Carapaz wins Tour de France stage 18 as Pogacar loses climbing teammate McNulty

Richard Carapaz scored a decisive win on Thursday in Tour de France stage 18, taking victory in the final climb to Orcieres-Merlette. This was not a minor stage result for race planners. In grand tours, the last climb is where time gaps turn from “maybe” into “math,” and Carapaz made the kind of move teams build months of strategy around.

The other part of the headline, the one that matters just as much for decision-makers watching the overall race, is what happened to Tadej Pogačar at the same moment. Pogačar had previously maintained his overall lead, but he suffered a key disruption as Brandon McNulty, a teammate crucial to climbing support, abandoned the race. That is the classic double whammy in cycling: the rider who can create time also wins, while the rider defending the leader’s position loses one of the hands they planned to use.

To understand why this stage is a big deal, you have to picture how a Tour de France race functions once it enters the mountain narrative. Teams do not just “have fast riders.” They have roles. A leader needs teammates to set tempo, protect against attacks, carry the burden when the peloton stretches, and help manage the dangerous moments when the race splits. When McNulty abandons, Pogačar loses a specific kind of teammate value, the climbing capability and race-time protection that only shows up when the route gets steep and the margins get thin.

Carapaz’s win at Orcieres-Merlette also reinforces a reality executives in any competitive environment recognize: performance under constraint beats performance under comfort. The final climb to Orcieres-Merlette is where the field stops staying together and starts measuring itself. Riders cannot rely on teamwork forever once the gradients rise and the wind turns tactics into endurance. A decisive stage win here signals that Carapaz’s form and timing were aligned when it counted.

There is also a strategic boardroom version of this story. Teams constantly balance short-term stage objectives with long-term general classification ambitions. If you are running a structure built around supporting a leader like Pogačar, your staffing plan is part of the operational plan. You plan which teammates are expected to survive key days and which riders you can “spend” tactically. An abandonment is not just a bad day. It changes the entire remaining workflow: fewer domestiques, different pacing obligations, and more pressure on whoever remains to do the hard work.

From a second-order perspective, McNulty’s exit creates ripple effects beyond the immediate stage. The leader’s rivals, and the teams riding near them, get a changed map of incentives. If Pogačar’s team has fewer climbing tools available, other squads may feel stronger about pressing attacks earlier or committing to moves that previously would have been neutralized. In grand tours, small changes in team capacity can amplify what riders attempt, because the risk calculation shifts when the opposition has fewer levers to pull.

For Pogačar himself, the impact is personal and immediate. He had maintained his overall lead before stage 18, which means the race had been going according to the kind of long-game scenario his camp likes. But when a key teammate abandons, the overall lead becomes harder to defend in the exact moments you most need controlled support. Cycling is brutal because it does not let you “make up” lost teammates the way a company might hire a contractor last minute. The race is the schedule, and the schedule is the only thing that matters.

This is why stage 18 feels like a turning point even though it is “just” one stage. Carapaz delivers the sporting outcome, winning the final climb to Orcieres-Merlette. At the same time, Pogačar’s team loses a climbing teammate, Brandon McNulty, who abandons the race, creating a new vulnerability while the spotlight is still on the mountains. For anyone who follows elite competition, the lesson is simple and transferable: in high-stakes environments, winning and losing often happen side by side, and the operational disruptions can decide how long a lead lasts.