Cycling

Tadej Pogačar celebrated his fifth stage win of this year’s Tour de France after a record setting performance on Alpe d’Huez. The Slovenian set a new record time of 35:27 up the storied climb breaking the record set by Marco Pantani in 1997. Pogačar has now racked up 26 stage wins in his career, just nine shy of Mark Cavendish’s record. With just one more mountain stage left in today’s race his grip on the yellow jersey now appears unassailable.

Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz won stage 18 of the Tour de France following a commanding breakaway. The EF Education-Easypost rider brilliantly accelerated away from his rivals with intuitive and canny riding, finishing 45 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Mauro Schmid of Jayco-Alula and Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike. Meanwhile, sickness appears to be making its way through overall leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad after key domestique Brandon McNulty abandoned the race mid-stage.

Jasper Philipsen came off Mathieu van der Poel’s wheel to launch an unanswerable sprint to win stage 17 of the Tour de France in Voiron. The day had been one of the most chaotic of this year’s Tour with attacks, counter-attacks and splits throughout the day. But eventually a reduced front group containing several sprinters including Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), Michael Matthews (Jayco-AlUla) and Aaron Gates (Astana-XDS) contested the victory.

Time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel took a dominant victory in the time trial at the Tour de France beating his key rival by nearly half a minute. The Belgian took his second stage win of the Tour as he clocked a time of 32.19 over the 26km course. No one could come close and he clawed back 28 seconds on Tadej Pogačar in the yellow jersey.