Reigning champion Tadej Pogacar won the third stage of the Tour de France on Monday to snatch the "special" leader's yellow jersey from rival Jonas Vingegaard.
The world champion and Vingegaard are dead level on time but Pogacar took over the race lead by virtue of his better finishing positions in the opening three stages.
It was Pogacar's 22nd Tour stage victory and his 10th in the Pyrenees.
💪 The final kick!
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 6, 2026
💪 L’attaque finale !#TDF2026 pic.twitter.com/Rc56xdHR9V
The 27-year-old Slovenian finished two seconds ahead of the Dane and also earned four more bonus seconds than Vingegaard to wipe out his six-second deficit from the start of the day.
"Of course, to take the yellow jersey is the dream for any cyclist of any age," said Pogacar.
"For me it's, I don't know which time already, but every time I can get it again on my shoulders, it feels really special."
Former Giro d'Italia winner Richard Carapaz came past French teenage prodigy Paul Seixas to take third in the same time as Vingegaard at the end of a 196km stage which started in Granollers, Spain and finished in Les Angles in the French Pyrenees.
Despite a plea from organisers for fans to stay away because of raging wildfires just 70 kilometres away from the finish, there were plenty of people by the side of the roads in France.
Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel was eighth at 4sec and remains third overall but fell to 23sec off the lead.
Sunday's stage two winner Isaac Del Toro is fourth overall at 24sec after finishing eighth, with Spaniard Juan Ayuso (27sec) and Seixas (48sec) rounding out the top six.
After Pogacar let his UAE Team Emirates teammate Del Toro take the victory on Sunday's finish on the Montjuic hill in Barcelona, this time it was the Mexican who led out his team leader for a decisive sprint to the line.
Pogacar left no doubt that he had his eyes on both the stage victory and the yellow jersey with a dominant win.
🏆 Perfect team work for a dominant win. Job well done for @TeamEmiratesUAE and Tadej Pogacar!
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 6, 2026
🏆 Un travail d'équipe parfait et une victoire en patron. Du travail bien fait pour @TeamEmiratesUAE et Tadej Pogacar !#TDF2026 | @Continental_fr pic.twitter.com/LqGpxq4EF7
"It's because of Isaac today (that) I got some extra power in the final," said Pogacar.
"He committed more than 100 per cent in the final climb and all the team actually.
"In the middle of the stage we decided that it's possible to go for the stage win and I'm really, really happy that we started the Tour like this."
NO SCRAPS FOR ANYONE
On a day which looked ideally suited to a breakaway, UAE left no scraps for anyone else, leading to some complaints from other teams and commentators that they were killing the spectacle with their domination.
UAE sporting director Mauro Gianetti said the stage was too tough for a breakaway to stay away.
"It was an unfavourable route (for the breakaway) because it was very demanding, there was more than 4 000-metres of elevation gain," said the Italian.
"I'm sorry... we're doing our job."
An 18-man breakaway finally formed after 70km and stretched out a maximum lead of three minutes.
At that point, UAE took over the pace-setting.
"Tadej said he feels good and then Florian (Vermeersch) just started to pull," said UAE's Austrian rider Felix Grossschartner.
"I think the breakaway didn't cooperate so well... so we could decrease the gap quite a lot there.
"I think this was really a main factor that we finally decided to go for the stage."
UAE had reduced the gap by half by the time the break reached the 9.3km-long first-category Col de Toses climb, just over halfway through the stage.
The break thinned out to a six-man group by the top and then with 34km left, French pair Alex Baudin and Nicolas Prodhomme set off alone.
Prodhomme lasted only another eight kilometres and Baudin, who had done enough to claim the polkadot 'King of the Mountains' jersey, was caught 12km from home.
UAE controlled the race until the final short climb to Les Angles, and Pogacar did the rest.
It was a miserable day for Belgian sprinter Arnaud De Lie, though, as he pulled out of the Tour.
He had been suffering since the opening stage on Saturday and when it became clear that he was not going to make Monday's time limit, he decided to abandon the race.
STAGE 3 RESULTS
1. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) – 4h45'11"
2. Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma | Lease a Bike) – +0:02 (4h45'13")
3. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) – +0:02 (4h45'13")
4. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) – +0:02 (4h45'13")
5. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) – +0:04 (4h45'15")
6. Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto Intermarché) – +0:04 (4h45'15")
7. Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) – +0:04 (4h45'15")
8. Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) – +0:04 (4h45'15")
9. Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) – +0:04 (4h45'15")
10. Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) – +0:04 (4h45'15")
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
1. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) – 8h42'40"
2. Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma | Lease a Bike) – +0:05
3. Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) – +0:21
4. Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) – +0:28
5. Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) – +0:31
6. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) – +0:32
7. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) – +0:36
8. Alex Molenaar (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) – +0:39
9. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek / EF listing in PCS data) – +0:39
10. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) – +0:41