Swiss rider Mauro Schmid produced the ride of his career to claim his maiden Tour de France stage victory, edging Colombia’s Harold Tejada in a thrilling sprint finish on Stage 13 on Friday. While Schmid celebrated a breakthrough win for Jayco-AlUla, Britain’s Tom Pidcock emerged as another big winner of the day, climbing to fourth in the overall standings. Meanwhile, race leader Tadej Pogacar safely retained the yellow jersey after finishing with the peloton, keeping his healthy advantage intact heading into the mountains.
Tour de France 2026 Stage 13 Results:
Pidcock, who was 10th in the general classification coming into the stage, moved up to fourth, and sits four minutes and 15 seconds behind Pogacar. Remco Evenpoel is third, nine seconds ahead of Pidcock.
“I can’t believe it. It was an incredibly hard day right from the start,” said 26-year-old Schmid (Jayco-AlUla) after his maiden Tour de France stage win.
“The whole team was motivated to get into the breakaway. We’d tried several times over the last few days, but things hadn’t gone according to plan until now. I felt good from the start, it was just full gas from the very first minute.”
Friday’s stage, a 205.8km hilly ride from Dole to Belfort, had its first big attack about 40km in when a group of 37 riders broke from the peloton.
Tom Pidcock Climbs to Fourth in the Tour de France 2026 General Classification
Pidcock, whose Pinarello-Q36.5 team are continuing without Chris Harper after the Australian lost a part of his thumb following a crash during stage 10, stayed in the mix as the leading group grew to 57 riders.
The peloton trailed by more than eight minutes going up to Ballon d’Alsace, the biggest climb of the day, about 30km from the finish line.
Pidcock waited until the last kilometre of the climb to launch his attack, and was the first to reach the peak as he looked to capitalise on the long descent. But with 16km to go, it was Schmid and Tejada (XDS-Astana) who sped ahead.
The chasing group led by Pidcock was 18 seconds behind the two breakaways going into the last two kilometres, but tried their best to close the gap as Tejada looked to get a solo finish.
But Schmid responded with a perfectly timed attack that got him a photo-finish win over Tejada, as Pidcock crossed the line two seconds later.
A tighter race for the yellow jersey will be the focal point again in Saturday’s stage 14, a 155.3 km mountainous ride from Mulhouse to Le Markstein Fellering.
(With inputs from Reuters)
