EF Education-Easypost brought a team to the 2026 Tour de France to hunt stage wins and they finally have one after Richard Carapaz attacked from a small group to win stage 18 at Orcières-Merlette.It was the perfect end to a superb performance from the Ecuadorian, who played his cards perfectly as the race reached the Alps.The profile of today’s stage was custom-designed for a large breakaway, and after plenty of skirmishing on the category one Côte d’Engins, eventually a 14-rider front group achieved some separation. Crucially, it contained Mads Pedersen — eager to make up the green jersey ground he ceded to Jasper Philipsen in yesterday’s stage — with today’s intermediate sprint not arriving until almost 130km into the stage.Pedersen duly took maximum points, before five riders — Matteo Jorgenson, Tobias Halland Johannessen, Raúl García Pierna, Felix Engelhardt and Mauro Schmid — used the slight lull to attack, joined by Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre. Engelhardt was soon dropped, as was García Pierna as they reached the Côte de Saint-Léger-les-Mélèzes, the penultimate climb of the day — although the Movistar rider dragged himself back to the group.That left the final ascent to Orcières-Merlette, and after a cagey beginning, Carapaz attacked with 4km to go. That shed Paret-Peintre and Johannessen, before a second Carapaz attack allowed him to go solo and cruise to a classy win. Behind him, Schmid continued his excellent Tour by outsprinting Jorgenson to finish secondTim Spiers and Jacob Whitehead analyze the day’s action.