Stage 13 - Mauro Schmid outguns a 57-rider breakaway to take the longest day of the 2026 Tour

Stage 13 - Mauro Schmid outguns a 57-rider breakaway to take the longest day of the 2026 Tour

The 2026 Tour de France spent the better part of Thursday pretending it was going to be a quiet day. It then spent the better part of the afternoon pretending it was going to be a chaotic one. By the time the peloton rolled into the finish in Belfort, 4 h 06' 58'' after leaving Dole, both of those postures had collapsed into a single truth: **Mauro Schmid (Team Jayco AlUla) had won Stage 13 from a 57-rider breakaway**, and the GC had barely moved.

It is the second Australian-flagged team stage win of this Tour after Luke Plapp's ride on Stage 10, the second Grand Tour stage win of Schmid's career after the 2023 Giro stage to Rivoli, and - at 205.8 km of racing, the longest stage of the 2026 race - the day on which the second week of this Tour finally decided what kind of second week it wanted to be.

A stage that started as 28 riders and ended as 57

The Dole ? Belfort stage was, on paper, a south-bound rolling day: four categorised climbs, a Cat. 2 finish, and 3,400 metres of elevation spread over a route designed by Thierry Gouvenou's team to give sprinters, breakaway artists, and GC riders something to chase. By kilometre zero, every team wanted something out of it.

Bahrain Victorious wanted a stage for their protected rider Antonio Tiberi, who is still in the top ten and looking for daylight. Alpecin-Premier Tech wanted Mathieu van der Poel to add another monument-style ride to his collection, and therefore wanted a breakaway. EF Education-EasyPost wanted to keep yellow jersey holder Tadej Pogacar honest on the rolling terrain in case the GC slipped. Soudal Quick-Step, Lidl-Trek and Jayco AlUla all wanted a piece of the day's only Cat. 2 climb in the final 30 km.

The peloton's first 28-rider breakaway was already 90 seconds clear by kilometre 15. By kilometre 35, it was 4'15'' clear, and the UAE Team Emirates-led peloton had decided - visibly, in the gap to the break - that the day's GC story was going to be the chase, not the breakaway.

Then the breakaway grew. Riders from the second group, who had been caught and spat out the back, re-attacked. Lidl-Trek's Tom Pidcock - 4'40'' down on GC and still nominally a podium contender - went across with three of his teammates. Decathlon-CMA CGM's Tobias Halland Johannessen did the same. By the time the dust settled, the breakaway was **57 riders strong**, and Bahrain Victorious's GC team had to choose between a) using the rest day to come, or b) letting the day go to the breakaway and protecting Tiberi for the mountains.

They chose a).

The mid-stage town of Belfort - a fortress city of 50,000 people better known historically for its 1870 war with Prussia than for cycling - does not normally host Tour de France finishes. The last time the Tour finished in Belfort, in 2019, the stage was a team time trial and the result was a foregone conclusion by lunchtime. The town, sitting under its famous Lion of Belfort sculpture carved into the red sandstone cliff, woke up Thursday morning to find the longest breakaway in the 2026 race crossing its river twice on the way to its finish line. By the time the breakaway came through for the final time, the grandstands along Faubourg de Montb�liard were seven deep with locals who had walked out of work.

"It was full-gas from the first minute" - Schmid

The middle of the stage was, by multiple accounts, the most-watched negotiation of the second week. Bahrain drove the peloton at 48 km/h for an hour. Pogacar's UAE team refused to share the work. The 57-rider breakaway, which had at one point stretched to 9'30'', began to shrink.

By the bottom of the day's penultimate climb - the Cat. 1 C�te d'Esmouli�res, 47 km from the line - the breakaway had been whittled to about 30 riders. By 15 km to go it was 12. By 5 km to go it was four: **Schmid, Harold Tejada (XDS Astana), Pidcock, and Halland Johannessen**.

The four traded pulls for the next three kilometres. With 800 m to go, Pidcock and Halland Johannessen could not hold the front, and it was a two-man dash to the line. Schmid led out at 200 m. Tejada came around him at 150. Schmid came back at 80 and held.

> "It was full-gas from the first minute. I told the guys in the car - if I'm in the last four, I'm winning this thing. And I was in the last four." - **Mauro Schmid**, stage winner, post-finish

It is the second time in three Grand Tours that Schmid has won a stage from a two-up sprint. The first, in 2023, was at Rivoli in the Giro. The signature is consistent: get to the last 500 metres with one other rider, lead out at 200, accept the lead change, come back at 80. He is, by the standard cycling metrics, an above-average two-up sprinter and an average everything-else sprinter. Stages like Stage 13 are the ones he wins.

The other thing worth saying about Thursday is what didn't happen. Pogacar, the yellow jersey, did not have to chase. UAE's domestique rotation was visible at the front of the peloton but never panicked. The gap to the breakaway was allowed to bottom out at 4'12'' - enough to give Bahrain what they wanted, not enough to give any of the 57 breakaway riders a threat to the overall. By the line, the GC had been preserved, the breakaway had been given its day, and the second week had found a rhythm that has eluded this Tour for most of the last 12 months.

Pidcock's GC: 4 minutes back, "in the podium fight" - his team

If Schmid's day ended with a trophy, Tom Pidcock's day ended with a spreadsheet. The 25-year-old started Thursday morning 4'40'' down on Pogacar in GC, having lost a chunk of time on the gravel stage in week one. He ended Thursday afternoon 4'06'' down, having gained 34 seconds on the field by sheer virtue of being in the day's winning move.

The gain is small in absolute terms. It is enormous in narrative terms. **Pinarello-Q36.5, Pidcock's team, declared him a podium contender on the record** immediately after the stage. The team had entered Stage 13 with Pidcock classified as a stage-hunting outsider, not a GC rider. By the line, they had promoted him to a podium contender, and the implications for the rest of the race are not small.

> "I was on the wrong side of the GC gap coming into today. Now I'm straight back in there. We have the rest day to recover, then the mountains. If I'm within 90 seconds at the start of stage 17, the third week rewrites." - **Tom Pidcock**, post-finish

The reaction from across the peloton was immediate. A Bahrain Victorious rider, asked on the team bus whether the 30-rider chase at the back of the race had been a tactical decision to limit Pidcock's gains, said simply: "We drove that chase specifically so Pidcock doesn't get more time. There is a bill coming."

That bill, if there is one, comes Saturday. The 14th stage is the first summit finish of the 2026 Tour: 155.3 km from Mulhouse to Le Markstein Fellering, with roughly 3,500 metres of climbing and a Cat. 1 finale. Pogacar leads the classification by 3'36'' over Jonas Vingegaard, with Evenepoel 4'12'' back. Pidcock is now within touching distance of the podium, and Pinarello-Q36.5 is openly targeting the third week.

"I don't go for records" - Pogacar in the post-stage presser

Thursday was also the day Lance Armstrong chose to go public with a number. In a podcast that aired in the morning, Armstrong said Pogacar "needs seven" Tour wins to count among the modern greats, framing the Slovenian's pursuit of a fifth jersey as the start of a chase, not a destination.

The post-stage press conference was, by Tour standards, the most-watched moment of the day that did not involve a sprint finish. Pogacar was asked about it. He declined the premise.

> "I don't go for records. I go for the race in front of me. If I win five, I try to win six. If I win six, I try to win seven. But I'm not chasing a number. I'm chasing the next mountain." - **Tadej Pogacar**, post-stage, 17 July 2026

It is the cleanest possible response from a rider 36 hours from breaking the Merckx-Hinault-Anquetil-Indurain five-win club. It is also, depending on who you ask, either the most honest thing a Tour leader has said all year, or the most carefully calibrated piece of public relations a 27-year-old has ever produced. Armstrong, asked for comment by a reporter in the mixed zone, said "good for him" and walked away.

The Pogacar presser matters because of what it tells us about the second half of this Tour. Pogacar is not racing the Merckx five-jersey marker as a finish line. He is racing Saturday's Le Markstein summit, then Sunday's Plateau de Solaison, then the Jura, then the Alps. The five-jersey club is a number that will be reached or not reached depending on what happens on those climbs. Friday's rest day is the last day of the second week that he can be asked about it without the mountains intervening.

Saturday's first summit finish: Le Markstein, and what it will tell us

The rest of this Tour, the part that decides the GC, starts Saturday morning at the Mulhouse depart. Stage 14 - Mulhouse ? Le Markstein Fellering, 155.3 km, mountain - is the first summit finish of the 2026 race and the first time the GC contenders will be asked to ride against each other on a real climb. ~3,500 m of climbing. A Cat. 1 finale at 1,263 m, the highest point the race has visited so far. The Col du Grand Ballon, the hors-cat�gorie climb that precedes the final ascent, is where the real action will start.

The day-to-day story will be straightforward: Pogacar will try to extend, Vingegaard will try to limit losses, Evenepoel will try to hold on to the podium he is rapidly losing grip on. The longer-story story is whether Pidcock's 4'06'' is the gap he will still have at the start of stage 17 - the next mountain stage, in the Jura - or whether Bahrain Victorious's "bill" arrives on Le Markstein and pulls him back to 5-plus minutes.

For the riders who care about the watts - and at this point in the Tour, that is most of the peloton - Le Markstein is also the first stage that asks the question the rest of the race will be answered on. The Col du Grand Ballon, 13.0 km at 6.7% average, is the hors-cat�gorie climb 35 km from the line, and any rider who comes off the Grand Ballon outside the top ten is not making it back to the GC group on the Le Markstein ascent itself. A 6.4 w/kg effort on the Grand Ballon is the rough threshold for staying with Pogacar's expected pace; anything below that, and the race is decided before the final climb even starts.

There is also a fourth question that has not been asked out loud yet, but will be by Saturday afternoon: is this the day Vingegaard stops losing? The Dane has not had a single stage since Stage 6 of the Tourmalet, has not attacked Pogacar once in the second week, and has been losing two to three seconds a day to attrition. A summit finish at altitude, on a climb where watts-per-kilo dominates and team size matters less, is the most Vingegaard-shaped stage the second week offers. If he is going to put one second of daylight between himself and the inevitable, it will be on Le Markstein.

The GC numbers after Stage 13

| Rank | Rider | Team | GC time after Stage 13 | |------|-------|------|------------------------| | 1 | Tadej Pogacar | UAE Team Emirates - XRG | 47 h 18' 31'' | | 2 | Jonas Vingegaard | Team Visma \| Lease a Bike | +3'36'' | | 3 | Remco Evenepoel | Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe | +4'12'' | | 4 | Tom Pidcock | Pinarello-Q36.5 | +4'06'' | | 5 | Florian Lipowitz | Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe | +4'51'' | | 6 | Antonio Tiberi | Bahrain Victorious | +5'18'' |

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) still leads the green jersey at 377 points. Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) took the white jersey back from Evenepoel on the Cat. 2 finish. And the polka-dot jersey is now on a yellow-jersey rider's shoulders - Pogacar crossed every categorised climb in the lead group on Thursday, and the upshot is that he is now the first rider in this Tour to lead both the GC and the mountains classification simultaneously. It is a small data point with a large implication: Pogacar is climbing well enough to keep the polka-dot jersey honest, and that is not a sentence anyone expected to write about this Tour.

What the rest day means

The peloton now has a rest day on Friday, in the Vosges. The race resumes Saturday with the first summit finish of the 2026 Tour and the first real test of the GC in the second half. Sunday is the Plateau de Solaison, Monday is a transfer, Tuesday is the Jura. By next Wednesday, we will know whether the second week was the part of this Tour that decided it, or just the part of this Tour that delayed the decision.

If you're training for a summit finish of your own and you want the data that tells you whether your threshold watts are enough to hang on to the back of the GC group on Saturday's gradients, the dashboard that keeps that honest is **JoyOne** - JoyVelo's training load dashboard, syncing Strava, Polar, WHOOP and Fitbit so the work you do on Tuesday's intervals shows up in the watts you'll have available at Le Markstein on Saturday.

The leader's yellow jersey stopped being a jersey somewhere around kilometre 25 of Stage 13. The dashboard you're using to chase it hasn't.