Tour insiders critical of 2026 route: built for Pogacar, not for suspense

The race begins with a team time trial in Barcelona, followed by a circuit on Montjuïc and an early block of mountain stages. Former rider and team director Johan Bruyneel sees little reason for optimism for his compatriot Remco Evenepoel. “It's not a good route for Remco,” he analyses in the podcast THEMOVE. “The time trial is only 26 kilometers, and the first 10 of those are uphill. It's a stage for the GC contenders; time trial specialists are definitely not at an advantage here.”

That time trial comes late in the race, just before the decisive Alpine segment. “They want to keep the excitement going until the end, so that we don’t know who is going to win until the last moment. That’s why that super-difficult stage is only in stage 20. It’s the most difficult stage of the Tour,” Bruyneel adds, referring to the Col de la Croix de Fer, Galibier, and Alpe d’Huez.

Lance Armstrong, speaking in the same podcast, agreed that the organisers have placed their focus on the final week, but doubts it will change the outcome. “We know what's going to happen: it will be very exciting, or extremely predictable. If Pogačar is the same man he has been in recent years, it will be a lot of pace, control and questioning other teams' tactics. But if he's going to have a hard time, the race could be fascinating.”

Both Armstrong and Bruyneel see the same pattern returning. And Bruyneel believes that Pogačar's reign could end on his own terms. “I don't think the man who will challenge Tadej is here yet,” he says. “It’s not Oscar Onley, it’s not Felix Gall, it’s not Florian Lipowitz.”

He even predicts when the Slovenian will hang up his wheels. “He has four more things to win. It's Milan-Sanremo, it's Paris-Roubaix, it's the Vuelta, and the Olympic Games. After that [2028], it's over. Then he will have won everything there is to win.”

Former Tour stage winner Jan Bakelants, meanwhile, takes aim at the route’s design in his analysis at HLN. “The strong Remco Evenepoel of the final weeks of this season should be able to play his role in this interesting part of the course,” he says. “But the organisers didn’t really consider riders like him and neglected to make their race potentially more exciting.”

For Bakelants, the problem is clear. “I miss an extra time trial of between forty and fifty kilometres that could have made the race more exciting. This will be an effort of about half an hour, maybe Remco finishes it even faster, but you can’t make up much time in the standings with that.”

And the double Alpe d’Huez? He’s not impressed. “Do they really know only one mountain in France? Nobody is really waiting for that in the final week. We got frustrating, predictable stages last year. The tension faded away, and not much happened in the general classification.”

Bakelants believes the route could have been more imaginative. “A few extra visits to the medium mountains would have been better,” he says. “But Pogačar's team is so strong that it can control the race there too. Without him, Remco would win races in ‘Pogacarian’ fashion. But the reality is that the Slovenian is part of the peloton, and the organisers haven’t built a race that gives the underdog a bigger chance.”

Rather than question the route, Cadel Evans chose to focus on its consequences. “You can’t Pog-proof the Tour,” Evans told Canadian Cycling Magazine. “The time gaps will be massive; maybe Remco Evenepoel’s in there too.”

Evans warned that the 2026 race “will demand total commitment from day one,” adding that “from the opening team time trial, GC contenders will have to be at their best immediately. It’s a tough first week and a brutal final stretch with two finishes on Alpe d’Huez, which is rare. It’ll be hard to control the lead and even harder to defend it.”

The Australian expects the decisive blows to land late in the race. “The last stage has 5,600 metres of climbing, probably the hardest mountain stage in living memory. When it gets that hard, the riders who are on will still be flying, and the others will be walking zombies. Instead of losing two or three minutes, they’ll lose 15.”

In the end, the verdict feels unanimous: the route may twist and turn through Spain and France, but most roads still seem to lead to the same place, Tadej Pogačar in yellow.