A huge breakaway turned the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on its head on Friday's stage 6, as pre-race favorites like Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) and Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) were powerless to stop a move that included some dangerous – albeit less famous – riders from muscling into the general classification battle.
When the dust settled atop the Cat. 1 Crest-Voland climb, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had secured a double coup, with Maxim Van Gils outsprinting Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) for the stage victory as the team's 21-year-old Australian neo-pro Luke Tuckwell surged to the top of the overall standings.
[race_result id=15 stage_id=90124 count=5 gc=0 year=2026]"We are here without a big leader," Van Gils noted after the stage, in a race that teammate Remco Evenepoel decided to skip. "This morning I had some questions in interviews, why we didn’t come with a big star. To win a stage and take yellow is really big.” For Van Gils in particular it's truly monumental: Auvergne is his first race since he broke his pelvis in a controversial crash at the Clasica Jaen in February that saw UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Jan Christen disqualified for an irregular sprint.
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