As it happened: First bunch sprint of Tour de France ends with a dominant win after chaotic run-in

Welcome and preamble

Hello there and welcome along as we head deeper into the Tour de France and towards what is expected to be our first bunch sprint of the 2026 edition.

There was a time when the opening week was littered with flat stages, but this year the fast finishers have had to through what have essentially been three GC days and a breakaway day – not to mention a heatwave – before finally finding terrain suited to them.

The Tour is trending away from traditional bunch kicks and there aren't ample opportunities on the 2026 route so all the big-name sprinters will be eager not to let this opportunity pass by.

There are a few lumps and bumps on this 158km stage, but nothing that is realistically going to trouble the sprinters, so expect a battle royale on the streets of Pau, which is the third-most-visited city in Tour de France history. Oh, and it's another scorcher in the south of France.

This is the scene at the start in Lannemezan, where the riders are currently signing on for today's stage

The roll-out is coming up at 14:05 local time, with the race set to properly get underway at 14:15 – so in around 25 minutes from now.

Pau is a Tour de France staple, this being the 77th time the Tour will visit. Only Paris and Bordeaux have welcomed the Tour on more occasions. It's often seen as the gateway to the Pyrenees, so has a key strategic location, all the infrastructure you need to host a finish and start (tomorrow), plus a really strong enthusiasm for cycling and the Tour within the local council.

We had a year off last year, so the last visit to Pau was in 2024 when a certain Jasper Philipsen was victorious. The Belgian is among the top favourites again today.

The riders are rolling. They'll make their way through a short neutral zone before the stage is waved underway.

Contenders

We've mentioned Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and the Belgian is the top Tour de France sprinter of recent years, with 10 stages to his name already. With a strong lead-out train that includes Mathieu van der Poel, he's a hot favourite.

Philipsen's closest rival in recent years has been his fellow Belgian, Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), who bagged two stages last year. He had a disrupted start to the season but has six wins to his name already and looks back to his best.

Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) also had a disrupted season start, and his very presence was doubted when Paul Seixas shot through the roof and revolutionised the team's plans for the Tour. But Kooij, finally riding his first Tour after years of limited opportunities at Visma, proved himself with three wins in two build-up races.

Biniam Girmay (NSN) won the green jersey two years ago and though he didn't win a single race in 2025, he's looking more like his old self again these days.

And don't count out Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who won from the breakaway yesterday but can more than hold his own in bunch kicks.

There are plenty more names who could also spring a surprise, so we should be in for a competitive and exciting sprint.

Kilometre-zero

We reach kilometre-zero, race director Christian Prudhomme rises from the sunroof of his red Skoda, waves his yellow flag, and we are underway on stage 5 of the Tour de France!

Immediate attack from Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché)

Breakaway is formed

That's it, then. Veistroffer pings off, no one else registers even the most remote of interests in going along with him. It's a one-man Tour de France breakaway formed in a matter of seconds.

A dying art

Breakaways are a dying art in the modern peloton on stages such as these. We have even seen a couple of Tour stages take place with no breakaway whatsoever in recent years, so at least we have one man out front today.

The heat will no doubt be a factor, with few riders wanting to exert themselves in temperatures that are bordering on the dangerous anyway. But doomed breakaways on sprint stages have long been trending down. Usually you could rely on the wildcard invited teams, for whom it would be a sort of de facto pact with ASO to animate the race and justify their inclusion. But there are only two wildcards now, and even they are now more than publicity seekers, with proper sprint ambitions in their own right – Caja Rural have Fernando Gaviria here.

It's upending the rhythms of the Tour de France and is perhaps a vicious circle – days like what we have here now may only encourage the organisers to lean even further away from pan-flat terrain in the future.

Uno-X controlling

The gap reaches the three-minute mark after around 15km of racing and that's the cue for the peloton to start picking up the pace to control this eminently controllable breakaway.

It's Uno-X on the front, fulfilling their duties as the team with the yellow jersey. Torsten Træen is the man in yellow, the Norwegian taking the jersey from Tadej Pogačar thanks to his presence in yesterday's big break.

More on what this means for Træen and his team here in this article from Stephen Farrand

A first shot of our breakaway hero, Baptiste Veistroffer.

"Three minutes only?!"

Veistroffer pulls up alongside his team car and we can just about make out what they're saying.

"Three minutes only? With one guy in front?"

Our solo leader is clearly non-plussed by the short leash he's being kept on by the peloton. As he points out, he's one lone rider against an army. Back in the day double-digits would be a common gap for a breakaway of several riders, but these days teams don't want to ramp up the chase later on, preferring a steadier spread of energy. It is slightly ridiculous.

Soudal-QuickStep and Alpecin-Premier Tech have taken over from Uno-X at the head of the peloton, the sprint teams getting involved early and even taking the gap to the lone escapee down to 2:30.

No De Lie

Lotto Intermarché may not ordinarily chuck a rider up the road on a day like today, but their sprinter Arnaud De Lie is already at home, abandoning the race on stage 3. The Belgian is blighted by bad luck these days and just like at the Giro he fell ill ahead of the Tour and failed to recover.

Veistroffer was in fact tasked with dropping back to help De Lie at the very back of the race amid his suffering on stage 3. De Lie actually told Veistroffer to go ahead and leave him towards the end of the stage, as the time cut loomed, and De Lie eventually climbed off only a few kilometres from the finish.

Arnaud De Lie out of Tour de France after brutal day of suffering

100km remaining

So, 100 to go and to bring you up to speed we have a lone leader, Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché), with a lead of 2:45 over the peloton, which is being led by Soudal-QuickStep and Alpecin-Premier Tech.

Philipsen and Merlier are the two favourites today and their teams are taking responsibility.

Boring?

We've gone slightly off-piste here but a surprisingly vigorous debate was sparked in the CN Slack channel this morning, when we were (presciently) discussing whether stages like this are boring, or whether pure sprinters still have a place in the modern Tour de France.

One colleague suddenly suggested that sprint stages are better than mountain stages these days, and it all kicked off from there... Check out the piece below for some wild takes and the chance to have your say.

Sprints underrated, mountains overrated? We just had a huge debate about which Tour de France stages are more exciting, and want to know your thoughts

Not a huge amount happening in the race right now. Just water bottles, a lot of water bottles. There are soigneurs regularly placed along the road, and riders are regularly going back to team cars for bottles and ice to try and stay cool. The peloton have just had a nature break, and our leader continues to plough his lonely furrow through the Pyrenean furnace.

What's coming up

There are a couple of points of interest in the final 50km, with an intermediate sprint in Vic-en-Bigorre with 45km to go, followed by the day's only climb, the category-3 Côte de Baleix (1km at 8.8%) with 25km to go. The intermediate sprint will provide something of a preview of the real thing, with most likely to be keen for the green jersey points on offer, but perhaps cautious about really opening the taps and dulling the legs.

Vic-en-Bigorre, by the way, is home to one of the best weekend markets you'll see in southern France.

70km to go

We're in the build up to the build up to the sprint...

It's not really hotting up yet, but Soudal-QuickStep and Alpecin-Premier Tech are both massed at the front, chatting tactics and just generally exerting their authority on this race. Tim Merlier and Jasper Philipsen are definitely the two big favourites, two of the purest and fastest sprinters in this bunch.

Is Cavendish's stage win record at risk?

A few years ago, a stage like this would have been a big Mark Cavendish day, and we might have been talking about the stage win record he spent the last few years of his career chasing.

Now, that record has come up again recently, but it's not a fellow sprinter who is at risk of breaking it. No, it's Tadej Pogačar who is being spoken about as the potential next rider to win 34, 35 or 36 stages. He's currently the most successful current rider, with 22 wins, the most recent one recorded on Monday.

But can he make it 36 before his career ends? We took a bit of a closer look at the numbers, his current win rate and a projection for when he could break it. Complete with fancy graphs.

Will Tadej Pogačar beat Mark Cavendish's Tour de France stage wins record? Crunching the numbers

The gap is starting to come down now, it's 2:50.

The intermediate sprint is in 15km, and obviously with only one rider out front there are a fair number of points still up for grabs for the bunch, so we'll see a proper sprint there.

Veistroffer continues to ride really strongly - his average speed so far is nearly 45km/h which is remarkable. He has just under three minutes in hand as he nears the intermediate sprint.

Let's hear from Biniam Girmay, speaking at the start of today's stage

"Unfortunately we had a crash yesterday with Jake Stewart so he will not be there in the final lead-out for me. It will cost us for sure. I think Alpecin have a good leadout and Merlier is also strong in this kind of finish. After four hard days everyone is more or les the same, so let's find out who's fastest."

Jonas Vingegaard has had some sort of issue and has had to drop back to his team car. He barks at a camera to get out the way and looks a tad stressed as he speeds back to the peloton, but no major dramas at all.

45km to go

Veistroffer passes through the intermediate sprint in Vic-en-Bigorre, collecting the maximum 25 points on offer, obviously uncontested. The real battle is coming from the bunch ina. couple of minutes' time.

Intermediate sprint

An odd one, as XDS Astana launch the sprint and gap the rest of the bunch in the process. Their sprinter Max Kanter is first from the bunch, followed by Pedersen, Girmay, and, on the other side of the road, Philipsen.

Pedersen is wearing the green jersey after his win yesterday but with 70 points on offer on the finish line, that's where the green jersey battle will really ignite. Girmay is actually the only rider who could overhaul Pedersen today, but we should get a better sense of who's capable of hauling in the points on these finishes.

A reminder that the points system is different this year with bumper packages on offer on designated sprint stages, and a general recalibration of the intermediate sprints. More on that in the link below.

An attempt to stop Tadej Pogačar? Tour de France further adjusts green jersey points system to keep it sprinter-friendly

QuickStep have raised the pace now. 33km to go and they have six riders on the front, with the gap to Veistroffer dropping to around the 1:10 mark.

Veistroffer, we are told, is known as the 'Sanglier de Fouesnant' in his native France – that's 'the boar of Fousenant', the latter being his hometown in Brittany. He's 26 but this is only his second year as a pro, having previously competed in triathlon. He came through Decathlon's development set-up before turning pro with Lotto last year. He's a canny rider who loves an unlikely attack, pulling off a fine stage win at the Tour of Oman earlier this year.

The day's only climb

Veistroffer hits the Côte de Baleix, which is our only categorised climb today. It's a cat-3 number, measuring 1km at 8.8%, so it's short but still sting. 50 seconds the gap as our leader gets out of the saddle for the first real time since launching his breakaway-making attack at KM0.

Veistroffer crests the climb alone with a lead of 50 seconds. He picks up two mountains classification points.

The polka-dot mountains jersey is on the shoulders of Alex Baudin and his EF teammates set him up now as the peloton nears the summit. He duly takes the one remaining point.

Attack!

Fred Wright was up there as Baudin accelerated for the KOM point and the British champ has basically turned this into an attack. It's the longest of shots, 25km out, but it's finally something to get excited about on this snoozy day.

Wright has company in Kasper Asgreen (EF) and Valentin Paret-Peintre (QuickStep).

Paret-Peintre is just marking this one. QuickStep have Merlier as a sprint favourite and have been pulling all day. He won't contribute here but his presence does allow QuickStep to sit back in the bunch now and coax other teams to the front.

Veistroffer is flagging. The Wright/Asgreen group is 20 seconds behind him now, the peloton a further 20 seconds back.

Arvid De Kleijn is back in the bunch. He was dropped on the climb, which does not bode well for his chances in today's sprint finish. He's been struggling so far in this Tour, but struggling with a sense of perspective.

'This suffering is nothing compared to what I saw' – With late father as inspiration, Arvid De Kleijn just beats time cut at Tour de France

Fred Wright pulls up. The peloton are hot on the heels and he knows it's no use.

De Kleijn has been dropped again, this time on the flat. Definitely not his day.

Wright, Asgreen and Paret-Peintre are all back in the bunch again. QuickStep get back to the front. Veistroffer is only 10 seconds ahead with 16km to go.

All together!

Baptiste Veistroffer's solo breakaway comes to an end, with 14km remaining. He was never going to make it but he put in one hell of a ride, animating this stage all on his own. The combativity prize will no doubt be his.

And now we begin the wind-up to the sprint. All the main teams are getting organised with their trains.

A reminder of the main contenders

We've mentioned Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and the Belgian is the top Tour de France sprinter of recent years, with 10 stages to his name already. With a strong lead-out train that includes Mathieu van der Poel, he's a hot favourite.

Philipsen's closest rival in recent years has been his fellow Belgian, Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), who bagged two stages last year. He had a disrupted start to the season but has six wins to his name already and looks back to his best.

Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) also had a disrupted season start, and his very presence was doubted when Paul Seixas shot through the roof and revolutionised the team's plans for the Tour. But Kooij, finally riding his first Tour after years of limited opportunities at Visma, proved himself with three wins in two build-up races.

Biniam Girmay (NSN) won the green jersey two years ago and though he didn't win a single race in 2025, he's looking more like his old self again these days.

And don't count out Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who won from the breakaway yesterday but can more than hold his own in bunch kicks.

Who's your pick? Vote in the poll just above

10km to go

10 to go and we've just gone down a mini descent with a couple of sweeping bends. The pace is high and they're freewheeling, and it's not going to slow up now.

These are the final 5km. It's ever so slightly false flat down all the way to the final kilometre. We have a corner with 500m to go, which could be crucial.

Cofidis have set up on the left, Ineos on the right. Tudor and Uno-X also have presence in the middle, so it's not the big sprint trains dominating just yet.

Ineos have Dorian Godon as an outsider who's more of a hilly sprinter but has had a great season so far. They certainly don't have a big GC card to keep safe as they used to do in sprints.

Cofidis, working for Milan Frentin, are dominating this now with 7km to go. But now Uno-X are moving up on their shoulders.

Alpecin are a bit further back and QuickStep have vanished from view.

Crash! Right-hand bend and several riders have gone down.

5km to go

That crash was just outside the 5km to go banner, so outside of the safety net for any time losses. Let's see who crashed. QuickStep had three riders involved but none were Merlier it seems.

That incident has caused a split in the peloton, as well.

Alex Molenaar (Caja Rural) was the one who crashed most heavily. BUt the race goes on and Uno-X are happemring it on the front with 3.5km to go

Yellow jersey not in the front group! Race leader Torsten Traeen has been chopped by that split, as his own team drill it at the front of the race.

Roundabout now and we have another crash, just one rider from Cofidis sent into the grass after a touch of shouolders.

2km to go and Uno-X still have the front. NSN just behind with Askey ahead of Girmay.

Cofidis still have Frentin being piloted. It's scrappy

Astana move up and it's a flyer, but Alpecin are chaseing it down with one.

Into the final kilometre and its Astana and COfidis with the front positions, not what we expected at all.

It's splitting still and oinly around 20 riders remain to sprint it out!

Kooij hits out and gets out in front... and takes it!!!

Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) wins stage 5 of the Tour de France

Kanter was second and Merlier came through for third just ahead of Huub Artz from Lotto.

Brilliant sprint from Kooij, who remained calm through all that chaos, hitting out at the perfect time from the perfect position, and his acceleration was devastating. Merlier had speed at the end but started from too far back, while Philipsen had to settle for 5th, ahead of Girmay and Pedersen. Great rides from Kanter in second and Artz in fourth for a Lotto who've lost De Lie, but that was pretty emphatic stuff from Kooij.

GC damage?

We're just waiting on the timings to come in, to assess whether any gaps were handed out. Tadej Pogačar came home among a main bunch that's been classed as 14 seconds down on the small group that contested the sprint finish. Traaen was held up so we'll see if he has lost any time.

Let's hear from the winner, Olav Kooij

"After a couple hard days here already, we had to wait to this day to get this first chance to sprint in the Tour, and yeah, to immediately win is unbelievable. It means quite a lot. I think just in general, I had a pretty tough spring, and I think just to get back to this level and to keep believing and in yourself, and just a few people who believe in you as well, is all you need.

"I think to be here with support of the team today was all I could ask for, and yeah, they did a great job, but it was pretty hectic. It was quite an easy day until the final, so then you know it will be hectic. And this first sprint in the Tour, everyone is still really eager. I just managed to find my way a bit on my own in the end, but I found the right wheel, and I just wanted to have the chance to sprint today, and when I saw the line, I just went as hard as I could."

Results

No change on GC

No dramas in the end. Pogačar led home the second group on the road, 14 seconds behind the 20-strong group that contested the sprint, but there were no GC men up there. There was a scare for Vingegaard and Traaen, who were scrambling to the line quite far behind the back of the Pogačar group. Measured in pure time, there was a fair old gap, but there were enough riders coming across the line that no actual gap could be recorded between any of those mini clusters of riders, meaning all the GC men finished on the same time.