Results are changeable, class is permanent. Yesterday, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe\u2019s co-leader Remco Evenpoel looked ready to slip off the podium, dropping back on the Col du Haag before limiting his losses.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, he sealed his first Tour de France mountain stage win at Plateau de Solaison, arguably the hardest climb of the whole race, and moved up to second.<\/p>\n
Eleven kilometers at nine per cent average? No sweat. He knew every bend from riding the HC leg-hurter 20 times in preparation.<\/p>\n
The only hanger-on to the Team UAE Emirates-XRG tandem of Tadej Poga\u010dar and Isaac Del Toro, Evenepoel deftly trailed two attacks in the last kilometer from the Mexican before outsprinting the race leader. The world time-trial champion made it look a lot easier than it felt.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s a big step forward that I can follow this pace because it was a crazy hard pace,\u201d he said post-race.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso you have to understand, I always get so many critics saying \u2018he cannot survive deep climbs\u2019 and this and that. It just feels amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, this is the first proper mountain stage that I win from the GC group. So it shows that I\u2019ve put a step forward and now I hope to keep this for the last week because it\u2019s not over yet,\u201d he added later.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel is amazed to be finding his \u201cbest legs during this Tour\u201d.<\/p>\n
In doing so, as Jonas Vingegaard exited the race in unfortunate circumstances, the 26-year-old is primed to finish in second place \u2013 especially with Tuesday\u2019s stage 16 time-trial on the horizon, which is likely to extend his 58-second advantage over third-placed Del Toro.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar bigs up Remco the rocket<\/h2>\n
Even the decade\u2019s daunting man to beat is paying tribute. \u201cChapeau to Remco. Solaison is a 30-minute test climb and I think we did some of our best numbers,\u201d Tadej Poga\u010dar said afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemco sometimes just needs a bit of a morale boost and he is flying. Today he showed he is a rocket. He\u2019s gonna be a pain in the ass next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking in his press conference for written press on Sunday evening, Poga\u010dar noted that the stage was \u201cnot as demanding as yesterday [stage 14]\u201d because they saved energy during breakaway bids sitting in the wheels:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not fresh legs, but one big effort and he really excels in this. Today, we saw how good he is but we will see how it will be when there are more climbs to come in the same stage \u2026 I think he\u2019s a big contender.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still dual leaders despite Lipowitz\u2019s deficit<\/h2>\n
Evenepoel has been ahead of teammate and co-leader Florian Lipowitz since day one\u2019s Barcelona TTT when he took off on the final climb.<\/p>\n
Throughout smaller time gains and occasional drama in the last fortnight, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have stuck to their guns that they have a dual leadership.<\/p>\n
However, with Lipowitz fifth overall at 6:48 after finishing with Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM Team), 1:48 behind the Belgian, it begs the question: will Evenpoel be the sole leader now?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I think we still maintain the dual leader approach. Of course Remco is closer on GC so we still need to maintain both as close as possible,\u201d team chief of sports Zak Dempster told media, including Velo<\/i>, outside their bus post-stage 15.<\/p>\n
He observed that the first half of the Tour played to Evenepoel\u2019s strengths, whereas Lipowitz is more of a diesel who has also shown he can perform in the mountains of its third week.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel\u2019s room to grow<\/h2>\n
Evenepoel himself acknowledged it was a big step forward to follow Poga\u010dar\u2019s pace on such a tough climb. Such a climb used to be one of his weaknesses. What has changed?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s still young. I know he\u2019s been a little while but he\u2019s gone through a process of changing coaches and teams,\u201d Dempster said. \u201cYou go back to the drawing board and try to improve bit-by-bit. With a good strategy, I think we\u2019re seeing one of the best versions of Remco.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we get to Paris, we\u2019ll find what the result will be. But we\u2019re full of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2286147045-scaled.jpg”] Andy McGrath Updated July 19, 2026 07:10PM Results are changeable, class is permanent. Yesterday, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe\u2019s co-leader Remco Evenpoel looked ready to slip off the podium, dropping back on the Col du Haag before limiting his losses. On Sunday, he sealed his first Tour de France mountain stage win at Plateau de […]<\/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-2051627","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\/2051627","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=2051627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2051627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2051627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2051627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}