Severed Thumbs, Smashed Faces, Lots of Fractured Collarbones: All the Tour de France DNFs

A peloton of 184 riders started the Tour de France in Barcelona. Only 158 of them made it to the finish Paris.

Yellow jerseys, super sprinters, and top Americans were among the 26 riders who didn’t make it the full three weeks due to injuries, illness, or the omnipresent time cut.

Jonas Vingegaard, Brandon McNulty, Tim Merlier, Florian Lipowitz, and Torstein Træen headline the relatively small but highly significant dropout list.

And yes, that’s right. A total of 26 DNFs is low in the context of the modern-era Tour de France.

In fact, this was the second-least attritional Tour of the 2020s.

The lowest dropout rate was set in 2025. Only 24 riders were forced out last year.

The most damaging Tour de France of the current decade? The 2021 edition, when a total of 43 riders abandoned. Brutal.

In that year, 12 riders exited in just one rain-soaked sufferfest through the Alps. Eight more went two stages later on a double ascent of the Ventoux.

Low volume, high caliber

The dropout rate for 2026 was thankfully relatively low. But it was high in caliber.

In 2025, Vingegaard and Lipowitz took away GC podium trophies. This year, they went home with fractured collarbones.

Cian Uijtdebroeks was hoping for a breakout top-5, but sickness had other plans.

And poor ol’ Træen was one of the very few riders in Tour de France history who crashed out while wearing the maillot jaune.

At the other end of the peloton, Tim Merlier abandoned as the sprinter of the Tour. The hat-trick king climbed off his Specialized on stage 15 in the Vosges. The big Belgian saw the Alps on the next week’s horizon and decided he was fatigued enough already.

Merlier’s Soudal-Quick Step team was one of the three to lose three riders, the most losses any squad sustained at the 2026 Tour de France.

Only eight teams made it to Paris unscathed.

Fractured collarbones and F’d thumbs

Vingegaard and Lipowitz were among the four riders who left the Tour with fractured collarbones, the so-called “occupational hazard” of pro cycling.

Meanwhile, two riders left with injuries no Tour de France cyclist should expect to suffer.

Chris Harper lost a part of his thumb when he slid to the tarmac on a sinuous descent in the Massif Central.

Einer Rubio plowed face-first into the back of a car on Alpe d’Huez and needed 20 stitches to put things back together.

Here are all the dropouts of the 2026 Tour de France: