Key events
28km to go: Lazkano attacks once more, surely for the final time. This time he is not followed by Juul-Jensen, Johannessen or Gaudu. We’re just over halfway into the Galibier climb, although the harshest sections are still to come.
29km to go: Lazkano attacks again, but is caught by the remaining three. Next, Johannessen goes, but it’s the same result. These four are expending so much energy. They will all surely be caught. If the breakaway had stayed at 17, perhaps there would have been an outside chance of staving off the peloton. But this is surely just a matter of time. The peloton is now less than a minute off the new breakaway group.
30km to go: Two more riders, Christopher Juul-Jensen and Tobias Johannessen, have joined Lazkano and Gaudu. The rest, including Barguil and Van der Poel are falling back towards the peloton.
31km to go: The breakaway group has completely splintered! Oier Lazkano attacked, which was a questionable move at best with this headwind, and David Gaudu has joined him. What was 17 riders is now two.
34km to go: And just like that, Politt is done at the front. He has emptied the tank for the peloton. Chapeau.
36km to go: Remarkably Politt is still leading the peleton, despite the rest of his UAE teammates (including Pogacar) being back in the main group, out of the wind. But the German has done a sensational job, almost single-handedly bringing the peloton back under two minutes from the breakaway group.
39km to go: “Are there any Americans who are in contention to win this year’s Tour De France?” asks Kurt Perleberg.
Honestly, it’s very unlikely. Matteo Jorgenson is probably the closest the US has got to a contender, but as part of the Visma–Lease a Bike team, his first objective will be to assist Jonas Vingegaard. Should something happen to the Dane, Jorgenson may get a chance to go for the GC, although he was lucky not to be more hurt in a fall in stage two.
🇺🇸Matteo Jorgenson talks about his potential Tour de France GC ambitions and we get a look at his path to becoming a pro cyclist.#TDF2024 📺: Peacock pic.twitter.com/yIKwD3V945
— NBC Sports Cycling (@NBCSCycling) June 21, 2024
41km to go: Here we go, then. The ascent to Galibier has officially begun. Watch out for those two black sections towards the summit. Absolutely brutal, especially with these headwinds.
43km to go: Nobody seems too keen to take up the front of the peloton. UAE’s Nils Politt had that honour for a while, and perhaps because of that, the breakaway group – who have been working well together in rotating the strike – have grown their lead again to around 2min45secs. The peloton can’t get too complacent!
46km to go: We’re in a bit of a holding pattern here as the riders wait to climb Galibier. Managing the altitude will be important: Galibier begins at 2,058 meters.
50km to go: The peloton are crawling along a brutal straight road against a furious headwind in the approach to Galibier. It’s surprising to say that despite the climbing today (and this headwind), the average speed is still just shy of 40mph/hr. Impressive.
52km to go: There are technically four groups of riders: the breakaway, the peleton (1min52secs behind leaders), a few riders that have dropped off (a further six second back), and a larger fourth group another 10 minutes further down the road. The latter group has 31 riders in, varying from Mark Cavendish to KOM leader Jonas Abrahamsen, although most are sprinters. Their only objective will be to stay within the time limit.
55km to go: Flanked by his UAE teammates, Pogacar leads the peloton, which remains around 1min54secs behind the lead group. Carapaz, the yellow jersey, is tucked into the main group, just a few metres behind the Slovenian.
60km to go: The breakaway is now less than two minutes ahead of the peloton. One would be forgiven for thinking that the lead pack has no hope of maintaining a lead come the end of this stage.
65km to go: So, just one ascent to go. The thing is, it’s Col du Galibier, one of the most fabled ascents in the history of the Tour. What’s notable, as per William Fotheringham in our stage-by-stage guide, is that it’s unprecedented for the Tour to go over a pass as high as the Galibier this early on. The ascent is generally kept until later in the race, as it was nine years ago. Galibier was meant to be the deciding factor on the penultimate stage in 2015, before a landslide scuppered that.
Five more KOM points for Williams at Col de Montgenèvre!
68km to go: Stevie Williams left it late, with Barguil trying to steal a march on his rivals with an early kick with 300m to go, but the Welshman has such a strong finish for a climber and timed that to perfection. Barguil had no answer, and Madouas came third there.
69km to go: Around 700m to go until the lead group reach the summit. Madouas will be desperate for these five points, but Williams is looking extremely relaxed at the front.
72km to go: Around halfway up the 8.3km ascent to Col de Montgenèvre and the lead group has once again stretched their lead to nearly three minutes.
78km to go: This is what those five points does for Williams’ challenge for the KOM race. To clarify, it is Abrahamsen, not Madouas, that leads the standings.
80km to go: After a quick descent from Sestrières, the leading pack now turn to Col de Montgenèvre, where five further KOM points are on offer. It’s also on the border between France and Italy, we will say goodbye to the latter in this year’s race.
Stevie Williams earns five KOM points at the top of Sestrières
That’s some sprint from Stevie Williams to take some valuable climbing points over Valentin Madouas. Could the Welshman challenge for the polka dot jersey?
90 km to go: Van der Poel is perhaps the only rider in the breakaway that one would think is in GC contention, yet he’s with a group that are largely pure climbers that have waited three days for this stage. Will be interesting to see how aggressive Van der Poel is here, especially with the peloton closing the gap, back to 2min08 secs. That’s over 35 seconds that has been eaten up in the last 10 minutes or so.
92km to go: “I’ve ridden this exact route, albeit the other way and with 1100cc of Yamaha power to assist,” emails Gary Naylor. “As a Brit, it’s impossible to understand the scale of these climbs unless you’ve actually covered them. That they do Sestriere (always Chiapucci’s Col) as an amuse bouche and then the Galibier as a main course just defies belief”.
I came relatively late to elite bike racing in my life, but it never fails to astound me what the physical feats are here. That they have come back, day after day, and knock off 150km at ridiculous speeds, on outrageous inclines, is unfathomable. I once did around 100km at a medium pace, on a route from Lyon to Paris back in 2016, and my legs were like jelly getting off the bike. I barely made it to my bed.
Michael Butler
Hello all.
95km to go: The lead group are hurtling up a 6% incline and have stretched their gap to around 2min45secs. Warren Barguil, part of that group, now has a virtual yellow jersey, currently nine seconds ahead of second-placed Odd Christian Eiking (also in the breakaway) and 16 seconds clear of Remco Evenepoel in third. Vingegaard and Pogacar are fourth and fifth respectively in these virtual standings, around 19 seconds back from Barguil.
97km to go … And with the lead group’s advantage hitting two minutes, here’s Michael.
100km to go … It’s a 17-man escape group. The gap is now out to 1m 11s. To save some typing, here it is:
102km to go … A look at some of the action from these early stages:
106km to go … Now we have a big bunch clear at the front as the pace eases. Mathieu van der Poel is among it, but there are around 20 riders clear. And the pace has subsided: they already have 48 seconds. It’s now 1m 57s to the Van Aert group.
109km to go … And the main pack are back together again. One time gap of note: Wout van Aert is back down the road at around 1m 13s down.
111km to go … Up the valley they go and the front quartet aren’t able to pull out much of a gap. The group comprises Alexey Lutsenko, Christopher Juul-Jensen, Oier Lazkano and Tobias Halland Johannessen, but it doesn’t look like they’ll hold out for long.
114km to go … Another kick off the front and four riders go clear.
115km to go … This epically long first climb to Sestrieres officially clocks in as a category two, with 39.9km at an average gradient of 3.7%.
In the meantime, here’s a piece from Rich Tenorio via our US office that’s well worth your time:
When cycling first took the US by storm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black Americans joined in the new pastime. One Black cyclist, Marshall “Major” Taylor, became a world champion in 1899. Yet American cycling installed a color line in professional racing. Opportunities became so limited that Black competitors had to take them wherever they could find them – including on the vaudeville stage and in Europe. Their story is documented in a new book, Black Cyclists: The Race for Inclusion, by Robert J Turpin, a professor of history at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina.
118km to go … It’s hot, both in terms of pace and the temperature on a glorious day, somewhere in the region of 27C where the riders currently are. It’s currently 18C in Valloire at today’s finish. There are still 29km to go on the current incline …
122km to go … And the breakaway is consumed by the main group.
125km to go … A small breakaway group forms, with Pedersen joined by Frank van den Broek – the star of stage one – as well as Britain’s Fred Wright, Kevin Geniets and Harold Tejada. The gap is minimal to the peloton, mind.
132km to go … It’s been a ferocious opening to the stage as the elevation gradually winds up for the riders, with Mads Pedersen going clear early to take the solitary sprint point for the day.
Some pre-stage imagery from Pinerolo:
And they’re off …
Preamble
Good afternoon and welcome to our live, rolling coverage of stage four of this year’s Tour de France. And it’s going to get spicy.
Michael Butler will be our man in the saddle with you shortly, but in the meantime, we’ll cover the early miles as the riders roll out of Pinerolo for a 140km trek to Valloire. To start you off, here’s William Fotheringham’s rundown from his pre-race stage-by-stage guide:
Gone are the days when the Tour’s opening week was a stultifying succession of sprint stages: this is pure climbing. The first 50km are uphill, but the sting comes at the end; it’s unprecedented for the Tour to go over a pass as high as the Galibier this early on. If the defending champion, Jonas Vingegaard, is short of form we will find out here; the downhill finale will suit Tom Pidcock, arguably the fastest descender in the bunch.
