Kooij Wins the Tour's First Bunch Sprint in Pau on Debut as a Late Crash Splits the Race and Træen Stays in Yellow
Olav Kooij had waited five days for the 2026 Tour de France to give the sprinters a chance, and when it finally arrived in Pau he made it count. The Decathlon CMA CGM rider powered clear on the finishing straight to win stage 5 on his Tour debut, outpacing Max Kanter (XDS Astana) and Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) at the end of the 158.3km run from Lannemezan.
The finale was anything but the tidy lead-out procession the sprint teams had planned. A crash at 5.5km to go brought down numerous riders and split the peloton, taking out Michael Matthews and several of Merlier's lead-out men. No major GC contenders were caught up in the fall, but by the time the race hit the final kilometre only a reduced group of around twenty riders remained at the front to contest the sprint.
It was XDS Astana who took control of the last kilometre, Aaron Gate and Mike Teunissen running the same lead-out for Kanter that had delivered him second place at the intermediate sprint. But Kooij, who had deliberately sat out the intermediate battle to save his legs, found Kanter's wheel with Huub Artz (Lotto-Intermarché) and launched past with a closing speed nobody could match. Artz took fourth ahead of Jasper Philipsen, Biniam Girmay and green jersey Mads Pedersen.
"After a couple hard days here already, we had to wait to this day to get this first chance to sprint in the Tour, and to immediately win is unbelievable," said Kooij, who admitted his spring had been a difficult one. "Just to get back to this level and to keep believing in yourself, and just a few people who believe in you as well, is all you need. When I saw the line, I just went as hard as I could."
The stage itself was a one-man show for 144 kilometres. Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché) jumped clear of the peloton in the opening kilometre and simply stayed there, building a lead of four minutes at its peak and sweeping up maximum points at the intermediate sprint in Vic-en-Bigorre. The Frenchman was still dangling ten seconds ahead over the Côte de Baleix before the race finally swallowed him inside the last 15 kilometres, moments after a late dig from Kasper Asgreen, Fred Wright and Valentin Paret-Peintre had also been snuffed out.
For the overall standings, the day changed nothing — by design. Torstein Træen (Uno-X Mobility) and the GC group rolled home safely 14 seconds behind the sprinters, protected by the 5km rule after the split. The Norwegian keeps yellow with 28 seconds over Sean Quinn and 3:50 over Mathias Vacek, while Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard remain locked together at 7:53, with Remco Evenepoel at 8:16.
The truce ends immediately. Thursday's stage 6 takes the race over the Col d'Aspin and the mighty Col du Tourmalet to a first-ever finish at Gavarnie-Gèdre — 186.2km, 4,100 metres of climbing, and the first real GC examination of this Tour. Træen's yellow jersey, and the phoney war between Pogačar and Vingegaard, are about to meet the high Pyrenees.