Remco Evenepoel tightened his grip on second place but said massive crowds prevented him from launching his attack on Alpe d\u2019Huez when he wanted to.<\/p>\n
The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe star said a line of motorcycles squeezed in by throngs of fans delayed his acceleration in the chaotic closing kilometers of stage 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided to attack five kilometers from the top. It took me two times, because I was blocked by the fans and the motos,\u201d Evenepoel told VTM<\/em>. \u201cIf I could have done that attack in one go, I think I would have yielded a different result.<\/p>\n \u201c[I thought] that something would go a bit wrong with all those people. Sorry it happened to me, but in the end I have to be satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n He finally launched once the barriers created more room to accelerate on the upper reaches of the climb.<\/p>\n The Belgian crossed the line sixth at 2:29 behind winner Tadej Poga\u010dar, who extended his lead to 7:11 with two stages left to go.<\/p>\n Evenepoel emerged relieved after defending second place and taking 11 seconds out of third-place rival Isaac del Toro and 16 seconds on fourth-place Paul Seixas.<\/p>\n \u201cI take back 10 seconds. I showed that I was better than the rest for the stage, and I got through this day well,\u201d Evenepoel said.<\/p>\n The Red Bull star said he never considered following Poga\u010dar when the yellow jersey attacked out of the chasing GC group at the base of Alpe d\u2019Huez to erase more than three minutes to the lead break featuring Sepp Kuss, Richard Carapaz and Lenny Martinez.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was to be expected that Tadej would perform a crazy song to try to win today. It was a good chance that he would go all-in today, and he did,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything went well with myself. Following him was a mission impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Evenepoel\u2019s decision to skip racing for more than two months before the Tour and shed 4kg appears to be paying off.<\/p>\n He now leads Del Toro by 2:31 and Seixas by 2:55 heading into Saturday\u2019s queen stage.<\/p>\n Evenepoel knows the Tour podium is within reach. If he survives stage 20, he will ride into Paris second overall, improving on his third-place Tour debut in 2024 and erasing the disappointment of last year\u2019s abandonment.<\/p>\n \u201cTomorrow go full one more time. We have a good eye on it,\u201d Evenepoel said. \u201cA lot can always happen. But the feeling is good, the legs are good and the teammates are good. Overall we are super satisfied. Tomorrow is a different stage: less explosive and longer. That should be better for me. I\u2019m really looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Evenepoel spoke to reporters wearing a face mask and admitted he was relieved to have survived his first ascent of the pandemonium of Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the way, my right ear is still ringing\u201d, Evenepoel said. \u201cBut it was a nice experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/remco-evenepoel-crowds-delayed-alpe-dhuez-attack-tour-de-france\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2286808385.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated July 25, 2026 07:51AM Remco Evenepoel tightened his grip on second place but said massive crowds prevented him from launching his attack on Alpe d\u2019Huez when he wanted to. The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe star said a line of motorcycles squeezed in by throngs of fans delayed his acceleration in 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-2062180","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\/2062180","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=2062180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2062180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2062180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2062180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Paris podium edging closer<\/h2>\n