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Remco Evenepoel beats Tadej Pogacar and wins the fifteenth stage of the Tour de France 2026, the 183.9 km Champagnole-Plateau de Solaison. The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider keeps pace with the Slovenian and manages to prevail in the final sprint, securing his third personal victory in the Grande Boucle. Pogacar, in any case, easily defends his yellow jersey; third place for the Mexican Isaac Del Toro (UAE Emirates), who gains fundamental seconds for the white jersey and the podium in the general classification. Sensational turn of events for Jonas Vingegaard, whose Tour ends early and in the worst way: the Dane of Visma Lease a Bike falls at -20 km, suffering a suspected fracture of the collarbone, and is forced to retire. Tomorrow is the second rest day, Tuesday there will be the sixteenth stage, the 26.1 kilometer individual time trial between Evian-les-Bains and Thonon-les-Bains.
Controversy over controls
Meanwhile, during the night, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, the first two in the general classification of the Tour de France, were woken up in the middle of last night for a surprise doping test before the first mountain stage in the Alps, as the two riders said. At the start of the 15th stage in Champagnole, the holder of the yellow jersey and his closest rival confirmed in the mixed zone the information published by the newspaper Le Parisien, according to which they had been woken up at 5 and 2 am respectively. «I only slept four hours last night – explained Pogacar -. The check was at 5am. I always go to bed late. It was a big shock for me to have only slept four hours,” said the four-time Tour winner, who is already checked daily as holder of the yellow jersey. «I also feel sorry for the kids who come for checks. Because I guess some runners get mad at them, but it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of those who send them. Those who control us are just doing their job,” he said. «I go to the doping control every day when I wear the yellow jersey. And what’s more, they come randomly in the morning during the Tour. And today they chose the night,” he added.
For Vingegaard, it was 2 in the morning when the controllers “knocked on his door.” “I thought they couldn’t do it, but apparently they could,” continued the Dane, who estimated that it took him “40 minutes to fall back to sleep.” “I think it’s right to undergo tests, but not when they affect our performance or our sleep. Testing at 2am is excessive, in my opinion,” he added. In his Visma-Lease a Bike team, some were even more outraged, like his American teammate Matteo Jorgenson. «I was asked to keep my opinion to myself, but it’s a total lack of respect for the riders. We make enormous efforts to try to catch up; it’s fundamental, especially between two such tough mountain stages. And then they wake you up at 2 in the morning. It infuriates me,” he blurted out. During the Tour de France, doping controls are carried out by the International Anti-Doping Agency (ITA), an independent body to which the International Cycling Union (UCI) has delegated its anti-doping program in 2021.