The Tour In 10: Stage 9, Tour de France 2026

The God's Medicine team gives the world's quickest reap of Stage 9 but we do manage to get in all the juicy breakaway moves. Stage 10 will see us climb Puy Mary among many others... buckle up...

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Transcript

Godsmedicinecycling 0:00

Can you hear the dog barking outside?

hannah 0:01

Sure can

Godsmedicinecycling 0:05

It's like nobody respects our podcast Hello and welcome back to God's Medicine Cycling Podcast. I'm your host Lauren here with my co-host Hannah, and we are giving you the Tour in 10. Let's get into it, and be warned, are present from here on out

hannah 0:22

Stage nine, Malemort to Uzès delivered the breakaway lover's dream in some senses. We'll get into that in a little bit. The stage finished with a four-up sprint that was genuinely electric. The peloton was surging to try and catch them, but didn't quite manage it, and our top 10 of the stage are as follows: Mathieu van der Poel wins from the break ahead of Tobias Halland Johannessen, Tom Pidcock, and Alex Baudin. Meanwhile, the sprint from the peloton was won by Pippo Ganna in fifth place, followed by Mads Pedersen in sixth, Michael Matthews on a great day in seventh place. We love to see it. TotalEnergies gets two guys in the top 10 with, Briard. I'm so sorry for butchering your last name, Jordan Jagot and Sean Quinn for EF Education EasyPost rounds out the top 10. Mads Pedersen continued as we expected to hunt down intermediate sprint points as well as his top 10 finish, and our top five green jersey candidates are Mads Pedersen on 268 points, Bini Girmay on 223, Tim Merlier on 213, Jasper Philipsen on 191, and Max Kanter on 172. The KOM jersey rankings had no change at the top. Tadej continues to lead the classification, and Jonas once more will be wearing the jersey on his behalf. The GC could have seen big shakeups given who was in this breakaway, but the peloton nearly caught them on the line, so the time gaps ended up being basically insignificant. And our top 10 only has one newcomer with Egan Bernal. In order, let me just remind you, Tadej Pogačar is in first place with two minutes and 42 seconds over Jonas Vingegaard. Then in third, we have Isaac Del Toro, in fourth Remco Evenepoel, in fifth Juan Ayuso, sixth is Pol Seguí, seventh Florian Lipowitz, eighth Lenny Martinez, ninth Matias Gilmos, and in 10th place moving up we have Egan Bernal

Godsmedicinecycling 2:00

So how did it all shake out? Well, break formation started from kilometer zero once again, but Trek was having none of it with the early moves. They caught everyone who tried to go off the front before the intermediate sprint. Simmons and Vacek let out Pedersen. Jake Stewart, riding in service of Girmay, tried to box Pedersen in, but he made it around both Stewart and Vacek and sped to victory, claiming those crucial intermediate sprint points, followed by Girmay and Philipsen. Immediately after that sprint, there was a long wave of breakaway attacks. We're talking 45 minutes, almost an hour. before a larger group formed and the peloton started to sit up. Our riders at this time are Derek G West, Quinn Simmons, Alex Baudin, Valentin Paret-Peintre, surprise to me, MVDP, Clement Brassard, Pablo Castrillo, Lars Craps, Lenny Van Eetvelt, Ewan Costou, Mark Hirshi, Jorgen Jagt, Tobias Hall and Johansen and Tobias Foss, double Tobias. Tom Pidcock missed this move and then launched an attack off the peloton to bridge, which almost spelled disaster for the breakaway as he did drag the peloton to within 15 seconds. But the peloton took their foot off the gas when nobody else joined him in attacking. The big group was not working well together. So Quinn Simmons and Tobias Hall and Johansen launched themselves off the front. Then we have Matthew Vanderpool, Tom Pidcock, Derek Gee West, Lenny Van Elt, Pablo Castrillo, and Alex Baudin working their way up to that front duo, and Pidcock, who's extremely animated all day, hit the front immediately to ensure the peloton did not catch them. At this point in the race, UAE takes over the peloton and keeps the break on a leash at one minute. by the way, is hanging in with the GC group over all of these climbs

hannah 3:46

With around 30 kilometers left in the stage, INEOS hits the front of the peloton. I guess it's a peloton. It's pretty shredded at this point. And they started riding in the interest of Pippo Ganna as the break was still at around one minute. Mathieu van der Poel decided to not play with fire in regards to the peloton catching him. I think he was having memories of last year's kilometer zero attack. and he made a series of moves off of the front, eventually taking Tobias Halland Johannessen, Tom Pidcock, and Alex Baudin with him in the final breakaway of the day. These moves basically immediately gave that quartet an extra 20 seconds on the peloton, and they all started working really well against INEOS, who were still pulling from behind. very unfortunately had a mech at around 23 kilometers left in the stage, and we got this incredible camera shot of him kicking his gears and continuing on the descent. Miraculously, as he pedaled out of the last corner of the descent, the gears got back with the program, and he chased the trio in the front back down. The quartet reformed and worked really well to take it to the line and sprint for the stage win. Van der Poel hit the front with one kilometer left to go and the peloton at 20 seconds behind. He launched his sprint at 200 meters. Halland Johannessen took his wheel and got a gap on Pidcock, who said later that he was having problems with his shifting due to that mechanical. Alex Baudin was stuck behind Pidcock and couldn't respond. Mathieu van der Poel rode it in to stage victory in the Tour once more. In the group behind, Ganna won the bunch sprint ahead of Pedersen and Michael Matthews, ultimately only 12 seconds behind the stage winners.

Godsmedicinecycling 5:13

For stage 10, Tuesday's stage 10, Aurillac to Le Lioran brings us back to the mountains. Honestly, look at the profile of the stage. It's just peppered with Category 3 climbs in between some much larger climbs. stage is 166.6 kilometers with 3,800 meters of climbing. Very casual. As usual, we'll kick things off at the intermediate sprint relatively early in the stage, worth 25 green jersey points. There will be a little bit of rolling terrain before the peloton hits the first of seven, count them, seven, categorized climbs on this day. I said, there are climbs peppered throughout. The most important are the Category 1 Puy Mary, which is 7.8 kilometers at 6% average gradient, and the Cat 1 Col de Portus, which is 4.4 kilometers at 8.5% average gradient. Reminder, average means there's some sections that are steeper than that. Riders will have a final Category 3 climb and a short descent before the 7.4% kicker, yeah, kicker, of an uphill sprint finish at Le Lioran. You will not catch me riding this stage

hannah 6:18

Absolutely not. But with so many climbs on the menu, the polka dot jersey contenders should be out here making moves. There's a lot of vert and there's a couple of attack points throughout the day, so this could end up being a breakaway stage. However, juicy moves will definitely happen, particularly on the Primori and the Col de Portus. Jonas Vingegaard has to attack basically, right? So something's gonna happen. A successful breakaway would need a very healthy

Godsmedicinecycling 6:40

Evenepoel has to attack.

hannah 6:42

Everybody who's not named Pogi has to attack, and yet who's gonna attack? Probably Pogi. Uh, a successful breakaway will need a pretty healthy lead Honestly, I'm s- I'm thinking six or seven minutes before hitting those Cat 1 climbs. And honestly, we would not be surprised if this one comes down to a battle of the GC favorites for the stage win

Godsmedicinecycling 6:59

Movers and shakers. We just said it's foggy. If the road goes up, we'll... I'll come up with a rhyme for this later, but just know it's in the works.

hannah 7:08

Carapaz for EF, he has looked active. He wanted to be in the breakaway the other day. It didn't shake out for him. The man likes vert. He likes to climb. He likes to annihilate other riders on mountains. I think he could do something

Godsmedicinecycling 7:20

Tom Pidcock has the legs. If he has the legs that he had in the last stage, he has the legs. want him to ride. He wants to ride. If you listen to our rest day pod, we don't exactly know what he's doing, but I want him to do it

hannah 7:33

I think this could be a day for Valentin Paret-Peintre, who has sort of shown himself to be interested in the polka dot jersey. Why not also his teammate, w- you've heard us say his name many times before, we'll say it many times coming up, Ilan Van Wilder. We're watching you. Lenny Martinez has also sort of thrown his hat in the polka dot ring, although he also is top 10 on GC, so I don't know if he gets that big of a leash. I don't know how that shakes out, but he might try something

Godsmedicinecycling 7:55

He also is thinking about that white jersey. Um, it would be interesting to see him try and keep up with Del Toro. I don't know if he can, but that could be a juicy little battle

hannah 8:02

Yeah. Michael Storer we've not really seen. If he's feeling well, this would be a great stage for him. He rode the Giro, so he might be fatigued. We don't know, but if he's feeling good, look for him when the road goes up

Godsmedicinecycling 8:14

Egan Bernal has looked like he's in great shape this tour. He's been all over the front of this race, as have Ineos in general. I think Egan Bernal, I don't know if you know the guy's palmares. He can climb a mountain, okay?

hannah 8:25

He's done it before.

Godsmedicinecycling 8:26

he may even have won the Tour de France.

hannah 8:29

Huge if true

Godsmedicinecycling 8:31

huge if true. obviously we've also seen Kevin Vauquelin trying to pick up the energy and come back. Is this the stage where Arenberg comes out to play? We've seen Ineos be very active. Of the three of them, I think Bernal has looked the most comfortable so far, but that doesn't necessarily mean he will have the legs on the day.

hannah 8:48

Yeah, I agree. I think Arensman, we know that he usually has a pretty bad first week in Grand Tours and sort of rides himself into it as he goes on, so maybe this is a stage for him to have some better legs

Godsmedicinecycling 8:59

Thanks for tuning in to our Tour in 10. We'll be back tomorrow with our recap of this stage and preview of the next. As a reminder, you can still join our fantasy game if you already have a team on Velogames. Please don't join if you're currently blasting everybody out of the water on the leaderboard, but for everybody else, for us normal folks, come on over. Our league code is 775623137. It's a good time, and we will be shouting out, leaders and movers and shakers in our league our next rest day podcast. So you might even get famous by being on our podcast, you know, just like us.