Looking at the way Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) managed to clinch first, third and then first again on the 2026 Tour de France's three Alpine stages, it's hard to believe that earlier this summer the 33-year-old was battling so hard against the after-effects of a major operation, needing to spend three weeks off the bike.
But at the same time, that was what laid the foundation for Carapaz to succeed in such dramatic fashion this July.
The rider from Ecuador's recovery from an operation to remove a perineal cyst in April proved so drawn-out that he had to cancel his initial Grand Tour objective for 2026, going for a top GC result in the Giro d'Italia in May.
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Instead, his thoughts turned to the Tour de France, and seeing what he could achieve there. But as Carapaz explained to reporters after netting his second Alpine stage win at Alpe d'Huez and the overall in the mountains classification for a second time in three years, his uneven condition made racing for GC impossible, as well as any top result in the first week through the Pyrenees. Instead, he needed to wait for deeper into the race.
An initial bid for glory in Le Lioran on stage 9 fell foul of Tadej Pogačar's (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) desire to win that day for himself, but also hinted strongly at rising form. Another breakaway in the Vosges also boded well.
And if the first day in the Alps at Orcières-Merlette saw Carapaz clinch a first stage victory and Friday his breakaway was poleaxed again by Pogačar, Saturday brought him a massive double triumph: an unmatchable lead in the mountains ranking and an even bigger stage win at Alpe d'Huez.
"When I knew I wasn't doing the Giro, it was a really complicated situation for me," Carapaz told reporters after celebrating the double victory.
"I had had an operation and I spent nearly three weeks without riding my bike. Then you always start out doubting if you are building for a top Grand Tour performance in the right way.
"Fortunately, my team and the people who I had supporting me, like my family and friends, helped me enormously, both in practical terms and psychologically, and that's hugely important.
"Then we knew how I was heading into the Tour, we knew the first week would be difficult, but we managed to handle it well, lose time on the stages when I had to lose time and gamble it all on the third week. Which is what we did."
Coming into stage 20 with a one-point lead in the mountains classification over race leader Pogačar and seven on Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-QuickStep), Carapaz said that the big goal was to try to ensure he got enough of an advantage on a stage littered with high mountain climbs. Whilst the Frenchman, a winner on Mont Ventoux in 2025, definitively fell out of the running fairly quickly, Carapaz made it into the break of the day. Having learned his lesson on stage 19, he knew Pogačar was more than capable of making a late challenge.
"Today, the number one objective was the mountains jersey, but after coming over the Galibier, there were four of us out front working very well together," he said about riding with Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and his most persistent challenger, Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike), who was unlucky enough to fall twice late on.
"We had a good advantage of around four minutes at the foot of the final climb [Col de Sarenne] and my main strategy was to try and stay calm," he explained. "I knew I had good legs, good enough to win, but it was a very different tactic to stage 19.
"Yesterday [Saturday] I was far more aggressive, far keener to push the boat out. This time round I played the long game. I knew that I had to simply go at my own pace on the climb for 30 minutes and that's what kept me up there for the win.
"There was a moment on the climb when Sepp attacked me and I was close, so close, but not quite there - six seconds, seven seconds.
"But then I don't know what happened to him on the descent, I suddenly went past him lying on the ground and that was that."
The last challenge was the long, painful grind up to the finish at Alpe d'Huez, no longer a classified ascent as it was just four kilometres long, but at the end of a stage featuring three HC climbs and more than 5,000 metres of vertical climbing, a really tough ask all the same.
"I suffered incredibly on that climb," said Carapaz, finally just 26 seconds ahead of counter-attacker and Tour runner-up Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) by the summit, which at the end of the toughest mountain stage of the race, was a ridiculously small time gap.
"I knew all the climb very well from the previous day, and it ended up being eternal. I suffered so much to get to the top, but I had to give it everything, and I think it was worth it, just to be able to sit here [as stage winner] and talk it all through with you today."
As for how winning the mountains ranking and his stages this time round felt compared to the 2024 Tour, Carapaz said, "It's been a very hard race this year, with a lot of records broken. But taking the polka dot jersey is very complicated and it was very difficult in 2024 and then in 2021, Pogačar beat me to it by the bare minimum.
"This year has been really hard, with so many different battles, and I knew this last week would be very hard. But the third week is always my favourite, too, and I think we've achieved all the objectives we had when we set out from Barcelona."
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