Tadej Pogacar stormed to victory on France’s national holiday with another dominant display on Tuesday’s mountainous 10th stage to extend his overall lead at the Tour de France.
World champion Pogacar won his third stage at this year’s Tour -- and for the third time on Bastille Day -- to extend his lead over Jonas Vingegaard to more than three and a half minutes.
It was also the four-time champion’s 24th stage victory at the Tour, moving him to within one win of Frenchman Andre Leducq -- who twice won the Tour in the 1930s -- in fourth in that list.
The reigning champion attacked 15.5km from the finish of the 166.6km stage in the Cantal mountains and quickly opened up a decisive lead.
Behind him, the battle was for the minor placings -- both on the day and in the overall standings.
Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel dug in to finish second on the day, 32sec behind Pogacar, with French teenage hope Paul Seixas pipping Florian Lipowitz to third place two seconds later.
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Vingegaard wilted on the uphill drag to the finish line and came home seventh at 44sec.
He is now 3min 36sec behind Pogacar with Evenepoel climbing to third overall another 30sec back.
Pogacar’s team-mate Isaac Del Toro was the most impacted of the day, dropping from third to seventh overall after finishing the stage eighth at 1min 31sec.
Pogacar faced some boos on the mountainous roads around the central Cantal region.
“Haters gonna hate, it’s always like this, even though (in) cycling (there) is not as much as... in tennis or football there is much more booing and going against one team or one player,” said the 27-year-old Slovenian.
“If they boo me on the road, they actually boo the whole bunch because you don’t know who it is, because we pass all together.
“I always think about tennis, Novak Djokovic, how great a mentality he has.
“He had one of the toughest careers about this, about getting boos and unnecessarily, because he’s the greatest.
“When someone is booing, I look up to Novak Djokovic and think about him.”
Djokovic was most recently booed on the Wimbledon Centre Court after smashing a ball in frustration having lost a point and his serve.
Pogacar insisted that those jeering him were just a tiny minority.
“In cycling, it’s actually not so much booing, it’s like 99 percent of people are cheering for everybody,” he said.
“When you see the kids, you can see that there is a family of kids and they are wearing different jerseys.
“One is wearing Visma, one is wearing Groupama and one is wearing UAE and you can see that they have their favourites, but it’s in the family and it’s really nice to see.
“Cycling fans are the greatest between all the sports, so we should be happy and grateful for all the fans and to all the booers that are there, I think they just give more boost to my teammates and they put wood on the fire.”
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Published on Jul 14, 2026