Sepp Kuss jolted the Tour de France queen stage alive at the entrance to the last 3 kilometers, attacking from Jai Hindley and Richard Carapaz on the road to Alpe d'Huez. He went clear, then found himself hauled back into a fight that still had not produced a stage winner.
That move came on the penultimate day of the race, when the hardest stage of the Tour was reserved for a finish on Alpe d'Huez after four brutal climbs. Kuss had already shown his legs by dropping Hindley 9 kilometers from the top of the Sarenne, a stretch that turned even sharper deeper into the climb and gave no room to recover.
By then, the race had already been pared down to its sharpest edge. Pogacar had taken the lead back from Del Toro, while Del Toro had briefly surged after a short turn from Evenepoel and the acceleration was too much for Seixas, who cracked on the slopes of the Sarenne and was out of the final podium picture on his Tour debut. Martinez rejoined the trio that was also said to form the final podium, and the stage settled into a duel of nerves and pain rather than a long-range chase.
Kuss’s attack was the kind of move that can decide a queen stage in one breath. It did not stay decisive. Carapaz reached Hindley while still 15 seconds behind Kuss, and the pair eventually pulled Kuss back again, leaving the stage result unresolved in the source as the race ran toward the Alpe d'Huez finish. Even as Kuss had broken the calm, the final answer was still being fought over behind him.
The Col de la Sarenne, 12.8 kilometers long at an average gradient of 7.3 percent, had already sorted the field before the final climb to Alpe d'Huez. Riccitello fell out of the leading breakaway and was blown back 40 seconds after the descent, while Johannessen was blown back to the Pogacar group. That left Kuss, Hindley and Carapaz at the center of the stage’s decisive moment — and the only thing missing was the name of the rider who finally held on.
