Belgian cycling star Remco Evenepoel claimed victory on stage 15 of the Tour de France on Sunday, beating race leader Tadej Pogacar in a sprint finish atop the Plateau de Solaison in the French Alps. The Olympic champion edged out the reigning Tour champion at the end of the gruelling 11.3-kilometre final climb, with Mexican youngster Isaac Del Toro finishing third, six seconds behind. The stage result reshuffled the overall standings significantly after a dramatic crash eliminated Jonas Vingegaard, who had been lying second on the general classification.
Vingegaard, the Danish two-time Tour winner (2022 and 2023), went down heavily on a roundabout approximately 20 kilometres from the finish, bringing down several of his Visma–Lease a Bike teammates and briefly also Del Toro, who managed to remount and continue. Vingegaard was taken away in an ambulance with his right arm in a sling, appearing to be in considerable pain; Dutch outlet NOS Sport reported a broken collarbone, with surgery expected in the coming days. It marked the first time in six Tour de France starts that Vingegaard failed to finish — in his previous five editions he won twice and finished second three times.
With Vingegaard gone, Pogacar extended his overall lead to five minutes, while Evenepoel — a former Vuelta a España winner — claimed second place overall, his first mountain-stage win at the Tour adding to two previous time-trial victories at the race. Del Toro moved up to third, also taking the white best young rider's jersey from French teenager Paul Seixas, who finished fourth. Seixas, described as a prodigy by French media, remains fifth overall alongside German Florian Lipowitz, while Spaniard Juan Ayuso dropped to sixth after losing further time.
The stage was also preceded by off-bike drama: both Pogacar and Vingegaard were woken in the night before the stage for unannounced anti-doping controls by the International Testing Agency. Vingegaard was visited at 2 a.m., Pogacar at 5 a.m. Visma rider Matteo Jorgenson described the timing as