Tour de France: Richard Carapaz from Ecuador wins first difficult Alpine stage

45 seconds behind Carapaz, a man who now knows this feeling crossed the finish line. Mauro Schmid (+45 seconds) also crossed the finish line in second place the day before. Like the day before, Schmid’s teammate Felix Engelhardt had once again done noticeably preparatory work for the captain, only in the end someone was better again.

The favorite group around the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar and Red Bull captain Remco Evenepoel from Belgium held back two days after Florian Lipowitz’s exit from the tour due to injury and crossed the finish line as a group, 4:35 minutes behind. In the overall ranking for the yellow jersey, nothing changed in the top places, Pogacar continues to lead with 4:32 minutes ahead of Evenepoel; Pogacar’s teammate Isaac Del Toro (Mexico/+6:51) is third.

Pogacar colleague Adam Yates probably dragged himself to the finish line with stomach problems

So things couldn’t be going better for Pogacar’s UAE team from the Emirates. Apparently the team had been struggling with health problems in the past few days. On Wednesday, Adam Yates apparently dragged himself to the finish line with stomach problems. However, his team did not provide any information, which left room for speculation. Pogacar is doing well, said team boss Mauro Gianetti on Thursday. At the award ceremony (where Pogacar has been called up twice for a long time because of the mountain jersey) he appeared healthy.

That’s what he and everyone else would like to see before the impending act of violence: The tour planners have packed Friday and Saturday full of elevation gain and pass crossings, each ending in Alpe d’Huez. The famous 21 hairpin bends that are scheduled for Friday were already so tight on Thursday that there was hardly any space left for a pop-up tent.