Tour de France 2026: Ballon d’Alsace awaits riders on testing stage 13 – live

Tour de France updates from 12pm BST/1pm CEST Stage-by-stage guide | Team guide | You can mail Tom Strap in folks, we’re going long today. At least we might get something that resembles a breakaway today. The intermediate sprint comes with 68 of the lengthy 205km to go, so unless the sprint teams fancy trying to neutralise 130-odd kilometres of attacks something will have to give. UAE Team Emirates may decide, as they have throughout this race, to give the escapists a short leash but so long as the composition is suitable this really could be a day where there is a chance of a breakaway winner. The Ballon d’Alsace is the big beast in the road book, a category one ascent of 8.9km at 6.9%, that clearly means the winner will need to be a more than decent climber, but they’ll also need to have the nous to get down the other side. To me it looks like a Richard Carapaz kind of course and EF Education-Easypost are yet to get a stage win in this year’s Tour, but there will be a few frustrated riders in the peloton eyeing this up. Get the snacks in, settle in, this should be (we really hope) a bit of fun. Continue reading...