The Tour In 10: Stage 12, Tour de France 2026

After wrangling with some technical difficulties, God's Medicine brings you an extra long episode of The Tour In Ten where we definitely don't list every single rider in the peloton as having a shot at being in a move today. So don't even think about trying to claim we did. 

Transcript

hannah 0:00

And we know that Alpecin is always fated to have one guy who climbs weirdly well, has a good Tour de France climbing weirdly well, and then immediately transfers 'cause that's not what they want

0:10

unfortunately, we had some major technical difficulties over yesterday and today, so this is late and it's too long, but you know what? Them's the sticks, okay? We will be back to our snappier format tomorrow. For now, enjoy a few extra minutes in this episode hello, everyone, and welcome back to God's Medicine. I'm your host, Lauren, here with my co-host Hannah. And may I be the first to say thank you and congratulations so much to Little Trek

hannah 0:36

Stage 12, Nevers to Chalance or Saône was a sprint stage with a riveting finale thanks to our friends at Little Trek. The top 10 on the stage are Tim Merlier, Olav Kooij, Jasper Philipsen, Biniam Girmay, Milan Fretin, Anthony Turgis, Max Kanter, Clément Russo, Mads Pedersen, and Hub Aerts. Our GC standings are stagnant. Tadej Pogačar remains in yellow, and he is also the current King of the Mountains, although who did we spot wearing the full polka dot kit, including the shorts today? Jonas Vingegaard, that's right, wearing the jersey on Pogačar's behalf. Juan Ayuso remains in white. Over in the points race, our green jersey contenders are Mads Pedersen in first place with 357 points, Biniam Girmay in second with 317, Jasper Philipsen hot on Bini's heels with 311, Tim Merlier closing in with 307, and Max Kanter rounding out the top five with 239. Today was the last, let's call it flat day of the race. The remaining expected sprint finishes are stage 17 and our Champs-Élysées finale. But stage 17 has 2,200 meters of climbing and four categorized climbs, and the final stage of the race once again features the Montmartre. So are either of those really gonna be sprint stages? I bring this up just to say, based on points, the green jersey is anyone's game, But the intermediate sprint points are going to be what decides it

1:50

How did it all shake out today? We are so glad you asked. Breakaway favorite Baptiste Weissraffer was back on the move early. After a swift battle for the breakaway, he found himself in a familiar position, alone at the front of the peloton. But in a delightful fashion, he told the camera bike, "I really didn't try to be alone," and the moto folks, the driver and the cameraman responded, "We'll be with you all day." Okay, so romance is alive and well, and it's happening in France. Mads Pedersen won the intermediate sprint ahead of Philipsen and Tim Merlier, who did contest it today unlike yesterday. As we've come to expect, the intermediate sprint triggered a second wave of attacks, most of which were caught immediately. But an intrepid trio of Caruso, Cosnef and Vercher made it off the front and caught up to Weissraffer by a hundred and twenty-two point six k's to go. So not only did Baptiste have the cameraman and the moto, he also got friends. Once again, romance is alive and well in France. The mid-race drama was a bit of confusion surrounding the intermediate sprint, however, and nothing to do with the magic of friendship. Pedersen was spotted at the commissaire's car seemingly receiving a warning, and then we got a Trek team radio saying he had been relegated. But then immediately afterwards, they issued a correction that Pedersen had been awarded the intermediate sprint points. And this was because Mads had taken a move to the right as he was opening up his sprint, which did sort of cut off Jasper Philipsen, but Philipsen didn't seem to be mad about it at all and actually congratulated Mads on winning the sprint at the end, and nobody-- none of the riders seemed to have a problem with it, so we're not entirely sure what happened. But this is the second day in a row that the commissaires have flagged something in the sprint and then walked it back. Meanwhile, back in the bunch, NSN was keeping the break at under 40 seconds for seemingly no reason. They were pulling so hard we had other DSs on the horn saying they didn't know what was going on. Okay? This prompted Caruso and Verscheure to sit up and be reabsorbed by the peloton. Weistroff and Costu stayed together until 49 Ks left in the stage when Weistroff struck back out on his own

hannah 6:16

He didn't stay there for long though as Little Trek started their shenanigans. They instigated a wave of absolutely insane attacks with about 35 kilometers left to go in the stage. Quinn Simmons got us started, who else? And he forced a really big split, taking Vacek, Fred Wright, and Pippo Ganna with him, amongst others, in a group of 17 riders. They caught Weistroffern at one point, had a lead of about 20 seconds, but Enerson continued to absolutely shred back in the Peloton with a bit of an assist from Soudal Quick-Step, and they closed things down. However, this did not deter Little Trek. Mads Pedersen attacked, Skael Mose attacked, Tom Skoyns attacked, Derek Gee West attacked. Literally everybody not named Juan Ayuso attacked. That's not true. I don't know if Carlos Verona attacked. Nothing stuck until Quinn Simmons dragged yet another strong group off of the front. He high-fived his father on the side of the road on this one. It was very cute. Visma shut this down in a sort of unexpected turn, but with 16 Ks to go, Mads Pedersen did what? Kept attacking. Some EF Education-EasyPost riders got in on that action as well. Quick-Step finally got the Peloton under control with around six kilometers to go in the stage. This is really how long this wave of attacks was taking, and all of the sprint teams got themselves in order for the finale. Alpecin stormed to their front with a full train at the flamme rouge with Tim Merlier tucked in onto Philipsen's wheel. His teammate, Jasper Stuyven, started the lead out ahead of the Alpecin train who took over when he pulled off. Tim Merlier got caught behind MVDP as the sprinter surged forward, but somehow, somehow, he found space to squeeze his way up to the front out of absolutely nowhere and win the stage ahead of a surging Olav Kooij, who threw his bike as Merlier was starting to celebrate. Philipsen finished in third place. Unfortunately, the rest of the action on the stage was a large crash that happened as the lead outs were beginning. A lot of guys went down. There was a trio of Uno-X riders who thankfully all seemed to be okay. SoerenVAERENSDAL, Charming, and Jonas Abrahamsson all went down, as did Dorian Godon for Ineos, who also, I believe, is relatively okay. Unfortunately, we lost Fernando Gaviria for Caja Rural and Burke Mose of Lotto, who both abandoned the race with broken collarbones.

8:21

Okay, today's Stage 13, Dole to Belfort, and we apologize for putting this up late. We had some technical difficulties. It's a 205.8 kilometer, quote unquote, hilly stage with 2,400 meters of climbing. Okay, here's our problem. There's a long run into the intermediate sprint, which doesn't come until 137 Ks into this stage. This lead up is flat to maybe moderately rolling, and we expect most of the sprinters to be able to contest this if they want to. So that's not really hilly. And then immediately afterwards, we get the Category 3 Col des Croix, which is 5.1 Ks at 4.8%, and then the Category 1 Ballon d'Alsace, which is 8.9 Ks at 6.9% in rapid succession. These two are back to back. Okay, so that's feeling more like a mountain. So which is it? This is a flat stage for the first two-thirds with a mountain stage thrown on the back, and they're calling it hilly. From the summit of the Ballon d'Alsace, which offers 10 KOM points to the first rider of cross, riders will descend for a flat finish at Belfort. We suspect this stage might be tricky for the breakaway riders, but if we learned anything from today, it's that Little Trek is gonna try something. They'll probably turn back to their winning formula from week one and put Pedersen in the break with a teammate or two, probably Simmons and Vacek, to try to win the intermediate sprint. We wouldn't be surprised if Philipsen and Girmay join him ahead of the peloton instead of trying to control the bunch.

hannah 9:54

The Ballon d'As might be too much for Pedersen to really contest the stage win, although there are 50 green jersey points on offer at the finish line, so if the race situation allows, he'll certainly do his best. Any strong climber who manages to get into the breakaway could contest this, and with a long descent towards the end of the race, we can't help but think, could this be a day for one Thomas Pidcock? There's also the strong possibility of GC action tomorrow. There's some serious vert on that Cat 1, which means it's definitely possible. Pogačar, of course, doesn't need to do anything, although we know that UAE will literally always ride for the stage win if it's within striking distance. However, who does need to do something? Everybody else on GC. Jonas probably wants to start making inroads sooner than later. Remco is breathing down Jonas' neck and definitely wants to dropkick him off of the second step of the podium. We aren't sure if this stage is hard enough to make huge GC shakeups, but we certainly cannot rule out any shenanigans

10:48

Okay, let's talk about some movers and shakers. Uh, we have Alex Baudin and Valentin Paret-Peintre who are both hunting KOM points. So if they are in that front pack when we get to the top of the Ballon d'Alsace, I would expect to see them both go for it. Pidcock is top 10 right now, but he's almost 12 minutes back, and the next person ahead of him, Lenny Martinez, is six minutes ahead of Pidcock. So would he be allowed to go into a move? If he does go, probably the couple people behind him, that would be Egan Bernal, Ilan Van Wilder, maybe Tobias Hall and Johannessen, they might go because they're all within a couple minutes of Pidcock at the most, meaning that they could snatch his 10th place spot. We have Movistar. Romo went really well in the last climbing stage, and Garcia Pierna has looked very lively. But we haven't really seen Movistar riders working together or having a cohesive strategy in the breakaway. Obviously, we're chalking this up to Movistar being Movistar. When they get a new strategy, we will notice our jaws will be on the floor. But for now, we would expect they would be pretty active, but probably not that cohesive Then I'm going to shout out some people who might make some sort of a move. We have Ramsey Cebreña from Alpecin. Speaking of Xandro Maurice, former Alpecin rider, now on Q36. Whether or not Pidcock goes, he can climb. He might get a shot. Ion Izaguirre has looked good. He seems to be sniffing around in these mountain stages, quote-unquote hilly stages. And Cofidis hasn't really had any sort of visibility or result yet. We've also seen Jayco being very active. Perhaps this is a day for Mara Schmidt. We've seen Ben O'Connor try and get in breakaways, but nothing seems to be happening. And he did have a crash. Luke Plapp, we had high hopes for coming in because it seems like he was in shape this season, but it hasn't come together yet for him. Michael Matthews is clearly in shape, but this is probably too much vertical. In any case, Jayco probably will try and do something.

hannah 13:01

Alex Bodan's EF teammates Sean Quinn and Richard Carapaz have also been going really well and looking strong in breaks. I don't know if this one's quite enough vert for Carapaz, but he wants a stage win, so I don't see why not. And Sean Quinn looked really good in the hilly stages and the, one big breakaway that was allowed to get more than two minutes in week one, so can't rule him out. Valentin Paret-Peintre, as you mentioned, he really was, like, working hard to close some moves for Soudal today. But if he's recovered, he can get into a break, and he climbs really well, so I think he's a really good shout Can Uno X try to keep their, quite frankly, dream tour going minus Torsten crashing out? this seems like p- potential for Tobias Halland Johannessen to go on a raid and perhaps the breakaway will get a slightly longer leash than the last raid he went on, which only got him 12 seconds Little Trek as a team. Ayusa and Skelmos will be in the favorites group. Neither of them will be allowed in any sort of breakaway. Quinn Simmons and Vacek on the other hand will almost certainly be in the break if Pedersen goes in the break. Derek Gee West could find himself on either side of things depending on how things shake out. If literally anybody from Little Trek goes over the bell in Del Sas well, could it be another stage win for that team? Sure

14:13

Does Big Kev have the legs? We've seen him trying to go. Some days he's looked pretty good, some days he's looked pretty cooked. If he does have the legs, I think he'll try and go today

hannah 14:23

I think his teammate, Tiesj Benotman, is probably asking himself the same thing. He has made it into a move or two and then has dropped early. is out of GC, should be going for stage wins, and he came really good for stage wins late in the tour last year after a rough start. So this is kind of his pattern. Might we see something from him? Somebody who has been looking really sharp all tour for INEOS, Tobias Foss Is it too hard for him or could he do it?

16:10

Thank you so much for tuning into God's Medicine for the Tour in 10. We will be back again with our recap of Stage 13 and preview of Stage 14, Mulhouse to La Markstein, Felding, we will talk to you soon