While Tadej Pogačar's commanding lead in the overall standings at the Tour de France ensured that stage 16 was hardly going to be decisive, there were still some big storylines on the day. Some riders made GC gains, others disappointed, and one key overall contender dropped out of the race entirely after a crash.
In an effort to distill the key takeaways from almost four hours of time trialing action, we decided to take a closer look at a few of the big winners and losers from the one individual time trial of the 2026 Tour de France ...
[race_result id=17 stage_id=89791 count=10 gc=0 year=2026]
[race_result id=17 stage_id=89791 count=10 gc=10 year=2026]
The winners
Remco Evenepoel
Let's start with the no-brainer (and a promise that we will provide more insight after we get this one out of the way first). Evenepoel is quite obviously a winner after winning the time trial, but this was a victory in more ways than one. He may have been the pre-race favorite but it was not as if there was no doubt that he would best Tadej Pogačar. The race leader is really, really good in Grand Tour time trials, but Evenepoel won by a comfortable 28 seconds to notch his second victory in as many stages at the Tour.
This also marked the second day in as many stages where he has looked great, riding in the form of his life just as the Tour enters its most difficult phase. Less than two weeks ago, there were reasons to question Evenepoel's place at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and even before disaster struck for his teammate Florian Lipowitz on Tuesday, it was clear that Evenepoel had re-established himself as the main guy for this team.
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