Stage 5
Kooij wins on debut in Pau
- Wednesday 8 July 2026
- 158 km
- 1,990 m climbed
- Won by Olav Kooij
The road
At the start
Træen in yellow, the sprinters wait
A breakaway given ten minutes on the road to Foix has handed the maillot jaune to Torstein Træen, twenty-eight seconds clear of Sean Quinn, with Pogačar and Vingegaard nearly eight minutes down and entirely untroubled by it. Kelland O'Brien missed the time cut. The short road from Lannemezan to Pau is flat: only twice in thirty years has the Tour got past stage 4 without a bunch sprint.
How it was won
- 6 km to go
Crash splits the run-in
With 5.5km to go a crash rips through the bunch, bringing down Michael Matthews and several of Tim Merlier's lead-out men — no GC names are caught, but the sprint trains are thrown into disarray.
- At the line
Kooij wins on debut in Pau
From a splintered group of barely twenty, XDS-Astana launch Max Kanter, but Olav Kooij — who skipped the intermediate sprint to save everything for this — surges past to win in Pau on his Tour de France debut, Merlier third.
The result
| Rank | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Olav Kooij | Decathlon CMA CGM Team | 3:29:07 |
| 2 | Max Kanter | XDS Astana Team | +0:00 |
| 3 | Tim Merlier | Soudal Quick-Step | +0:00 |
The route on real terrain, every moment pinned to the kilometre it happened on — and the GPX to ride it yourself.