Jonas Vingegaard set to seal Tour de France title after superb solo win on Stage 18

Jonas Vingegaard took another giant step closer to securing the Tour de France title by winning Stage 18 following a superb solo finish on Thursday.

The Jumbo-Visma rider pulled away from defending champion Tadej Pocagar more than three kilometres from the finishing line at the summit of Hautacam to win by a minute and four seconds.

That result extended Vingegaard’s lead over the Slovenian to 3 minutes 26 seconds with three stages to go and, barring disaster or a bad fall, should see him ride up the Champs Elysees and become champion for the first time on Sunday.

Ineos-Grenadiers rider Geraint Thomas, who had attempted a solo run earlier in the stage, is eight minutes behind Vingegaard in third, but holds a comfortable 3:05 lead over fourth-placed David Gaudu.

“It's incredible,” Vingegaard said. “This morning I said to my girlfriend and daughter I wanted to win for them and I did.

“I'm really happy and proud I won for them. This one is really for my two girls at home.

“I was just happy it finally ended. It was incredibly hard. I'm also really happy I won the stage. Now there's still two more days to come before we are in Paris so we need to keep focus and we'll take it day by day again.”

Pogacar threw everything at Vingegaard in the penultimate climb to the Col de Spandelles, also throwing caution to the wind in the descent on a gruelling 143.2km trek from Lourdes.