Tour de France: Wout van Aert wins Paris finale as Pogacar claims fourth title

Wout van Aert delivered a stunning attack on Montmartre to win the rain-soaked final stage of the Tour de France in Paris, denying Tadej Pogacar a fifth stage victory. Pogacar secured his fourth overall title, equalling Chris Froome’s record.

Hyderabad: Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) gatecrashed Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar’s party as the Belgian put in a monster ride through Montmartre to deny the Slovenian a fifth stage win in the new-look Paris finale on Sunday.

Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was unable to match the Belgian’s massive attack on the third and final ascent of the Butte de Montmartre in a sodden Stage 21 of the Tour in the French capital.

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World champion Tadej Pogacar could still raise his arms to the skies on the Champs-Elysees – not to celebrate his fourth place in the stage, but his fourth Tour triumph.

Italy’s Davide Ballerini (XDS-Astana) pipped Slovenia’s Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) for second place in an absorbing final stage, which was livened by torrential rain and three laps on a similar lumpy loop that made the Paris 2024 Olympic Road race so memorable last summer.

Van Aert’s first stage win on the Tour since 2022 came after his American team-mate Matteo Jorgenson put in a series of accelerations to soften up the six-man leading group ahead of the decisive climb up the 1.1km ascent of the Rue Lepic.

With times for the general classification taken after the initial four loops of the traditional Champs-Elysees circuit, Pogacar had no need to push for a fifth win. But the 26-year-old did the yellow jersey proud by going all-out for 22nd career stage win on the Tour.

Pogacar had attacked on the previous two climbs in Montmartre – and the race leader looked to have made the decisive move with another acceleration on the final climb.

But as Ballerini slipped back the same way as Jorgenson, Mohoric and Matteo Trentin (Tudor Pro Cycling), Van Aert not only drew level with Pogacar but then achieved something no one else has managed in the past three weeks: drop the four-time champion on a climb.

Van Aert held a five-second advantage over the summit – a lead which grew as he threw caution to the wind on the technical descent back into central Paris, while his pursuer Pogacar decided to sit up and wait for reinforcements.

Victory for Van Aert was the tenth time the Belgian had won a stage on the Tour – but the first since 2022 thanks to a series of injuries that have hampered his performances.

“It was a special day out – and really special to win here on the Champs-Elysees again, and on the first occasion where we climbed to Montmartre,” the 30-year-old said.

“The rain made it quite sketchy but I managed to stay upright and I had the full support of my team-mates. I really have to thank them for keeping believing in me.

“They helped me control this race so that I could leave it all out there on the last climb. It was our plan, and it worked. I came close a few times [earlier in the Tour] but I was quite far off on several occasions. Yesterday, I wasn’t good enough to even make the breakaway.

“The hardest thing was to keep the belief but because people around me were able to do it, I could as well.”

A second stage win for his Visma-Lease a Bike team – following Simon Yates’s victory in the Massif Central – was just rewards for a team which did themselves proud despite being unable to deliver Jonas Vingegaard to a third win, according to Van Aert.

“We came here with the ambition to win the yellow jersey, but the strongest rider in the race and the biggest rider in the world, Tadej Pogacar, won it.

“We tried to give him competition and I’m proud of how we tried to beat him. We had a great group, and we won the team classification so we should be proud.”

Pogacar might have missed out on a final-day bonanza in the City of Light, but he nevertheless joins British legend Chris Froome on four Tour titles and moves within one of the outright record of five shared by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain.

With the final times for the general classification taken 50km from the finish because of the severe weather, there were no changes in the final top 10 in Paris. Pogacar won the 112th edition of the Tour by 4’24″ over Denmark’s Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), whose two Tour wins in 2022 and 2023 now seem like a distant memory.