• Three outstanding riders in race broke clear of peloton

• Padding row intensifies after footage of male inspection

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s defence of her Tour de France Femmes title unravelled among the Beaujolais vineyards as the French rider lost even more ground to rivals Demi Vollering, Marlen Reusser and Kasia Niewiadoma.

The three outstanding riders in this year’s race broke clear of the peloton over the final steep gradients of Mont Brouilly, with 2023 Tour winner Vollering outsprinting overall race leader Reusser to take the fourth Tour stage win of her career.

• Chest fairings could smooth airflow around the body

• Warning came before time-trial stage to Dijon

Riders in the Tour de France Femmes were examined for hidden aerodynamic enhancements, or chest fairings, before the race’s time trial stage to Dijon on Tuesday, in a clampdown on the latest attempts to circumnavigate cycling’s rules.

Changes to body morphology to improve aerodynamics are banned under International Cycling Union rules. The UCI’s commissaires were looking for padded chest fairings that would artificially improve airflow and reduce wind resistance.

• Norwegian breaks clear in stage three to take overall lead

• Haugset: ‘I never thought it was possible, it’s unreal’

Sigrid Haugset, the Norwegian national champion, shocked the established order in the Tour de France Femmes, breaking away alone for 90km, to take the overall lead after winning stage three to Poligny.

“I never thought it was possible,” she said, after realising she had taken the biggest success of her career and the overall lead in the sport’s biggest race. “It’s unreal. I was so dizzy at the end. I know my boyfriend would be so angry at me for not celebrating, but I couldn’t. I could not lift my arms off the bike. It was impossible.”

• Slovene great last rode in Vuelta in 2019

• ‘Time is right to go back,’ says five-time Tour winner

The Tour de France champion, Tadej Pogacar, has confirmed that he will race in the Vuelta a España, which starts in Monaco on 22 August. The five-time Tour winner will be ­seeking to match the rare achievement of long-term rival, Jonas Vingegaard, who completed a grand slam of all three Grand Tours, by winning the Giro d’Italia in May.

“I’m excited to say I’m going back to La Vuelta,” Pogacar said. “It was my first-ever Grand Tour back in 2019 and an amazing experience. Spain is a country I love to visit and race in and I think the time is right to go back.

• David Lappartient says selective night testing is justified

• ‘We always have suspicion in cycling, due to our past’

The UCI president, David Lappartient, has said there will “always be suspicion in cycling” and insisted this year’s men’s Tour de France was clean. Lappartient, speaking at the start of stage two of the Tour de France Femmes in Aigle, also said he supported night-time testing during races in “exceptional cases”.

Lappartient added that the absence of any positive test announcements by the International Testing Agency (ITA) indicated that last month’s men’s Tour was drug free. “The ITA never make a press release about negative results, only about positive results,” said Lappartient. “We didn’t see any press release in the Tour de France, so it seems there was nothing in the Tour.”

• Dutch sprinter makes it two from two in Geneva

• Her team still intend to sue UCI over Giro disqualification

The Dutch sprinter Lorena Wiebes took her second win in this year’s Tour de France Femmes in Geneva, further extending her overall lead in the nine-day race. Wiebes is proving untouchable in the sprint finishes and her turn of speed in the final 250 metres, on the lakeside finish of the Quai du Mont-Blanc, reduced her rivals to onlookers.

Lone breakaway Riejanne Markus had led by more than half a minute on the flat approach to Geneva and maintained that advantage into the final 5km, even with the whole peloton giving chase. But as the kilometres clicked down, the peloton clawed its way back, eclipsing Markus in the last 500 metres, before Wiebes made her inevitable surge to take yet another sprint win.

• Wiebes’ turn of speed too much for 2023 winner Vollering

• ‘It was a long sprint, but I’m super happy’

Lorena Wiebes took the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes after climbing the Côte Saint-François and outsprinting race favourites Kim Le Court and 2023 champion, Demi Vollering.

“The team worked super hard today,” Wiebes said. “When Demi attacked, I knew I had to follow. It was a long sprint, but I’m super happy.”

• Authorities want stage altered if risk is ‘extreme’

• 2025 champion Ferrand-Prévot faces sterner challenge

The Tour de France Femmes is facing pressure to reroute part of its key stage to the summit of Mont Ventoux next Friday because of the wildfires threat in Provence.

The women’s Tour, which begins in Lausanne on Saturday, is expected to keep the famous climb to the top of the “Giant of Provence”, but the current routing of the stage through the Ventoux’s foothills could be affected.

Dutch rider completed the set of Grand Tours by winning the Giro and is set on claiming a second title in France

French pulses were set racing by Pauline-Ferrand Prévot’s win in the 2025 Tour de France Femmes, but the pragmatic choice of favourite for this year’s race, which begins in Lausanne on Saturday, is Demi Vollering.

The 29-year old Dutch rider, leader of the FDJ United-Suez team and the first €1m athlete in women’s racing, combines outstanding results – this year she completed a grand slam of all three of Europe’s Grand Tours – with an outspoken personality.

Oscar Onley’s pre-race injury presaged three bleak weeks and new director of racing knows he has his work cut out

Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst for the beleaguered Netcompany Ineos team. From the first stage, when Dave Brailsford’s team came close to winning the team time trial in Montjuic, the 2026 Tour was, in the words of their director of racing, Geraint Thomas, “tough going”.

Thomas, who has taken Brailsford’s place as the team’s frontman, said: “I’m happy to not be racing any more, because I suffered way too much. But it’s good to still be involved in the nitty‑gritty of it.”

• Slovene has quickly drawn level with the greats

• Paul Seixas acknowledges Pogacar’s dominance

Tadej Pogacar woke up in Paris on Monday as the fastest and the youngest cyclist to win five Tours de France. The 27-year-old Slovene took his fifth overall victory on the Champs Élysées on Sunday evening in a thrilling final stage won by Mathieu van der Poel.

Pogacar is level with Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin and he is expected to continue racing in pursuit of a record-breaking sixth win.

• Slovene becomes fifth rider to win five Tours

• Eddy Merckx: ‘He’ll soon break our record’

Tadej Pogacar took a record-equalling fifth win in the Tour de France on Sunday, joining Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin in the canon of the Tour’s most successful cyclists. In a thrilling finale to the Tour, Mathieu van der Poel took his second stage win of the race on the Champs-Élysées, fending off the pursuing pack of sprinters by a tyre’s width, after breaking clear with Pogacar on the final climb of the Butte de Montmartre.

Merckx, widely considered the greatest-ever cyclist because of the breadth of his achievements beyond the Tour itself, believes that Pogacar will now go on to win a sixth Tour. “I don’t think he’ll be content just to draw level with me and the other ­champions,” the 81-year-old Belgian said. “He’ll soon break our record for Tour victories.”

• Four-time victor holds huge lead after Alpe d’Huez

• Final stage to be shortened due to wildfires elsewhere

Tadej Pogacar’s likely victory parade on the streets of Paris will come sooner on Sunday after the final stage of the Tour de France was shortened due to wildfires elsewhere in France. The stage will now be only 89km long and will start on the Champs-Élysées, where two laps of the avenue will be followed by the now traditional circuits of the Butte Montmartre.

In a joint statement with the prefecture police, the Tour organiser, ASO, said: “The ministry of the interior has decided to redeploy a portion of the internal security forces initially mobilised for the final stage of the Tour de France, in order to reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires.”

• Slovenian only second man to win in yellow on mountain

• Leader opens up gap of more than seven minutes

Tadej Pogacar put further distance between himself and his last remaining rivals, winning the Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France and extending his overall lead to more than seven minutes.

There was a brutal inevitability about the defending Tour champion’s win on the legendary climb of the Alpe, despite all the rumours of illness and gastric problems within his UAE Emirates XRG team.

• Richard Carapaz roars clear of breakaway to win stage 18

• McNulty abandons, Wellens and Vermeersch struggle

Richard Carapaz won stage 18 of the Tour de France after a breakaway group of six riders duelled their way to the winter sports station at Orcières-Merlette, but uncertainty surrounds the health of race leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates XRG, which has been swept by a virus since Monday’s rest day.

After Adam Yates’s stage-long calvary on the road to Voiron, Pogacar’s team was further weakened by the abandonment of his American colleague, Brandon McNulty, who quit the Tour with 21km of Thursday’s stage remaining.

• Home rider Seixas yet to be tested at night, unlike some rivals

• Authorities deny French doping agency plays role in who is tested

Anti-doping authorities at the Tour de France have rejected accusations of preferential treatment towards Paul Seixas, the teenage French rider and home favourite who is placed fourth overall.

Seixas and his Decathlon CMA CGM team were tested, with the rest of the peloton, on Monday evening as part of the biological passport testing programme, but the 19-year-old has not yet been subjected to the nocturnal test that both the race leader Tadej Pogacar and the now-withdrawn Jonas Vingegaard underwent.

• Belgian wins time trial, says chase of leader ‘not over yet’

• Florian Lipowitz, third last year, quits race after crashing

Remco Evenepoel took back-to-back stage wins in the Tour de France, and eroded some of Tadej Pogacar’s overall lead, with victory in the stage 16 time trial from Evian to Thonon-les-Bains.

The Olympic road and time trial champion, now second overall in the Tour, won on the Belgian national day from Pogacar by 28 seconds, to reduce the Slovenian’s advantage to just over four and a half minutes. It was the third Tour time trial win of his career.

• International Testing Agency petitioned for tests

• Duo tested outside of normal 6am to 11pm window

A Paris judge authorised the night-time doping tests of the Tour de France leader, Tadej Pogacar, and his nearest rival, Jonas Vingegaard, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed on Monday that the International Testing Agency (ITA) petitioned the “Paris judge specialising in liberty and detention matters … to authorise the anti-doping tests that took place overnight between July 18 and 19”.

• Dane was woken by doping control at 2am on day of stage

• Remco Evenepoel outsprints Pogacar to claim victory

Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France on the first Alpine stage on Sunday, only hours after being woken up in the early hours to undergo doping controls. He will have collarbone surgery in the next few days.

The double Tour winner, who also won the Giro d’Italia this year, climbed gingerly into a race ambulance, his right arm in a sling, after falling as the main peloton exited a roundabout in Bonneville.

• Slovene now 4min 30sec ahead of Vingegaard

• Paul Seixas takes lead in young rider classification

Tadej Pogacar’s rapacious appetite for stage wins was in evidence yet again in the climbs of the Vosges on Saturday, as he raced to his fourth victory of this year’s Tour de France at Le Markstein.

Pogacar’s attack came 1.6km from the summit of the final climb, the Col de Haag, and 7.5km from the finish line and once again left Jonas Vingegaard, Paul Seixas and Remco Evenepoel in his wake.