With an emphatic win at stage one of the Tour de Suisse, simply riding away from the field with apparent ease, Tadej Pogačar has set the stage for the Tour de France. Then, from the sublime to the sorrowful: Wout van Aert was ruled out of the Tour de France after a septic elbow injury, dealing Visma-Lease a Bike a significant blow. On the women’s side — we’re fans here at Pez! —Femke de Vries claimed her first professional victory at 32 in the Tour de Suisse Women’s Stage 1. Meanwhile, Biniam Girmay returned to winning form at the Baloise Belgium Tour. Laurence Pithie continued his breakout 2026 season with a stage win in Slovenia. Plus: the 2026 Tour of Britain host cities were announced…and Mike’s Ride of the Week is two rides, the first going a whole lot better than the second.
TOP STORY
- Tour de Suisse Stage 1: Utter Pogačar Domination
RACE NEWS
- Nooooo! Wout van Aert to Miss the Tour de France
- Femke de Vries Earns First Pro Victory at Tour de Suisse
- Bini’s Back! Girmay Nabs Baloise Stage 1
- Laurence Pithie Storms to Slovenia Victory
- Host Cities Announced for Tour of Britain
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
- Sarah Gigante’s Comeback Suffers a Blow
MIKE’S RIDE OF THE WEEK
- The Dalles Omnium
VIDEO
- Descending Santa Rosa Road on Campagnolo Levante: The GoPro View
Tour de Suisse Stage 1: Utter Pogačar Domination
Recency bias reigns here at Pez HQ: Back in early spring, as Paul Seixas was putting up KOMs and world-beating watts-per-kilo marks, we were asking, “Is he the one to take down Pogi — and will it happen this year?
Then last month, during Vingegaard’s walkover at the Giro we determined that the only man ever to beat Pogačar at the Tour might indeed do it again.
Even last week, we watched Isaac del Toro trounce his Auvergne-Rhöne-Alpes competition, and the possibility of UAE’s number two rising to number one entered our minds.
Heck, just a couple of weeks ago a third of you responded that someone not named Tadej would win in France this year.
And then today happened.
Appropriately enough, considering that the peloton heads to France soon, Pogačar threw down the gauntlet in the first stage of the Tour de Suisse. Granted, his competition in the traditional Tour warmup isn’t anything like what he’ll face next month — but this just looked too easy.
It wasn’t an emphatic attack that separated him from his ersatz competition; he seemed just to roll off the front, and then widened the gap with an effort that appeared entirely modest.
He even picked up a couple of bonus seconds in the stage’s first sprint.
Top Ten — Stage 1, Tour de Suisse, courtesy of Pro Cycling Stats
RACE NEWS
Nooooo! Wout van Aert to Miss the Tour de France
It’s the latest, saddest moment in Wout van Aert’s mercurial 2026: the Paris-Roubaix winner (and Pez fave) will miss the Grand Depart in Barcelona July 4.
And here I was hoping for a Green Jersey campaign.
The trouble traces back to a training crash before the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Van Aert toughed it out, first falling off his team’s pace in the team time trial, but then snagging a bunch sprint win on stage five; the wound on his elbow, however, turned septic enough to force an abandon on stage six and a night in hospital. Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed Wednesday that the recovery timeline simply won’t bend to fit a Tour de France start.
The year started with the Belgian engine’s crash as he tested Mathieu van der Poel in a January cyclocross race.
But then 2026 saw van Aert nearly catch Tadej Pogačar and Tom Pidcock at Milan-Sanremo — and of course sprint around Pogačar in the Roubaix Velodrome.
But his omission ripples beyond van Aert’s disappointment (and even mine): Jonas Vingegaard loses arguably his most versatile lieutenant just as the rematch with Pogačar looms. Visma will his replacement on June 23.
For now, it’s healing over racing, with a possible return pencilled in for the Vuelta a España. Get well soon, Wout; the cobbles and the classics will still be there when you’re back.
Femke de Vries Earns First Pro Victory at Tour de Suisse
Sondrio served up the perfect amuse-bouche for what promises to be a feisty Tour de Suisse Women, and Femke de Vries made sure she was the one with the appetite. The Visma | Lease a Bike rider out-kicked Britain’s Lauren Dickson (FDJ United-SUEZ) in a straight two-up sprint to claim Stage 1, and with it, her first-ever professional win at the age of 32. Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) rode in alone for third.
Don’t let the modest 108 kilometers fool you; this was a stage built for climbers who don’t mind a bit of pain. Three lumps stood between the bunch and the finish, the nastiest being the Bordighi, just 1.1km long but averaging a brutal 12% gradient with four kilometers still to race.
The race split early on the Buglio in Monte, with Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) lighting the fuse that produced a ten-rider front group. De Vries went again on the Triangia, dragging only Dickson and Urška Žigart clear, before a brutal second dig from De Vries cracked the Slovenian, who was promptly swallowed by the chasing pack.
De Vries tried to drop Dickson on the Bordighi but couldn’t shake her. It didn’t matter. Behind, Kim Le Court and then Kasia Niewiadoma lit the fuse among the GC favorites, but the move came too late to threaten the lead duo. In the sprint, Dickson opened it up first, and De Vries calmly came around her for the win, snatching the overall lead in the process.
Top Ten — Tour de Suisse Stage 1, courtesy of Pro Cycling Stats
Bini’s Back! Girmay Nabs Baloise Stage 1
Plenty of fireworks were promised on the cobbled Hageland circuit, but in the end it was a name some had quietly stopped expecting that struck first: Biniam Girmay. The Eritrean reeled in late attacker Rune Herregodts with the line in sight, then held off a fast-finishing Tim Merlier by the width of a tire to win Stage 1 of the Baloise Belgium Tour in Scherpenheuvel-Zichem. It was his first win since the Clasica Almeria in February, and a timely reminder that he can still out-gun the bunch’s genuine fast men, not just survive a hilly day. Olav Kooij and Jasper Philipsen, both on the start list, never even featured in the finale.
The race began innocently enough with a four-man breakaway that the peloton let dangle at three minutes before reeling it in with seventy kilometers still on the clock. A fresh wave of counter-attackers, including Bogdan Zabelinskiy and a five-man chase group, kept things interesting through the Golden Kilometer, where Bart Kortleve mopped up bonus seconds. The Kerkstraat cobbles produced a few twitchy moments, but it was Rune Herregodts who threatened to spoil the script, slipping clear in the final ten kilometers and opening a gap that briefly looked dangerous.
Herregodts held on until the final corners, but the charging bunch swallowed him in the closing meters. That left it to the genuine sprinters — and Girmay timed his effort perfectly, nipping past Merlier right on the line. Max Kanter, Steffen De Schuyteneer, and Søren Wærenskjold rounded out the top five.
Laurence Pithie Storms to Slovenia Victory
A couple of seasons ago, Laurence Pithie made an instant impression stepping up to the WorldTour, the kind of fast-finishing, race-smart talent tipped for Classics stardom. Then came the agonizing misses, including 43rd at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and 26th at Gent-Wevelgem despite being in the mix with the leaders deep into both races. But stage 1 of the Tour of Slovenia was the latest proof that 2026 is finally the year it clicks.
Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe simply dismantled the 141km run from Velenje to Rogaška Slatina, with Tour de France podium man Florian Lipowitz and Giro contender Giulio Pellizzari turning domestique for the day, tearing the peloton apart on the stage’s lone categorized climb and dropping most of the sprinters. That left Pithie to finish the job, with lead-out man Arne Marit claiming second himself. Edoardo Zambanini (Bahrain-Victorious) rounded out the podium in third.
It’s already Pithie’s fourth win of the season, following his first overall stage-race title at the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque and additional wins at Rund um Köln and Tour de Wallonie. The kid who arrived with hype two years ago is finally delivering on it.
Host Cities Announced for Tour of Britain
The 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Men will run from Wednesday, September 2 to Sunday, September 6, with host venues announced this week.
The race opens with a circuit stage in Lincoln, marking the city’s first Tour visit in over three decades, then heads to Boston for a stage finishing on the coast at Skegness, neither of which has hosted the modern race before. Stage three runs from Hull to Beverley, a venue last used in 2023 when Olav Kooij sprinted to victory. The fourth stage crosses North Yorkshire from Helmsley, scene of Gonzalo Serrano’s 2022 stage and overall win, to a first-ever race finish in Leyburn. The race concludes in the Scottish Borders, with Earlston hosting both start and finish for the first time, just outside Edinburgh.
British Cycling Ventures’ Jonathan Day framed the route as a mix of new hosts and returning cycling-friendly regions. British Cycling research found the 2025 Tours (men’s and women’s combined, ten stages) generated £62.3 million in economic impact for host communities.
Detailed stage routes and the women’s race host venues are due in the coming weeks.
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
Gigante’s Comeback Suffers a Blow
Sarah Gigante fans, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait longer to see her on the road. Fracturing the largest bone in your body rarely promises quick recovery, and indeed, Gigante’s femur is taking time to heal fully.
Recall that after breakout performances at the 2025 Giro d’Italia Women and Tour de France Femmes, the AG Insurance-Soudal rider crashed during training and broke her femur. Initially she showed signs of a quick recovery, but recently underwent another round of surgery. “Unfortunately, after initially good progress, I feel more and more like a hamster on a wheel. I am doing my utmost and working so hard, but I am not getting anywhere.
“Two steps forward, three steps back. That gets annoying quickly,” she posted on Instagram. “Thanks to the unconditional support of my team and a few smart Belgian surgeons, we finally discovered that my pain was no longer coming from the fracture itself, but from irritation. I can complete long training rides, but intensive rides are a whole different, and very painful, story.”
Gigante appears to be keeping her proverbial chin up: “It is a shame that Sarah 4.0 is taking so long, but this time it will be fine. A bit more rest, then some Zwift rides, and hopefully this story about my fractured femur can finally be closed… And I’ll only have to refer back to it once in my book.”
MIKE’S RIDE OF THE WEEK: THE DALLES OMNIUM
I don’t race much these days, not conventional road races, and initially turned down my friend Rick when he asked if I wanted to enter the Oregon State RR Championships in The Dalles last weekend. Sounded like a long way to drive to race for 2-3 hours.
But then he told me he hadn’t been able to decide whether to enter the Masters 3/4/5 race (40 miles in the morning) or the Open Masters (60 miles in the afternoon), so he’d entered both. In one day.
That, I thought, is badass.
So I entered both as well.
The morning race went smoothly: Twice around a 20-mile loop that passed first through a rather bland canyon, but then rose above farmland, with sweeping views in practically every direction. (Not that I took them in; I was busy racing.)
But about 5 minutes into the afternoon race, I realized that taking on a longer race against faster competition in the heat of the day on very tired legs was maybe not the most prudent idea. The photo at the top of this post is what it looks like when nearly the entire field rides away from you on the day’s first climb. (Zoom in and you can see riders waaay up the road.)
But there was a benefit to falling off the field so profoundly: After our third trip up the circuit’s hill, with just 5 downhill miles to go, I told my sad group of chasers, “Guys, I’ve had enough. I’m going to stop and take photos.” They didn’t think I was serious! But I’m glad I finally looked around; otherwise I’d have missed this stunning view of Mt. Hood.
PEZ VIDEO
PEZ SEz: Descending Santa Rosa Road at Nova Eroica California on Campagnolo Levante gravel wheels – One of my first full length ride videos testing a new GoPro. If you have nothing better to do for 45 minutes – then check this out…
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