Evenepoel wins Tour de France time trial as Pogačar leads

Remco Evenepoel powered to victory in the Stage 7 individual time trial at the Tour de France, covering 25.3 kilometers from Nuits-Saint-Georges to Gevrey-Chambertin on July 5 and claiming back-to-back stage wins. The Belgian, who entered the race as the reigning world time trial champion, took his first Tour de France stage victory with a ride that confirmed his strength against the clock.

Tadej Pogačar kept the yellow jersey after the stage, and that is what still shaped the race’s overall balance. The time trial did not shake the general classification at the top, but it did sharpen the picture of who could still threaten the hierarchy as the Tour moved out of its opening week and into the harder terrain to come. In a race that began on June 29 and finished on July 21, the July 5 test was the first individual time trial and one of the clearest moments for the main contenders to measure themselves directly.

That matters because a Tour time trial is one of the few stages where a rider can gain meaningful ground alone, without the protection of teammates or the chaos of a breakaway. Evenepoel’s win showed that his form was strong enough to exploit a course built for pure power and precision, while Pogačar’s retention of yellow showed he could absorb one of the race’s most honest tests without ceding control. The stage was also the first real head-to-head GC checkpoint between Evenepoel and Pogačar in the 2024 race.

The result fit the larger pattern of the Tour: Evenepoel kept adding stage victories and reinforcing his case as a top overall contender, while Pogačar continued to defend the lead that made him the rider everyone else had to chase. By the end of the race, Pogačar had won his third Tour title overall and Evenepoel finished third in the final general classification, confirming that the time trial was not just a side story. It was one of the early moments that showed where the race could still bend, even if it never broke.