State of the Jerseys After Stage 7: Pedersen Tightens His Grip on Green as Carapaz Trades His GC Place for Freedom
One week into the 2026 Tour de France and the four jersey competitions have settled into distinct stories: one apparently decided, one genuinely open, one on a knife edge and one waiting for the mountains to resume. With the race pausing for breath between sprint stages in Bordeaux and Bergerac, here is where every classification stands.
The yellow jersey battle needs little introduction. Tadej Pogačar leads Jonas Vingegaard by 2:42 after his Tourmalet demolition, with Isaac del Toro at 3:27, Remco Evenepoel at 3:30 and Juan Ayuso — now in Lidl-Trek colours — at 3:34. The most interesting GC move of stage 7 happened at the other end of the top 25: Richard Carapaz deliberately shed almost three minutes on the road to Bordeaux, sliding from 16th to 24th, a calculated surrender designed to buy the EF Education-EasyPost leader breakaway freedom when the road tilts upward again.
The green jersey is the genuinely live contest. Mads Pedersen did not contest the Bordeaux finale with real conviction — eighth on the stage — yet still extended his advantage by winning the intermediate sprint battle at Landiras. The Dane now has 204 points, comfortably clear of a tightly packed chase: Biniam Girmay on 145, Max Kanter on 140, Tim Merlier on 134 after his stage win, and Jasper Philipsen on 126. Søren Wærenskjold's second place in Bordeaux was worth 50 points and a fourteen-place leap to seventh — quietly, Uno-X Mobility keep finding ways into every story of this Tour. With Bergerac offering another 70-point finish, the gap can close as quickly as it opened.
The white jersey is the knife edge. Del Toro leads Ayuso by a scarcely believable seven seconds after a full week of racing, with 19-year-old Paul Seixas at 28 seconds and Lenny Martínez at 54 — four riders separated by less than a minute in what is shaping up to be the best young rider battle in years. For now, the Mexican carries both the podium ambitions of UAE Team Emirates-XRG's second card and the media duties that come with the jersey, which, as he noted himself, are paid for in recovery time.
The polka-dot competition, by contrast, is dormant. Without meaningful climbs since Gavarnie-Gèdre, Pogačar still leads the mountains classification with 28 points from Vingegaard's 19, with Martínez third on 16. Expect this one to remain frozen through the weekend — and expect the GC men to keep hoovering up the big-mountain points unless a breakaway specialist like Carapaz makes it his project.
In the teams classification, Lidl-Trek's extraordinary first week — stage wins, the green jersey and three riders in the GC top ten — has them 27 minutes clear of Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe and UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Two more flat stages remain before the race turns serious again; the jerseys may not change hands this weekend, but in Bergerac the points certainly will.