*sniff* — We’re already missing the Tour de France (even if this year’s version left us wanting…). Mike rounds up the winners and losers of the Grande Boucle, from time trials reclaiming relevance and Remco Evenepoel’s podium resurgence to Alpe d’Huez’s increasingly dangerous fan crowds and a quiet Tour for INEOS. The revamped green jersey scoring kept Pogačar out of the sprint conversation, while Lidl-Trek notched back-to-back points titles. And after a lopsided, bo-ring GC battle, Van der Poel’s Champs-Élysées heroics salvaged the race for fans. Elsewhere: Quinn Simmons repeats as Best Teammate, Lorena Wiebes sweeps the Tour de Pologne Women ahead of the Tour de France Femmes, and Wout van Aert eyes redemption at the Tour of Denmark.
And for those of you already wondering what you’ll do with your mornings (or afternoons if you’re in Europe, or middles-of-the-night in Australia…), EuroTrash plans to go BIG on the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. There’s plenty more racing to come!
TOP STORY
- 2026 Tour de France Winners and Losers
RACE NEWS
- Relive Stage 21’s Thrilling Final Kilometer
- Tour of Denmark: The Circus Rolls On
- Lorena Wiebes Sweeps Tour de Pologne Women, Perfect Pre-Tour Tune-Up
- Kahoot! Signs On as Official Learning Partner of La Vuelta
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
- Quinn Simmons…SuperTeammate — Again
- TDF ’26’s Final EuroTrash HeroSash Goes To…
VIDEO
- PEZ Rides the Col du Glandon
2026 Tour de France Winners and Losers
By “winners and losers,” I’m not talking about Tadej Pogačar and…everyone else. I mean the people, teams, and sentiments that exceeded expectations — or fell short of them.
WINNER: Time Trials — The winner of the Tour de France hasn’t always been the strongest climber; there used to be enough time trial kilometers that an all-rounder could emerge victorious. Time trials have been diminished because they’re not that fun to watch — yet this year’s races of truth (especially the Stage 1 TTT) were arguably the most entertaining of the last three weeks, for a moment shifting the GC conversation away from Tadej Pogačar.
LOSER: Throngs on Alpe d’Huez — Sure, crowds lining cycling’s epic ascents are part of our sport’s lore and legend. But the flesh-press has gotten too dangerous, and to…gross. More people with more alcohol in hotter weather all holding phones, determined either to take the right photo or to get into a photo is a recipe for calamity; we saw a small one when Einer Rubio smacked the back of a team car, which had slammed its brakes to avoid hitting a fallen fan.
WINNER: GC Remco — Leading up to this version of the Tour, doubters had begun to question whether we’d ever again see Remco Evenepoel on a Grand Tour podium. Certainly he benefited from Vingegaard’s departure, but he’d been chipping away at his margin. Look for Evenepoel to line up for a Grand Tour without Pogačar on its startlist.
LOSER: GC Pidcock — The one-time winner atop Alpe d’Huez (and one-time subject of future-GC-contenders conversations) made only the lightest impression in this Tour. A Tour top ten is a remarkable achievement, of course, but it’s nowhere near the level his fans once envisioned he’d reach.
WINNER: The Modified Green Jersey Scoring System — While Tadej Pogačar likely wouldn’t have contended for the sprinter’s jersey under the previous rubric anyway, the Tour’s organizers did well to ensure that the flatlanders would vie for it, not the guy winning everything else. The Green Jersey competition was one of this Tour’s few mildly suspenseful elements.
LOSERS: Netcompany INEOS — 2019, when many of us thought that Egan Bernal was kicking off a streak that would extend the Team Sky/INEOS dynasty, wasn’t that long ago. Yet the erstwhile superteam was practically invisible during this Tour, its highest-placed member being…Bernal, in 20th position.
WINNERS: The Lidl-Trek Green Jersey Machine — Two years, two Green Jerseys on two very different riders. The GC Ayuso bid appears to have been a bust, but in an era when it’s tough for any team but UAE and Visma to appear in any conversation, Lidl-Trek has carved out a nice niche.
LOSERS: The Seixas-Should-Wait Crowd — While Paul Seixas didn’t pose the GC threat that some thought he might, he rode with strength and a seemingly clear head. He gained experience, and will likely return stronger, perhaps one day contending for a win. Cyclists’ careers in this era are often brutally short; the young Frenchman did well to take advantage of this opportunity.
WINNER: The Tadej-Is-G.O.A.T. Argument — I suffer from acute recency and familiarity bias, but after this Tour, it’s becoming difficult not at least to consider that Pogačar might be the greatest cyclist of all time.
LOSERS: Tour de France Fans — Every Tour presents moments of magic, and that includes 2026; I loved following this year’s Grande Boucle. But it was over after stage 6; the final margin was a practical eternity; Pogačar’s chief rival crashed out; the spectre of doping appeared; the heat was punishing; fans were idiotic. We fans are looking forward to a better Tour.
WINNERS: Tour de France Fans — I wrote the entry just above (and the rest of this post) prior to watching Stage 21. In my esteem, that stage, replete with everything we love about bike racing, and with the sport’s cream rising to the top as soon as the field hit Montmartre the first time, flipped this Tour’s script and made it one we’ll remember much more fondly. I stand by all the reasons that we fans lost out with this Tour, but after van der Poel’s electric win in Paris — and all that led up to it — we earned a win as well.
Check out all of PEZ Tour coverage, including…
- Van der Poel’s Dramatic Win on the Champs Elysées
- Our Interview with TDF Stage Winner Jeff Pierce
- PEZ Rides the Col du Glandon
RACE NEWS
Relive Stage 21’s Thrilling Final Kilometer
If you’re like me, you’ve been replaying Sunday’s stage again and again in your head.
(And if you’re like me, you vastly prefer a non-American Tour broadcast.)
This video, then, is for you. Enjoy!
MATHIEU VAN DER POEL MAKES HISTORY IN PARIS
This might just be the most dramatic and iconic of Van der Poel’s glittering career pic.twitter.com/erelyQ2Ofc
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) July 26, 2026
Tour of Denmark: The Circus Rolls On
Suffering from Tour withdrawal already? Good news: there’s always more bike racing around the corner. I’ll offer up a Tour de France Femmes preview Thursday; for now, I give you…the Tour of Denmark!
Running July 29 to August 2, the 2026 PostNord Tour of Denmark serves up five stages and 882 punchy Danish kilometers, kicking off with a stage 1 loop around Aalborg, before the race works its way south through Glyngøre-to-Skive, Fredericia-to-Vejle, and Rudkøbing-to-Fåborg legs, before wrapping up with a proper crit-style finale from Køge into Rødovre, just outside Copenhagen. It’s definitely not a race for pure climbers; think rolling farmland, coastal crosswinds, and cobbled town-center finishes tailor-made for the puncheurs and sprinters of the world.
Not only does the parcours feature a Danish flavor; the startlist tilts heavily Scandinavian as well, with several teams listing mostly- or all-Dane squads. American’s also appear throughout the roster, including several U.S. riders from the upstart Modern Adventure team. And when you’re asked, But why would I watch this race, having just finished following the Tour de France? you’ll respond with three words: Unibet Rose Rockets.
But the one rider’s name that jumps off the startlist is Wout van Aert. Expect WVA to race with extra fury this week, having missed out on the Tour de France entirely, then having been forced to sit home and watch Mathieu van der Poel out-Wout Wout on the Champs-Élysées. That’s the kind of indignity that turns a guy into a wrecking ball for a week in Jutland. If there’s a headwind, a cobbled kicker, or a reduced bunch sprint on offer, Wout’s going to be looking to make somebody pay.
Five stages, a home crowd, unfinished business — the Tour of Denmark might be exactly the tonic for post-Tour blues. Stay tuned!
Lorena Wiebes Sweeps Tour de Pologne Women, Perfect Pre-Tour Tune-Up
Lorena Wiebes left no doubt about her form heading into the Tour de France Femmes, dominating the fourth edition of the Tour de Pologne Women with victories across all three stages, sealing the overall title ahead of Elisa Balsamo and Lara Gillespie.
The Dutch sprinter’s campaign began with drama in Zamość, where a wet, crash-affected finale disrupted SD Worx-Protime’s lead-out on stage one, yet Wiebes still powered through for the win, with teammate Barbara Guarischi completing a SD Worx-Protime one-two.
Stage two brought more chaos than control. Katherine Sarkisov went solo with a one-minute lead before SD-Worx caught her with 10 km remaining, and amid a chaotic lead-out, Wiebes found space to secure her second consecutive stage win, this time ahead of Lara Gillespie and Elisa Balsamo.
The final stage into Lublin followed a similar script. A breakaway built a two-minute lead before being reeled in, and with five kilometers to go, SD-Worx executed a perfect lead-out, enabling Wiebes to win the stage and secure overall victory.
Three stages, three wins — a statement performance just one week before the Tour de France Femmes. In her own words after stage two, Wiebes credited her team’s structure: “We wanted to finish at the sprint if there was no breakaway, which we succeeded in doing… The girls did a great job.”
For SD Worx-Protime, this was close to a perfect week — control on the front, sprint trains built on confidence, and a rider peaking exactly on schedule. If the Tour de Pologne Women was meant as a dress rehearsal for the Tour de France Femmes, Wiebes just delivered a flawless one. The rest of the sprint field now has a week to figure out how to stop her.
Top Ten, Women’s Tour of Poland — Courtesy of Pro Cycling Stats
Kahoot! Signs On as Official Learning Partner of La Vuelta
Kahoot! has struck a multi-year deal to become the official digital interactive learning platform for both La Vuelta and La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es, blending trivia and education with the drama of Spanish grand tour racing.
The tie-up brings Vuelta-themed content to Kahoot!’s Language Learning platform and its Drops app, offering bite-sized lessons in 16 languages that use race terminology to teach vocabulary while also covering Spanish culture, food, history, and landscape. Fans at the race itself will get in on it too, with live Kahoot! sessions running at start villages and fan zones along the route, plus daily trivia challenges hosted on both the Kahoot! and La Vuelta websites as the race travels from Monaco to Granada.
Behind the scenes, race organizers will also use Kahoot! 360, the company’s workforce engagement product, to train and communicate with race staff.
Kahoot! CEO Eilert Hanoa framed the partnership as a way to pair the excitement of the race with playful learning, while La Vuelta director Javier Guillén described the race as a cultural and geographic journey he wants fans to experience beyond just the sport.
La Vuelta Femenina ran May 3–9; La Vuelta 26 runs August 22–September 13.
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
Quinn Simmons…SuperTeammate — Again
For the second year in a row, Quinn Simmons was named the Tour de France’s “Best Teammate.”
Like him or not, Simmons has established quite a brand: Brash; audacious; desperate to win races…but willing to sacrifice himself for his Lidl-Trek bretheren.
That the prize bears a prize of €3,000 is laughable, and emblematic of cycling’s absurd financial situation — but that’s a topic for a different EuroTrash.
Hopefully the so-finely coiffed American appreciates the designation; you get the idea sometimes that he’d really rather be riding for himself.
But that’s not to take away from the prize, or from his diligence in helping his teammates — Milan last year; Pedersen this year — win the green jersey. A super-teammate is arguably more helpful in winning the sprinter’s competition than the GC — yep; I said it — so I hope he gets more than those Euros.
TDF ’26’s Final EuroTrash HeroSash Goes To…
Who else could it go to, but the rider who timed his sprint so perfectly that he didn’t win, but could hail his teammate’s victory?
Whether that was skill or pure luck, Philipsen’s romp on the Champs deserves all sorts of kudos — including the final HeroSash of this Tour.
But don’t worry: this coveted strip of fabric will be back for the Tour de France Femmes!
VIDEO: PEZ RIDES THE COL DU GLANDON
We’re just not ready to bid adieu to the Tour de France, so we’ll relive not just the last stage (see above), but Pez’ ascent of the fearsome Col du Glandon. Enjoy!(?)
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The post EUROTRASH: TDF ’26 Winners and Losers appeared first on PezCycling News.
