but managing to keep the gap close and coming back before Hautacam.
The 50 man breakaway did not have a shot winning this stage as the gap was never too big with Bruno Armirail being solo before the final climb. The best French hope for GC Kevin Vauquelin spent 3402 kilojoules for 3:45h at 13.65 kj/kg/h, showing that this stage was not extremely hard but with the heat was still very demanding.
On Hautacam UAE Emirates took the control with the early breakaway man Tim Wellens and Jhonathan Narvaez who did a hard pull dropping even his teammate Adam Yates. Narvaez set up Pogacar’s attack who again seated rode away from everyone with gapping Jonas Vingegaard who already seemed to struggle to follow Slovenians attack on stage 10. Pogacar increased the gap with winning the stage by 2:10 minutes over Vingegaard with Florian Lipowitz who paced it better finishing 13 seconds behind the Dane. Evenepoel despite dropping on Col du Soulor lost only 3:35 min and kept the third place in GC.
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Pogačar did a good performance with 6.74 ᵉW/Kg for 35:11 min, losing 30 seconds to Bjarne Riis 1996 time when Telekom rider climbed Hautacam on a unipuerto stage in 34:41 min with 6.97 ᵉW/Kg, being the greatest performance of that era. With Pogačar’s hard crash yesterday and the heat the conditions were not perfect and he did a relativelly average performance compared to his 2024 Tour de France and 2025 Criterium du Dauphine stages.
Vingegaard blew up with 6.29 ᵉW/Kg and was slower than on the 2022 Hautacam stage with a way harder stage before it. Florian Lipowitz who was already close to the Dane in Criterium du Dauphine lost 13 seconds with 6.16 ᵉW/Kg, being the best from the next generation climbers, slightly beating Oscar Onley, Tobias Halland Johannesen, Remco Evenepoel and Kevin Vauquelin who did little bit above 6.00 ᵉW/Kg.
