{"id":2062198,"date":"2026-07-25T14:38:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2062198"},"modified":"2026-07-25T14:38:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:38:46","slug":"tour-de-france-stage-20-carapaz-wins-after-kuss-heartbreak-pogacar-pulls-del-toro-to-white-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2062198","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France Stage 20: Carapaz Wins after Kuss Heartbreak, Poga\u010dar Pulls Del Toro to White Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"
Richard Carapaz won his second stage of the 2026 Tour de France on Saturday after Sepp Kuss suffered a heart-breaking near miss in a nail-biting high-mountain finale.<\/p>\n
Kuss was solo at the front of Saturday\u2019s 20th stage through the Alps when he crashed twice inside the final 7km, leaving the chasing Carapaz to steam past and take victory on Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n
Kuss\u2019 devastation wasn\u2019t over after his second crash at around 5km from the line.<\/p>\n
Remco Evenepoel denied him the second-place finish after the Belgian caught and passed him inside the final 50 meters.<\/p>\n
It was a bitter finish for the Coloradan after he narrowly finished fourth on Alpe d\u2019Huez only one day earlier.<\/p>\n
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A VERY close call for Sepp Kuss \ud83d\ude31<\/p>\n
Richard Carapaz flies past and steals the race lead! pic.twitter.com\/Zc3TIUK3eg<\/p>\n
\u2014 Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) July 25, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
Evenepoel finished second after he attacked away from a small GC group inside the final kilometers of the summit finish to Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n
Tadej Poga\u010dar led his teammate Isaac del Toro to the line to give UAE Emirates a 4-5 finish on the stage and a near-guaranteed 1-3 on the final podium.<\/p>\n
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Poga\u010dar the yellow jersey MVP<\/h2>\nPoga\u010dar paced Del Toro to pressure Seixas and secure the white jersey for the Mexican. (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Poga\u010dar played teammate for the Del Toro through the back-half of Saturday\u2019s stage to seal the Mexican\u2019s white jersey.<\/p>\n
Del Toro\u2019s rival Paul Seixas cracked after Poga\u010dar began playing pacemaker in this gruesome \u201cQueen Stage.\u201d Seixas lost 1:50 to his young rider classification foe but did enough to hang on to fourth.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the finish, Poga\u010dar hailed the help of Del Toro and his teammates through the past 20 stages of the Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will now talk how I helped Isaac to the podium, but first of all he helped me to ride for yellow, and the rest of the team,\u201d Poga\u010dar said at the finish.<\/p>\n
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\u201cToday it was an honor to ride for Isaac in the last one and a half hours,\u201d Poga\u010dar said. \u201cI did it with pleasure and learned how hard it is to ride for somebody else. To come together to the line, it\u2019s a memorable achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were no changes in GC after a stage that likely cements the standings ahead of a shortened, modified stage in Paris on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar is 6:26 ahead of Evenepoel on GC and all-but guaranteed a record-equaling fifth yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
Del Toro is third, more than two minutes ahead of Seixas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did really good this Tour, so did the team. But there was bad luck for competitors. It\u2019s three weeks, a lot of shit can happen, and we made it through,\u201d Poga\u010dar said.<\/p>\n
Mountain misery in the high Alps<\/h2>\nThe peloton ventured over the top of the Alps on stage 20 of the Tour de France.<\/span> (Photo: Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The Tour de France route organizers saved the worst to (almost) last Saturday. This 20th stage was disgustingly hard.<\/p>\n
In fact, the raw stats made it one of the hardest Tour de France stages in history.<\/p>\n
The \u201cqueen stage\u201d of this year\u2019s race loaded 5,450m of climbing into 171km.<\/p>\n
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The historic climbs of Col du Croix Fer (Hors Categorie), T\u00e9l\u00e9graphe (Cat.1) and Galibier (Hors Categorie) served the beaten-down peloton a procession of pain before a back-road approach to the Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n
The bunch approached the ski town via the narrow, ramped climb of the 13km Col du Sarenne and tricky 10km plateau road.<\/p>\n
Carapaz and Pedersen secure polka and green<\/h2>\nPedersen hung tough in the breakaway over the first HC climb to collect more intermediate sprint points.<\/span> (Photo: Loic VENANCE \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A who\u2019s who of hitters made the day\u2019s break on the Croix de Fer.<\/p>\n
Carapaz made the split to raid the summits and all-but seal the KoM classification. Mads Pedersen hauled his cobble-bashing frame over the 25km Croix de Fer to take the intermediate sprint and secure the green jersey.<\/p>\n
Only five riders remained out front ahead of the climb to the 2,600m high Galibier.<\/p>\n
Carapaz, Kuss, Matthew Riccitello, and Jai Hindley were there.<\/p>\n
Crucially, so too was Juan Ayuso. The Spaniard hemorrhaged time and slid down the GC on stage 19 and was on the rampage to move back up.<\/p>\n
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However, the mission failed for Ayuso when the GC group came blasting past the remants of the breakaway in the final 10km. He finished the stage in the same position he started.<\/p>\n
The attackers took more than 5 minutes of a gap over the Galbier ascent and into the 30km descent toward Sarenne.<\/p>\n
Riccitello was gapped on the downhill to leave four out front at the base of the Sarenne.<\/p>\n
Kuss kicks, crashes, finishes third<\/h2>\nKuss suffered his second near-miss in two days on Alpe d\u2019Huez. (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Kuss made the first major move from the attacking group.<\/p>\n
After being stung by start-stop-tactics while on the attack on Alpe d\u2019Huez, the Eagle of Colorado flew solo in the early kilometers of the 13km climb of the Sarenne.<\/p>\n
He got the gap and held it for several kilometers, was caught by Carapaz and Hindley, and went again at 18km to go.<\/p>\n
Kuss\u2019 second move look liked it would stick.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old took a 20-second gap over the summit of the Sarenne and held his lead over Carapaz on the rolling plateau toward Alpe d\u2019Huez.<\/p>\n
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The Durango star looked set for the stage win as he entered the final 7km with around 15 seconds of a lead.<\/p>\n
But it all unraveled in dramatic fashion.<\/p>\n
Kuss crashed twice in the space of two kilometers inside the final 7km. The first fall appeared to be relatively undramatic, but footage of the second revealed he was only saved from tumbling down a ravine by the fence netting across the exposed roadside.<\/p>\n
Kuss was straight back to his feet after his second crash, but Carapaz went rocketing past.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar plays superdomestique, Seixas cracks<\/h2>\nSeixas Fever didn\u2019t die down after the 19-year-old was denied th white jersey.<\/span> (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Poga\u010dar turned pacemaker on the Col du Galibier as the stage tipped into the final 70km.<\/p>\n
When all UAE\u2019s domestiques cracked out of the GC peloton, the yellow jersey rode the front for Del Toro. It initially sparked questions whether the yellow jersey was pulling for his teammate or was greedy for a 6th stage win.<\/p>\n
It later became apparent it was likely a bit of both.<\/p>\n
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Seixas dropped out of the race for white on the Sarenne. Ironically, the 19-year-old was gapped soon after his very own teammates on Decathlon CMA CGM tried to light it up to put time on Del Toro.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar started piling on at the front of the GC group inside the final 10km, but it was too late to secure a stage win.<\/p>\n
A small group of top climbers came to the final 3km together before Evenepoel accelerated late to secure a few consolation seconds.<\/p>\n
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2286928954.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated July 25, 2026 10:43AM Richard Carapaz won his second stage of the 2026 Tour de France on Saturday after Sepp Kuss suffered a heart-breaking near miss in a nail-biting high-mountain finale. Kuss was solo at the front of Saturday\u2019s 20th stage through the Alps when he crashed twice inside […]<\/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-2062198","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\/2062198","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=2062198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2062198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2062198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2062198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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![\"Tour](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2287590259.jpg?width=2048&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
![\"Pedersen](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2286909784.jpg?width=2048&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
![\"Kuss](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2286929062.jpg?width=2048&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
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