Remco Evenepoel sounded stunned at the finish of stage 10 of the Tour de France in Le Lioran.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, [Jonas] Vingegaard was worse than me after all,\u201d he told Belgian media at the finish after moving into third place overall and reinvigorating the battle for the podium.<\/p>\n
Neither Evenepoel nor the most passionate Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe fan could not have expected such an outcome minutes before the finish. The co-leader went from dropping off the back of the chasing contenders\u2019 group on the last climb, the Col de Font de C\u00e8re, to distancing his rivals in his ferocious sprint for the line.<\/p>\n
The \u201cannoying\u201d changes of pace on the group\u2019s front in the pursuit of runaway stage winner Poga\u010dar led to his moment of weakness, albeit as his own teammate and co-leader Florian Lipowitz made an acceleration on the front. Evenepoel revealed post-stage he was briefly on the verge of cramping.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of pain was going through my head, so I couldn\u2019t think much. Just pedal, and that was the right choice. I struggled for two to three minutes,\u201d Evenepoel said.<\/p>\n
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe\u2019s leadership debate has been making headlines during the Tour, with the team insisting all is good between its leaders despite Evenepoel lashing out earlier in the race. Now, he and Lipowitz are up to third and sixth overall, separated by 38 seconds.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel thought about following Poga\u010dar attack<\/b><\/h2>\n
Evenepoel kept the group in sight and returned on the short technical descent before surprising fellow contenders Vingegaard, Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM Team), and Lidl-Trek pair Juan Ayuso and Mattias Skjelmose with an early acceleration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t get much out of those guys from Lidl-Trek again,\u201d Evenepoel added post-stage, inferring a lack of work on the front in the pursuit of Poga\u010dar.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel remains optimistic as the battle for second and third place in the Tour de France has become even more open. \u201cOn the toughest climb, I was actually well-positioned at the front and even considered jumping after Tadej for a moment. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m any worse uphill than I used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 12 seconds gained on the Dane across the line and six bonus seconds for second place on the stage, his 18-second ambush on Vingegaard might mean a shift of the power balance in the Tour de France fight for second place. He is just 30 seconds behind the Dane on GC.<\/p>\n
Belgian superstar\u2019s increased maturity<\/h2>\n
His sports director Patxi Vila believes Evenpoel \u201cshowed his character. Also a bit like in the Tourmalet [when the Belgian blasted Lipowitz over not leading him out on stage six], I think we see that Remco is a bit more mature: he\u2019s able to handle the effort and just not blow up, to take his own pace and keep fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to Velo<\/em> and media outside their team bus, Vila confirmed that the podium is their goal: \u201cWe see for the moment Tadej completely out of reach so that\u2019s another story. So for the moment, the race is against the podium contenders, between us. Today, when we saw Isaac [del Toro] having a bit of a hard time, we tried to benefit from it and I think it was a good collaboration \u2026 we\u2019re fighting for second and third on the podium, it\u2019s still open.\u201d<\/p>\n The result also came as a positive response to stage 9\u2019s mediocre showing from the team. Evenepoel and Lipowitz were left without teammates to support them in the finale into Ussel.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo days ago, perhaps we had to do some homework. Today I think the team was very good. Hats off to them,\u201d Vila said.<\/p>\n As the man in second place overall, Jonas Vingegaard did much of the chase work in the group, in vain, as Poga\u010dar rode to his third stage win of this year\u2019s race.<\/p>\n \u201cI could feel that I\u2019d probably explode if I tried to go with him,\u201d Vingegaard told Danish channel TV2<\/i> of the moment Poga\u010dar accelerated to victory, with 16 kilometers left to race. \u201cI tried to ride my own pace. If I get help, I get help, and if not, that\u2019s how it is.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI actually think it was a stage that suited him better. I think I can be satisfied and I believe that my days will come,\u201d the man wearing the King of the Mountains jersey added.<\/p>\n His team management had other explanations for Vingegaard\u2019s loss of time to Poga\u010dar, Evenepoel, Lipowitz, Seixas, Skjelmose, and Ayuso on the stage.<\/p>\n \u201cJonas did all the work and then it\u2019s normal that at an arrival like this, guys can still sprint away from him,\u201d sport director Marc Reef told Feltet<\/i> and Velo<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are here to try to win the race, we wanted to keep the gap as close as possible, that\u2019s also what Jonas did. I\u2019m really proud of him, about the spirit he has been showing.\u201d<\/p>\n Vingegaard\u2019s small loss of time could be a hiccup, a forgettable footnote in the whole scheme of things \u2014 or it could be indicative of bigger problems to come when the race hits the Vosges Saturday with a tough mountain day to Le Markstein.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/comeback-king-evenepoel-blasts-open-tour-podium-battle-vingegaard-pays-price\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2285366925-scaled.jpg”] Andy McGrath Updated July 15, 2026 02:22AM Remco Evenepoel sounded stunned at the finish of stage 10 of the Tour de France in Le Lioran. \u201cIn the end, [Jonas] Vingegaard was worse than me after all,\u201d he told Belgian media at the finish after moving into third place overall and reinvigorating the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2044782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2044782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2044782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2044782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2044782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Vingegaard \u2018did all the work\u2019
<\/b><\/h2>\n![](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Z8A_6571-720x518.jpg?width=1920&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")