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Some first words from new race leader Tadej Pogačar (Slo) UAE Team Emirates, after taking the twelfthTour de France stage victory of his career:
“I’m super-happy, this was more or less the plan and we executed it really well. It was like a dream stage and I finished it off solo. It’s incredible.”
“I want to hit hard today, I’ve been training here a lot of weeks already and it felt like a home stage passing through Sestrieres and Montgenevre. Bonus seconds on the top, too. I felt confident and I had to try.”
As for his attack and downhill acceleration away from Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and the rest of the field, he argued, “I didn’t want to go too early because of the wind and i had to do all the difference in the last few hundred metres. I know the downhill but I was a little bit surprised to see wet road in the first few corners. So it was a bit scary. But this descent is super fast and if you know the road also it helps.”
Regarding his advantage on Vingegaard, he said, “It’s good news. I can be happy with this. I’m superhappy with how I feel on the bike. So let’s continue today with this attitude I have now.”
And here is a first image of Pogačar crossing the line and reclaiming the race lead he held for one day on stage 2.
Tadej Pogačar has now opened a 45 second lead overall on Remco Evenepoel, with Jonas Vingegaard at 50 seconds. After four days of racing and with almost all the mountains to come, that’s quite a statement.
Guided home by teammate Ben Healy, former maillot jaune Richard Carapaz finishes more than five minutes down.
Vingegaard drifted off the pace a little coming into the finish and will perhaps lose a few more seconds. Pogačar, meanwhile, has also gained an 18-second time bonus.
The clock is ticking and Evenepoel comes across the line, about 34 seconds back. Ayuso takes third.
Tadej Pogačar (Slo) UAE Team Emirates wins stage 4 of the Tour de France and takes the race lead.
Pogačar is into the barrier-ed area looking for his first Tour de France stage win since the Vosges last year.
Two kilometres to go and Pogačar is on the outskirts of Valloire. At a mere 90kmh on this part of the descent.
Three kilometres to go
Evenepoel is also coming across to the four ahead. So now five riders behind Pogacar: Remco, Roglic, Vingegaard, Rodriguez and Ayuso.
The trio of chasers catch Vingegaard. Will they work together?
Five kilometres to go
The gap between the defending Tour champion and Pogačar rises a little further, to 29 seconds. After taking 10 seconds on Vingegaard on the Galibier, so far Pogačar has more than doubled his advantage on the descent.
Pogačar is opening up a gap on Vingegaard, to around 18 seconds now.
10 kilometres to go
Evenepoel is still at 30 seconds and on the point of being joined by Primoz Roglic.
Pogačar is touching speeds of 80 kmh on this descent. Thankfully the roads are dry here.
Race leader Carapaz is at more than four minutes on Pogačar at the summit of the Galibier.
The gap between Pogačar and Vingegaard is hovering at around 8 seconds as Pogačar moves onto broader, much drier roads.
Evenepoel is 14 seconds down as Pogačar thunders down the first part of the descent.
Tadej Pogačar (Slo) UAE Team Emirates has a seven second gap on Vingegaard at the summit of the Galibier.
20 metres between Pogacar and Vingegaard
Pogacar opens up a small gap on Vingegaard with 300 metres to the summit.
Pogacar and Vingegaard are opening a gap.
Pogacar attacks 800 metres from the summit. Vingegaard follows.
20 kilometres to go
Only 1,500 metres to the top and the ‘Big Four’ for the GC in the 2024 Tour are still ahead and together.
Ayuso takes over from Almeida, with three UAE riders in the front group of eight. A notable effort from the young Spanish racer in his Tour de France debut.
Ayuso, Vingegaard, Pogacar, Almeida, Rodriguez, Evenepoel, Landa and Roglic in the front group.
Three kilometres to the summit and Roglic looks to be struggling, but not yet dropped.
Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) also dropped and another big burst of climbing power from Almeida.
UAE still have four riders in the front group of around 10.
Former leader Romain Bardet (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) and Enric Mas (Movistar) are both dropped as is Jorgenson. Vingegaard by himself.
Both Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel are still in the group as Adam Yates, a podium finisher in the Tour de France last year and teammate for Pogacar, comes to the front.
Five kilometres from the summit and Carapaz has lost 30 seconds, SImon Yates at two minutes. There’ll be a new race leader tonight, but who will it be?
Vingegaard is looking very comfortable in third place in the string for now, right behind teammate Mattia Jorgenson
in the space of a kilometre as the road steepens notably, the bunch has shrunk to just 25 units at most.
After Sivakov’s brief but intense effort, Joao Almeida is the next to come to the fore for UAE, just when Tour de France leader Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) is dropped.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) also in difficulties.
26 kilometres to go
Gaudu caught, and Lazkano has 15 seconds on the bunch. Pavel Sivakov takes over from Marc Soler for UAE.
A quick reminder of the top ten on GC:
1 Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost 15:20:18
3 Remco Evenepoel (Bel) Soudal-QuickStep
Eight kilometres of clmbing left and still around 50 riders in the front group of favourites.
No sign of Carapaz weakening, by the way, with US National Champ and teammate Sean Quinn just in front of him. Soudal-QuickStep still have five riders alongside Remco Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard is looking almost equally well surrounded, albeit minus Van Aert and Laporte, both of whom were dropped.
Lazkano makes his third lone last-ditch effort as the race powers through a snow tunnel. But the gap is just 41 seconds back to the peloton
A shot of UAE leading a fast-shrinking peloton on the lower slopes of the Galibier…
Wellens swings off and Marc Soler comes to the fore now for Pogacar.
Lazkano makes a pronounced dig, Gaudu following him. But there’s precious little collaboration between the two and the end of the break appears to be nigh.
Van der Poel caught by the UAE-led peloton. Wellens still powering away for team leader Tadej Pogacar.
Gaudu and Lazkano have been joined by Chris Juul-Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa) and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), but the gap is shrinking fast.
TV images on Eurosport showing that there are some wet segments on the top of the Galibier where minature snow avalanches have fallen onto the road. But the road itself has been cleared.
Lazkano has been joined by Gaudu and the two have a small gap on the remnants of the crumbling break.
Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease a Bike) dropped from the peloton and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) sits up in the break.
Gaudu’s move brings a response from former Spanish National Champion Oier Lazkano (Movistar), who follows his teammate Nairo Quintana’s ghostly wheeltracks up the Galibier.
34 kilometres to go
We’ve still got just over 15 kilometres of climbing to the summit of the Galibier, by the way, but UAE are clearly making their intentions known from a very long way out.
Tim Wellens takes over from UAE teammate Nils Politt on the front of the peloton. And the gap shrinks down to 1:34.
If – and it remains very much an ‘if’ for now – Tadej Pogačar does launch a significantly successful attack on yellow today, there will be no lack of recollections that it was on this climb that Marco Pantani, the last rider to do the Giro-Tour in 1998, made a major move to claim the maillot jaune on the Galibier, dropping previous year’s winner Jan Ullrich. That was coming up the other side, mind, and in much wetter weather than today.
The weather is overcast, but dry for now, thankfully, meaning the twisting descent off the Galibier will be a little less risky than if tackled in the wet.
Nils Politt continues to grind out a powerful pace for UAE Team Emirates, with the gap, that had briefly ballooned to three minutes, now shrinking to just over two.
40 kilometres to go
Marc Madiot, Groupama-FDJ general manager, is on the roadside in soigneur mode, handing out bidons to his three riders in the front group, including team leader David Gaudu.
3%, 4%, 3% – the 17 riders are keeping a sustained pace on the long, long drag up to the official foot of the Galibier, passing the race sign saying the climb ‘proper’ has begun and with 22 kilometres to go to the summit. They’ve already been going uphill for quite a while now, so a message like that can’t be anything but daunting.
Quintana is not on the Tour this year, by the way, but there are rumours he will be signing an extension with Movistar for 2025. Watch this space.
A flashback to 2019, when the race last took this road over the Galibier and then dropped down to Valloire, the stage finish and Nairo Quintana (Movistar) took a lone victory.
47 kilometres to go
17-rider break: Odd Christian Eiking and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Warren Barguil (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL) Bruno Armirail (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Julien Bernard (Lidl-Trek), Valentin Madouas, David Gaudu and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), Cristian Rodríguez and Raul Garcíá Pierna (Arkea-B&B Hotels), Kobe Goossen (Intermarché-Wanty), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan), Stephen Williams (Israel-Premier Tech), Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies), and Chris Juul-Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa)
Bunch: At 2:13
Green jersey group: at 12:35
The race moves out of Briancon and the road begins to rise gently. We’re onto the lower slopes of the Galibier.
Talking of which, here is a picture of UAE earlier on today on the front, looking – well – ominous.
As we come into Briancon, the UAE Team Emirates start to mass at the front. Ominous.
Still powering downhill, the race reaches Briancon, scene of many a Tour de France and Criterium du Dauphine finish.
The peloton briefly splits on the descent of the Montgenevre. UAE are in the front group, with Carapaz in a second group behind. Gaps are minimal for now and it should come back together, but as a statement of intentions, the split could be an omen for how hard the fight will be on the slopes of the Galibier…
The first segment, sometimes classified separately is the far gentler Col du Lauteret, essentially a long, straightforward, A-road drag up from Briancon through the valley to the crossroads where left takes you down to the foot of Alpe d’Huez, and right, up to the top of the Galibier.
We’re fast approaching the foot of the Galibier, here’s a profile of what they are about to face.
Still to come:
Km 120.6: Climb: Col du Galibier (HC, 23km at 5.1%)
It’s a fast, well-surfaced descent off the Montgenevre, but there are a lot of hairpins as well.
2:25 on the bunch at the summit, incidentally, meaning the break’s chances of staying away to the finish exist, but they are still limited.
Barguil goes for it again on the summit of the Montgenevre, but Williams once again outsprints him. More points for the Briton.
One kilometre to the top and riders are grabbing bottles in a feed zone before the long descent to Briancon and the crunch climb of the day, the Galibier.
The Tour de France passes the French border and back to home soil.
Four kilometres to the top of the Montgenevre and the Tour’s return to France. Paris-Roubaix runner-up Nils Politt finds himself in rather different terrain, hauling the UAE-led peloton over the second last climb of the day. Warmer weather, too, than usually what’s on offer in Roubaix – for now.
74 kilometres to go
Break: Odd Christian Eiking and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Warren Barguil (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL) Bruno Armirail (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Julien Bernard (Lidl-Trek), Valentin Madouas, David Gaudu and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), Cristian Rodríguez and Raul Garcíá Pierna (Arkea-B&B Hotels), Kobe Goossen (Intermarché-Wanty), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan), Stephen Williams (Israel-Premier Tech), Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies), and Chris Juul-Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa)
Bunch: at 2:59
The 17 riders are on the Col de Montgenevre, Cat 2, 8.3km at 5.9%.
The break of the day
The Barguil-inspired move was shortlived and on the sweeping, fast descent off Sestrieres, the lead group reforms. 2:14 the gap.
Still to come:
Km 71.1: Climb: Col de Montgenevre (Cat 2, 8.3km at 5.9%)
The peloton crosses the summit of the Sestrieres with a 2:00 disadvantage, so Eiking’s spell in the Tour lead has been and gone.
Conscious that the gap is fast dropping on the peloton, Barguil opts to push on with Williams and Madouas over the top of the Sestrieres ascent. Their advantage is minimal though.
Former Tour de France KoM winner Barguil blasts away for the points, but he’s outpaced by Williams at the summit of Sestrieres ahead of Madouas.
Less than a kilometre to the top of the Sestrieres, a climb well known to the Tour and scene of a famous breakaway victory for Claudio Chiappucci way back in the 1992 race.
Jonas Vingegaard was interviewed on Eurosport at the start of the stage about how he views his strategy about what could well be one of the biggest days in this year’s Tour.
“Most of all [I want to] just to try to defend myself. It’s still in the first week, this might be the place where I’m the most vulnerable. I think we just have to defend here in the first week and then maybe later on we will have a different mindset.
“Of course, with the crash I’ve had, I think it’s normal the most pressure is on [Pogačar]. I’m still an unknown factor, so to speak. You never know how I will be over these three weeks. The preparation I had was far from ideal, so I think it’s normal that he’s the big favourite.”
UAE add a rider to the front of the peloton to keep things under control and the gap stabilizes at around at the three minute mark.
The lead stretches up to 2:59 and Eiking has a provisional overall lead to the Tour de France to add to the real Vuelta a Espana lead he held for much of week 2 of the race back in 2021.
Amongst the 17-man move, the two biggest threats to Carapaz overall, incidentally, are Odd Christian Eiking (Uno-X) and Warren Barguil (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL), both at 2:31 and 34th and 37th overall.
95 kilometres to go
Less than 8 kilometres to the top on the ascent of Sestrieres and the gap is now standing at 2:00 for the 17-strong lead group
EF Education-EasyPost lead the pack behind, follow by a large delegation of UAE riders.
100 kilometres to go
Finally a 17-rider group goes clear and it looks like we have a break of the day: Odd Christan Eiking and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobilty), Warren Barguil (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL) Bruno Armirail (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Julien Bernard (Lidl-Trek), Valentin Madouas, David Gaudu and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), Cristian Rodríguez and Raul Garcíá Pierna (Arkea-B&B Hotels), Kobe Goossen (Intermarché-Wanty), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan), Stephen Williams (Israel-Premier Tech), Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies), and Chris Juul-Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa).
Race leader Carapaz, incidentally, is sitting comfortably on fifth wheel of the pack, watching to be sure none of his most serious rivals steal an early march on him.
12 riders off the front in the umpteenth reconfiguration of the head of the race, including Mathieu van der Poel, but the UAE-led peloton is just a stone’s throw behind.
The gradients are very gentle here and multiple riders are trying to bridge across, including Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates). Rui Costa, racing for race leader Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) chases down Soler and the bunch is close to reforming…
A four-rider group picks its way clear 25 kilometres from the summit: Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan), Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Christopher Juul-Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa) and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility).
114 kilometres to go
A big group of fastmen now dropped, roughly 20 riders including Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan), green jersey Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) and other sprinters…
One of the surprises is that gifted young French climber Lenny Martínez (Groupama-FDJ) is already out the back.
Sprinters already in difficulties at the back of the bunch, including Movistar’s Fernando Gaviria (Movistar), second on Monday in Turin.
Pedersen gets the sprint ahead of Girmay, the Tour’s website reports, followed by Bryan Coquard (Cofidis), Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and points classification leader Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility).
Pedersen leads out the uphill sprint but stage 3 winner Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) is on his trail.
Lidl-Trek move to the front of the reformed bunch and we’re just a kilometre away from the one and only intermediate sprint of the day…
One DNS today, incidentally, Soudal-QuickStep’s Casper Pedersen, who was unlucky enough to break his collarbone late on stage 3. He finished the stage, but couldn’t continue any further in the 2024 Tour de France.
123 kilometres to go
World Champion Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is trying to bridge across to the break…
Alpecin-Deceuninck chasing behind with their same domestique for the first part of stage 3, Silvan Dillier.
We are already on the start of the interminable Sestrieres climb.
No dice for these three, on what is proving to be a much more fraught start to the stage than on Monday…finally, though, Pedersen is joined by Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious), Kevin Geniets (Groupama-FDJ), Harold Tejada (Astana Qazaqstan),
Frank van den Broek (DSM-firmenich PostNL) and Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility). They have roughly 20 seconds on the bunch.
The five are quickly reeled in, but then there’s another counter-attack forming with
Raul Garcia Pierna (Arkea-B&B Hotels), Soren Kragh Andersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ).
Pedersen has 11 seconds, while another five riders are trying to get across.
Former World Champion Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), likely after the points on offer in the fast-approaching intermediate sprint, makes a lone move.
Yet more attacks, but nothing is sticking yet. Warm, dry weather by the way.
Less than 10 kilometres to the foot of the first climb, the Sestrieres (Cat 2, 39.9km at 3.7%). After which it’s up or down all day.
The peloton is instantly strung out, courtesy of Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Victor Campenaerts (Lotto-Dstny)
139 kilometres to go
The riders have started their four kilometres of neutralised racing out of Pinerolo and towards the Départ Reel.
A shot of defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) during this morning’s team presentations at Pinerolo. It’s a crunch day for all the GC favourites, and Vingegaard has come through the opening stages of the Tour better than expected, considering his long spell away from racing because of injury. But today’s climbing test is also bigger than anything the 2024 Tour de France has tackled so far.
While we’re waiting, some transfer gossip. According to Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, Soren Kragh Andersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Lennard Kamna (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), both former Tour de France stage winners amongst other achievements, are both due to move across to Lidl-Trek next year. Also rumours that Australian sprinter Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is moving on, too, either to Astana Qazaqstan or Bahrain Victorious.
Less than 10 minutes before the stage gets underway, the last this year to start on Italian soil after the three-and-a-bit days the Tour de France has spent in the neighbouring country. Once we hit the summit of the Cat2 Col de Montgenevre, the race will be back on home soil.
One sprinter who was unable to take part in the mass dash for the line in Turin was Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), who was caught up in a huge crash some two kilometres from the line. The Belgian sprinter, already a multiple stage winner in the Tour, will be able to continue racing on stage 4. James Moultrie has the full story here:
Jasper Philipsen continues Tour de France after frustrating high-speed crash on first sprint stage
While Richard Carapaz became the first Ecuadorian ever to lead the Tour de France on Monday, a major achievement in anyone’s book, an even bigger story of the day was the bunch sprint victory for Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty), the first ever Black African to win a stage in the Tour.
Reporting on the impact of his win by Dani Ostanek here:
Another first – Biniam Girmay makes history once again with Tour de France stage win in Turin
General classification after stage 3
2 Tadej Pogačar (Slo) UAE Team Emirates
3 Remco Evenepoel (Bel) Soudal-QuickStep
4 Jonas Vingegaard (Den) Visma-Lease a Bike
5 Romain Bardet (Fra) DSM-Firmenich-PostNL 0:00:06
6 Pello Bilbao (Spa) Bahrain Victorious 0:00:21
7 Guillaume Martin (Fra) Cofidis
8 Egan Bernal (Col) Ineos Grenadiers
9 Jai Hindley (Aus) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe
10 Aleksandr Vlasov (-) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe
There’s also an awful lot of going uphill packed into 139 kilometres: 3,900 metres of vertical climbing, the most that the peloton will see in the first week and all the way through to stage 11 in the Massif Centrale.
Even the first sprint of the day, after 18.9 kilometres at Castel del Bosco, actually happens during the first categorized climb of the stage. That’s the 39.9 kilometre (!) cat.2 ascent to Sestrieres, which peaks out at km 50.4.
Hopefully it’ll be a mite warmer by then, too. Current reports are that the temperature at the top of the Galibier for this afternoon are set to be 3 degrees Celsius.
Key to it all is the Galibier, which at 2,642 metres above sea level is the second highest climb of the 2024 Tour de France. The highest being the Col de la Bonette-Restefond, which peaks out at 2,802 metres above sea level, but which the Tour peloton won’t see until the back end of week 3.
In other words, this is the first major mountain test of the 2024 Tour de France. Unprecedently early and difficult – even in 2023, when ASO opted to shake things up by heading almost straight into the Pyrenees, the first big mountain stage wasn’t until day 5, and that wasn’t as hard as this one.
On today’s menu:
Today’s stage gets under way in just over an hour’s time. The peloton heads out of Pinerolo and the neutralised start at 13.05 CET, with the race due to pass through kilometre zero at 13.15. After which, there’s quite a day in store…
Hello and welcome to Cyclingnews‘ live coverage of stage 4 of the 2024 Tour de France.
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