The most demanding stage of the whole race was left to the penultimate day, in which riders had to climb 5,450 metres across three hors category climbs covering 170.9km to finish in the iconic Alpe d’Huez ski-resort for a second time in two days.
American Kuss of Visma-Lease a Bike was part a large early breakaway which contained riders looking for a stage win, and attacked alone with about 25km to go.
The 31-year-old looked to have found the strength which helped him win the Vuelta a Espana in 2023 and seemed set to hold on to a slender lead for victory.
But the often unflappable Kuss was on the ragged edge and crashed coming out of a tunnel approaching Alpe d’Huez town.
He maintained his lead, but soon after crashed again on a right-hand corner after getting his line wrong, his rear wheel sliding on dust at the edge of the road before coming to a stop, half off his bike and leaning into safety netting which prevented him from falling down a sheer drop.
The tenacious Carapaz, of EF Education-Easypost, swept past Kuss and into the lead – the 2019 Giro d’Italia winner, eventually taking his second stage win in three days and also securing victory in the king of the mountains competition.
“[I was] not really scared,” Kuss told TNT Sports afterwards. “I was just annoyed because we drove down it this morning and I looked at that corner and thought: ‘Ah that’s a pretty descent corner, no problem in the race,’ so I took it pretty full-on.
“It was a bit more of a corner than I expected. My wife won’t let me race my bike anymore – she always tells me not take risks on the downhills, but you’ve got to have a little adrenaline rush every once in a while.”
Typically, on a stage such as this one in the French Alps, Pogacar would be expected to deliver yet another masterclass but he held back to help Del Toro, who at one point was starting to struggle on the Col du Galibier, to defend his white jersey and third place overall from French sensation Paul Seixas of Decathlon CMA-CGM.
The 19-year-old Seixas finally ran out of energy on the final mountain of the race and is set to finish fourth in the general classification, 11 minutes and 56 seconds down on Pogacar’s overall time.
Britain’s Tom Pidcock of Pinarello-Q36.5 finished the stage 16th, nine minutes and three seconds down, and will finish ninth overall in the GC.
Denmark’s Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek will win the green points jersey in Paris on Sunday just by finishing as he leads Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Premier Tech by an uncatchable 82 points.
