Tour de France Femmes 2026: Sigrid Haugset wins stage three after epic solo breakaway – as it happened

Key events

• 2h ago

  Stage three report

• 5h ago

  Sigrid Haugset wins stage three!

• 9h ago

  Preamble

Stage three report

And so ends today’s coverage. Like Sigrid Haugset I’ve spent many hours in my seat engaged in a mammoth solo effort. Unlike her, I’ve used very little energy doing so and am now going to walk the dog. Bye!

The GC rankings now look like this:

1. Sigrid Haugset (Uno-X Mobility) 11h 17m 56sec

2. Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) +2min 2sec

3. Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) +2min 6sec

4. Noemi Ruegg (EF Education-Oatly) +2min 10sec

5. Marianne Vos (Team Visma) +2min 10sec

Haugset also leads the points rankings with 25, ahead of Lotte Kopecky with 20. Puck Pieterse of Fenix-Premier Tech has the polka dot jersey, with Nikola Noskova of Cofidis just behind.

And Lotte Kopecky now has a word:

It was one of my longest solo rides, I think. I really had good legs today. I went on the chase alone. I was a long time at 1min 20sec, and then I came closer and closer. The uphill parts I tried to really push. And then I saw her in front of me. The thing is, I was empty. My legs were starting to cramp and I couldn’t push any more. I had to let her go. She was really strong.

Sigrid Haugset has spoken! And the good news is that her smiling muscles have recovered.

Is this a dream come true?

No, because I haven’t been thinking about it, because I never thought it was possible. It’s unreal.

When I went, I thought yeah, she’ll catch me. I thought, should I just drop down to her? Second is good! But I kept on. The car was amazing, pushing me. I was thinking about all my teammates and it was like, I had to give it all. I can’t believe she didn’t catch me.

I was so dizzy at the end. My boyfriend will be angry with me for not celebrating but I couldn’t lift my arms off the bike. It was impossible.

Marianne Vos wins the sprint for third place, a footnote to a remarkable story of which Sigrid Haugset is the undoubted star.

Haugset rode solo for the last 85km of today’s 156.5km stage. She finishes it in 4h 5m 59sec. Kopecky has crossed the line now, 1min 24sec behind, also after a splendid solo effort.

Sigrid Haugset wins stage three!

The Norwegian has gone and won this thing! What a ludicrous solo effort from the 27-year-old, who will end the day 1) in the yellow jersey, and b) quite sore.

1km to go: She’s almost there. Kopecky has lost sight and lost hope.

2km to go: This is happening. A heroic, historic ride from Haugset. She leads now by 55sec!

3km to go: Haugset has snarfed another kilometre, and her lead still stands. 37sec as I type.

4km to go: Kopecky is 35sec behind, and it’s looking increasingly like Haugset can actually do this.

5km to go: Haugset will surely end the day in the yellow jersey. The only question is whether Kopecky can catch her and snaffle the stage win.

6.5km to go: Haugset leads by 24sec – she’s somehow managing to stretch it!

7km to go: A camera motorbike pulls up alongside Haugset, who is currently 80% grimace. Powered by pure grit at this stage.

8km to go: Haugset is holding her lead, which is 13sec at last count.

9km to go: Behind Kopecky, everyone else is just chillin’, saving themselves for a sprint once they hit Poligny.

10km to go: Only 10sec between Haugset and Kopecky, and on a long, straight, flat road the Belgian can see her rival now!

11.5km to go: The stage win is between two people now, surely. If Haugset can sustain 50km/h the chasing pack would need to sustain 60km/h to catch her.

14km to go: Haugset is going, slightly downhill, at around 50km/h. At that pace she’ll finish the stage in just under 17 minutes. But suddenly Kopecky’s clocked at just 18sec behind!

15km to go: Haugset has maintained her lead over Kopecky since that final climb – there’s still 30sec in it. Can she hold on?

20km to go: I’ve had a few emails in the last few minutes supporting Kim Le Court – the Mauritian is a group of nine that has peeled slightly clear of the peloton in pursuit of Kopecky. They’re 1min 53sec off second place as I type.

24.7km to go: Haugset has gone over the top of the Cote de Chaux-Champagny, and she leads by 30sec. What an effort this has been from the 27-year-old, but the peloton is also fighting back fast: they’re just 3min behind the leader now, which means they’ve taken a minute out of the lead in the last 6km or so.

30km to go: Just over 5km stand between Haugset and the final classified climb of the day, the 1.8km, 6.4% Cote de Chaux-Champagny. After that it’s very much all downhill (or flat), so these are five big gilometers.

31km to go: … but the Norwegian’s lead is disappearing fast now. Kopecky is 43sec behind, and the peloton a further 3min 20sec away.

35km to go: If Haugset wins this stage it would be, TNT Sports informs us, the longest successful solo break in the history of the race, overtaking an effort by Fabiana Luperini in the dim and distant days of 1995, when it was known as the Tour Cycliste Feminin. Luperini won the race that year, and then the next three as well.

47km to go: The gap between Kopecky and Haugset is down to 55sec, with the peloton three and a bit minutes further back. It is 37C on the road, which is pretty tough.

44km to go: They’re gobbling up the miles now, and Kopecky is nibbling at Haugset’s lead. There’s 1min 15sec in it now.

54km to go: There are all sorts of splits opening up now. A couple of riders have launched themselves off the front of the peloton, though they haven’t exactly escaped yet. Haugset is over five minutes ahead of the peloton, and more than 11 ahead of the yellow jersey group. Are they saving their legs at this point? Tomorrow there’s a 21km individual time trial, before three tough days on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

64km to go: The pace is picking up, with the rest of the day largely flat or downhill (with one sneaky category four climb), and Korpecky is already 2mins ahead of the peloton, and 1min 10sec behind Haugset, whose lead is being gradually whittled.

71km to go: Haugset now leads by 1min 30sec, and Lotte Kopecky of Team SD Worx-Protime is having a go at riding some of that back. The yellow jersey group is now 10min behind Haugset, and they’re surely not coming back from that.

75km to go: Haugset was first over the Col de la Savine, with Puck Pieterse second. Pieterse, with those three points, thereby secured the polka dot jersey, which will be presented to her at the end of the stage.

80km to go: Sigrid Haugset is clear on her own! The Uno-X Mobility rider is 24sec ahead of the peloton, and nearly nine minutes up on the yellow jersey group.

85km to go: The leaders are heading up the Col de la Savine, a category two climb. And we have live pictures! They only turned on the cameras at 2.45pm BST, you see.

87km to go: TNT Sports coverage has started, which I suppose is good news, but 10 minutes into it they’re chatting to riders about what they think is going to happen in a day that has now half-happened. And now they’re going to an ad break, and promising more preview stuff when they get back. This is befuddling, and infuriating.

90km to go: The gap between the peloton and Lorena Wiebes’ yellow jersey group is now more than four minutes. Elisa Balsamo, second placed at the start of the day, is also in the Wiebes group.

97km to go: The leaders go through Hauts de Bienne, “the capital of French eyewear manufacturing”, it says here. It is home to the Musee de la Lunette, the eyewear museum, which has a collection of 2,500 objects including 450 pairs of glasses. I personally wouldn’t have guessed that fewer than 20% of the objects accumulated by the museum of glasses would be glasses, but I suppose it’s good to be kept on one’s toes.

100km to go: The leading group, now 11 strong after the arrival of Sigrid Haugset, is 30 seconds ahead of the peloton, and 2min 40sec ahead of the group containing the woman in the yellow jersey, Lorena Wiebes.

106km to go: Lucinda Brand of Lidl-Trek had a go at a solo breakaway, but after a matter of minutes she’s been reined in. There’s currently a leading group of 10: Femke de Vries (Visma), Célia Gery (FDJ), Rosa Kloser (Canyon), Lotte Kopecky and Nienke Vinke (of SD Worx-Protime), Liane Lippert (Movistar) Loes Adegeest (Lidl-Trek), Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Yara Kastelijn (Fenix).

111km to go: Puck Pieterse was also first over the Cote de Lajoux, ahead of Nikola Noskova. Pieterse thus tops the polka dot jersey classifications, ahead of Noskova.

118km to go: The good news, as the leaders conquer the Cote de Lajoux, is that they have covered only 25% of today’s distance, they have done nearly 50% of the climbing, with 1200m of the 2500m already covered.

123km to go: The leaders are now heading up the second climb of the day, the category three Côte de Lajoux.

129km to go: Puck Pieterse was first over the Col de la Faucille, bagging 10 points, ahead of Nikola Noskova. The peloton is nearly 1km ahead of the group containing the current race leader, Lorena Wiebes.

132km remaining: Dina Boels has abandoned. The Belgian was 139th and last after yesterday’s second stage, and only just crossed the finish line inside the time limit.

And now an email! From Jez Smith, who was in Geneva for the start of today’s stage. “Thanks for the updates from the Tour today. I went with my family to the start area in Geneva. There was presentations of the teams and long queues for the chance to win publicity caravan merchandise. We went to the Rolex Bridge about 300m from tbe start to watch the Femmes as they set off. A great spectacle.

“Here’s a pic of my two-year-old Australian Shepherd, Shadow, taking in the Tour with the impressive Swiss broadcaster tower in the background.”

And what a view Shadow had!

133km remaining: The peak of the Col de la Faucille approaches!

Anyway, moving on from pipes, Jura’s top industries include the unexpected entries bar turning, which is not some kind of pub crawl but a mechanical manufacturing process that removes material from a rotating object using automatic lathes to create parts with specific shapes, and “luxury goods subcontracting”, which so far as I can does not involve actually doing anything industrious at all, but rather telling other people to do it.

136km remaining: Some 11 riders have been dropped from the peloton, two-thirds of the way up the Col de la Faucille. They include St Michel’s Alison Jackson, and Amalie Dideriksen of Cofidis and Britain’s Pfeiffer Georgi of Picnic.

138km remaining: There has, apparently, been a small and non-serious crash. I meanwhile am still, mentally at least, in Saint-Claude where it turns out there is a Musee Pipe et Diamant, a joint museum created by the Association of Diamond Dealers from Haut-Jura and the Brotherhood of Master Pipe Makers from Saint-Claude. Two unlikely bedfellows, I’m sure you’ll agree. The Confrérie des Maîtres Pipiers de Saint-Claude, to give them their full and proper title, confers the highly-regarded Premier Fumeur de pipe de l’année award on the person who has done most to improve the lot of pipe smokers. It appears that they quite often announce that there is “pas de premier fumeur” in any given year, which I suppose is a good thing. The Confrérie was created in 1966 by Edgar Faure, whose first decision was to name himself the premier Premier Fumeur du pipe. The last winner, after nine years without one, was the writer Daniel Pennac in 2025.

Incidentally the British Pipesmokers’ Council ran a similar Pipeman of the Year award between 1964 and 2004, when they gave up due to a lack of outstanding pipemen. Previous winners include Jimmy Greaves, Ian Botham, Rod Hull, Harold Wilson and Warren Mitchell, who reportedly rejected the award “saying it was silly, that he smoked a pipe, but also used a lavatory brush so he might just as well be Lavatory Brush Man of the Year”.

That, I think, is enough about pipes.

143km remaining: Today’s stage largely takes place in the Jura region. While the list of specialities of the Jura, according to the Tour’s website, starts with “Comte cheese, Morbier cheese, Vache Qui Rit cheese” there’s a lot more to the place than that. It is home to Saint-Claude, “the world capital of pipe making” and site of a bloody enormous pipe should you ever want to be photographed next to such a thing, which can be found outside the town’s museum.

147km remaining: They’ve already started up the Col de la Faucille, today’s category one climb. The first part of today’s stage is a) perhaps the most interesting bit, apart from the flat and speedy approach to Poligny, and also b) not being televised. Only Wednesday’s fifth stage and Sunday’s concluding ninth are being televised in full.

The stage began a few minutes ago. The first interesting place today’s route passes is Cessy, the small town (population just under 6,000) under which the Large Hadron collider runs. It’s Cessy and it knows it, etc.

Not long before Cessy, and just before the French-Swiss border, is the fabulously-named Bossy. Bossy is part of the Collex-Bossy municipality and traditionally listed as such, but I for one would be a supporter of independence.

Before today’s stage heats up, catch up with what happened yesterday through the medium of Jeremy Whittle’s report:

Preamble

Hello world! Today, then, the second-longest stage of this year’s tour at 156.5km, and the first in the hills, with four categorised climbs and about 2,500m of elevation gain, with the steepest, longest and hardest section coming in the first 25km. By way of bonus the forecast is both hot (33-35C) and with a chance of rain, particularly in those tough early stages heading north out of Geneva.

The day ends in Poligny, and if the name of that town rings a bell that’s probably (well, there’s a slight chance that it’s) because you read about it in April, when it featured in the Guardian’s list of fun and fabulous reasons to visit France this year. Nothing to do with cycling – our reasoning was entirely cheese-related, Poligny being home to La Maison du Comté: not just somewhere to learn about a marvellous cheese, but also one of the finalists for the 10th French National Wood Construction Award in 2021!

(It didn’t win, because the Halle des Fenottes in Ancy-Dornot, despite basically just being a glorified roof on legs, was better. It is, to be fair, a fabulous roof)

Important fact: the average wheel of Comte, at 75cm in diameter, is 128mm, or about 1.2 times, bigger than the average wheel of a road race bicycle. According to Cycling Weekly “most wheel brands these days can hit 1,300g or lower in a 50mm-deep wheelset”, which makes the average single wheel of Comte 30.8 times heavier. You would, to summarise, not want to cycle up a mountain using wheels of Comte.