Tadej Pogačar’s Vosges Statement: A Rain-Soaked Solo Strike on the Col du Haag to Win at Le Markstein

Curated by Gary Edgington · Race Results

For three days the general-classification favourites had traded the Tour de France to the breakaway and kept their powder dry. In the Vosges, on a cold and rain-lashed afternoon between Mulhouse and Le Markstein, Tadej Pogačar decided the ceasefire was over. On the brutal ramps of the Col du Haag, the yellow jersey punched clear of every rival left standing, crested the summit alone and descended through the wet to a solo win at Le Markstein — his fourth stage of this Tour and his second career victory at the little Alsace ski station, after 2023. It was not a day that reshaped the podium so much as one that hammered the leader’s authority home: by nightfall Pogačar led the race by more than four and a half minutes, and the men chasing him looked further away than ever.

Twenty-eight men up the road

The 155-kilometre stage was built to reward aggression, with four graded climbs stacked across its second half, and the fight to make the day’s move was fierce from the flag. When it finally settled, a breakaway of around twenty-eight riders had the road, and it was studded with quality: Richard Carapaz and Ben Healy for EF Education–EasyPost, Thymen Arensman of Netcompany–Ineos, the Uno-X brothers Tobias and Anders Halland Johannessen, Movistar’s Pablo Castrillo and Einer Rubio, the climber Valentin Paret-Peintre, and — most significantly for the overall — Tom Pidcock, who had begun the day fourth. Up front, Jasper Philipsen nipped through to take the intermediate sprint and top up his green-jersey account, but the real prizes lay higher up, on the climbs that would decide both the stage and the mountains competition.

UAE turn the screw

Behind the escape, UAE Team Emirates–XRG went to the front and stayed there. With Pidcock up the road and only four minutes down on the overall, Pogačar’s team could not let the break run free, and so they set a relentless, grinding tempo over the giant Grand Ballon — twenty-one kilometres of climbing that stretched the peloton into a long, suffering line. Heavy showers swept across the mountains, turning the descents slick and the day into a test of nerve as much as legs. Piece by piece the leaders’ advantage was whittled down: what had been several minutes shrank to barely ninety seconds by the time the race crossed the uncategorised Col du Hundsruck, the breakaway’s hopes of a stage win draining away with every kilometre UAE reeled in. As our guide to how the Tour is won lays out, this is the machinery of a mountain stage — a strong team burning matches early so its leader has a clean run at the finale.

The Col du Haag thins the field

Everything came down to the final ascent, the Col du Haag: 11.2 kilometres at a savage 7.3 per cent, its summit sitting just six kilometres of downhill from the line. Carapaz, sensing the break was doomed, threw himself up the road early in a bid to stay away, but the surge behind him was too strong and he was swept up around two kilometres before the top. The GC men were already at their limit. Florian Lipowitz lit the first real attack from the yellow-jersey group with roughly eleven kilometres remaining, and Paul Seixas was the only rider able to jump onto him. The move splintered the favourites: Mattias Skjelmose and Lenny Martínez cracked and slid backwards, Remco Evenepoel was visibly on his limit well before the summit, and Arensman — earlier one of the strongest men in the break — had already seen his stage undone by a puncture on the Col du Page. As the polka-dot jersey tends to reward, it was the long-range climbers up front who mopped up the mountain points while the overall contenders fought their private war behind.

The winning blow, 1.6 kilometres from the top

Pogačar let others do the softening up, then delivered the knockout. With 1.6 kilometres of the Col du Haag still to climb, he launched an explosive acceleration through a corridor of spectators, and no one could answer. Only his own teammate Isaac del Toro and the 19-year-old Seixas came anywhere close, and even they were left trailing as the yellow jersey opened a gap that grew with every pedal stroke. Pogačar crested the summit alone, tucked low through the wet, and descended smoothly and confidently the last six kilometres to Le Markstein to take the win by 38 seconds. It was a display that answered any lingering question about whether the sprint week had dulled his edge: back in the high country, on a climb that suited pure power, the champion was simply a level above.

The overall hardens — and Pidcock pays

The consequences rippled down the standings. Del Toro and Seixas took second and third at 38 seconds, Jonas Vingegaard limited his losses to around three-quarters of a minute in fourth, and Evenepoel led Lipowitz and Juan Ayuso across at fifty seconds. Pogačar now leads Vingegaard by 4:30, with Evenepoel clinging to the final podium step at 5:04 as Seixas closes to 5:19. The day’s biggest mover, though, moved the wrong way: Tom Pidcock, so brilliant in the Belfort breakaway 24 hours earlier, was distanced when the escape was caught and tumbled from fourth to ninth, nearly four minutes lost in an afternoon. There was consolation for the youngest of the front-runners: Seixas gained just enough on Ayuso to prise the white jersey off the Spaniard’s shoulders, leading the young-rider classification by three seconds.

Green stays red-hot, dots stay yellow

The jersey fights outside the top ten kept simmering too. Philipsen’s intermediate-sprint raid nudged the green-jersey race along without changing its shape: Mads Pedersen still leads the points on 397, the Belgian second on 361 and Biniam Girmay third on 347, the mountains ahead expected to favour the versatile Dane. In the mountains competition, Pogačar’s haul on the Haag pushed his King-of-the-Mountains lead to 52 points, clear of the breakaway climbers Paret-Peintre on 43 and Carapaz on 38 — the yellow jersey once again wearing the polka dots as well, at least on paper.

What it sets up

Stage 14 did not blow the race apart, but it removed any doubt about who is in charge of it. Pogačar has stretched his lead past four and a half minutes, reclaimed the initiative he had loaned to the breakaways, and served notice on the high mountains still to come. Behind him the fight is for the remaining podium places — Evenepoel, Seixas and a resurgent Vingegaard separated by less than a minute — and that scrap promises to intensify immediately, with an even steeper summit finish looming next. For one wet afternoon in the Vosges, though, the story was singular and familiar: when the Tour returned to the mountains, Tadej Pogačar returned to winning.

Stage 14 — how they finished

1. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates–XRG)
2. Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) — +0:38
3. Paul Seixas (Decathlon–CMA CGM) — +0:38
4. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) — +0:44
5. Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) — +0:50

GC after stage 14: Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) leads Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) by 4:30 and Evenepoel (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) by 5:04, with Seixas +5:19, Ayuso +5:22, Lipowitz +5:44 and del Toro +5:50; Skjelmose +7:35, Pidcock +7:59 and Martínez +8:25 round out the top ten. Green: Pedersen 397 pts, Philipsen 361, Girmay 347. Polka dot: Pogačar 52, Paret-Peintre 43, Carapaz 38. White: Seixas, from Ayuso (+0:03) and del Toro (+0:31).

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