Tour de France: Mads Pedersen scorches stage 4 sprint with Quinn Simmons closing for Lidl-Trek one-two as yellow jersey changes hands

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) galloped to victory on stage 4 of the Tour de France, easily outpacing the very strong breakaway that survived to the line in Foix, which also delivered Torstein Træen (Uno-X Mobility) into the yellow jersey as the break took several minutes on the bunch.

Pedersen's sprint was untouchable after a long day and control from Lidl-Trek, who had three in the breakaway, and indeed they were rewarded with a 1-2 as Quinn Simmons secured second on the line. Raúl Garcia Pierna (Movistar) took third.

Unlike on stage 3 where UAE Team Emirates-XRG kept the break close in order to launch Tadej Pogačar to the stage win and the yellow jersey, they were happy to let the jersey go on Tuesday, allowing the gap to balloon out and Træen to grab the jersey from the Slovenian.

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He gained more than 12 minutes on the peloton, so sits a good seven minutes ahead of most of the GC favourites, meaning he could well wear yellow for a few days now.

An original breakaway of 34 riders got away early in the stage, which after various attacks and splits eventually turned into 10 in the final 30km. With three riders in the final 10, it was Lidl-Trek who set the agenda in the final run-in to Foix, keeping a pace that was tough to attack and closing down anyone who tried.

Movistar, with two riders, tried again and again, but couldn't break the German team, and lead-out by Mathias Vacek, Pedersen sprinted to the stage win with relative ease.

"For sure, I would say this was a masterpiece in teamwork," Pedersen said. "Maybe not in climbing, I was suffering a lot on the last climb, but with Quinn and Vacek there it was an incredible day and they did incredible on the climb to pace it well for me and make sure that we didn't lose too much time over the top. Then they were just machines from there to the finish line. What a team effort and what a team win today."

As well as thanking his team, Pedersen had a special dedication to Luca Guercilena, the long-term Lidl-Trek manager and founder of the team who is leaving his post after this Tour.

"I had a talk with Luca, our team manager, before the race and he said 'Please win me a stage and please do it early in the race', and he said this would be a good one for me, so I would say this stage is for Luca and all the good years we had together. I'm really grateful for everything he has done for me."

Træen, who previously wore the red leader's jersey at the Vuelta a Espana, now leads the GC by 28 seconds over breakaway companion Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost). Vacek is up to third, and into the white jersey, at 3:50.

The peloton eventually finished at 12:59, which meant Pogačar dropped down to fourth overall, now at 7:53 to Træen, with Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) in fifth on the same time.

A straightforward start to the day

The fourth stage rolled out of Carcassonne for another very hot and very breakaway-friendly day on Tuesday, similar to stage 3, but the peloton would be hoping that UAE Team Emirates-XRG actually let the break survive this time.

Unlike stage 3's drawn out fight for the breakaway, which ultimately lessened their chances of success, stage 4's escape went away much quicker, with a large group of 34 breaking off the front of the bunch and establishing a gap after only just over 10km.

In that group was: Nico Denz, Jan Tratnik (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Mads Pedersen, Mathias Vacek, Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), Sean Quinn, Michael Valgren, Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost), Robert Stannard, Vlad Van Mechelen (Bahrain Victorious), Kévin Vauquelin (Netcompany Ineos), Pascal Eenkhorn, Jasper Stuyven (Soudal-QuickStep), Ramses Debruyne, Edward Planckaert, Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech), Michael Matthews (Jayco AlUla), Torstein Træen (Uno-X Mobility), Biniam Girmay, Marco Frigo (NSN), Pablo Castrillo, Raúl García Pierna, Nelson Oliveira (Movistar), Georg Zimmerman (Lotto Intermarché), Ion Izagirre, Alex Kirsch (Cofidis), Quinten Hermans, Brent Van Moer (Pinarello Q36.5), Romain Grégoire, Ewan Costiou (Groupama-FDJ United), Alexandre Delettre (TotalEnergies), Frank van den Broek (Picnic PostNL), Alex Molenaar and Joel Nicolau (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA).

With several teams having multiple riders in the break, the peloton was happy to let this one go and they gradually built a lead of over three minutes.

Amongst the many riders and teams in the move, they were all there for different reasons. Some were chasing the stage win, but others, namely the sprinters like Pedersen, Philipsen and Girmay, were more there with an eye on the intermediate sprint than outright victory, which meant there were a lot of tactics and approaches at play, but mainly the group all worked together.

Behind, the peloton settled quite quickly, content to have an easier day in the still very high temperatures, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG put Nils Politt to work to set the pace, but let the break have a gap of nearly four minutes for all of the first 50km of racing.

Climbs start to shake up the break

On the first climb, the Col des Bedos, former polka dot jersey Molenaar claimed the one point available to move a little closer to classification leader Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost) who was surprisingly not in the break, though three of his teammates were. Molenaar grabbed maximum points on the next climb, the Col du Paradis, though Steinhauser pushed him for it and swept up a few points in defense of Baudin's jersey.

Over the climb, the peloton briefly ate into the break's lead, perhaps just from some overzealous riding from Politt, but as the road went back down and onto the flat the break breathed a sigh of relief as the gap went back up over five minutes.

At the intermediate sprint, as expected it was Lidl-Trek and Pedersen who led it out, but it was Girmay who had the speed to win the dash to the line, ahead of Philipsen and Pedersen.

With their aims achieved, Philipsen and Girmay were the first riders to then drop out of the break as the attention turned back to the climbs. With 83km to go, on the 10.9km Col de Coudons, Tratnik and Vacek launched a move together, going away solo from the rest of the break. Vacek was only 8:56 down on GC and by now seven minutes ahead of the peloton, but two riders behind were even closer – Quinn at 5:34 and Træen at 5:06, so it became very interesting to see what UAE would do in regards to giving up or defending the yellow jersey.

Despite the combined strength of Vacek and Tratnik, they didn't have an enormous gap over the remainder of the break, and with still 75km to go there was plenty of interest in bridging across, which Alex Kirsch did to make it three in the lead with 66km to go. They were stronger as a three, and built a lead of a minute, but with so many motivated riders still in the chase, they were not alone in the lead for long.

Yellow advantage for the escapees

On the base of the Col de Montségur, Vacek and Tratnik distanced Kirsch, and then with 40km to go they were caught themselves by the chasers, who still numbered more than 30 at that point. As the climb ramped up, so did the attacks, pushed on largely by EF.

In the lead over the top of the climb were Træen, Frigo, Castrillo, Garcia Pierna and Debruyne, joined by five more riders on the descent, Pedersen, Vacek, Simmons, Quinn and Vauquelin. They had a lead of 10 minutes over the peloton with 30km to go – making it clear that a new rider would be in yellow at the end of the day.

Going into the finale, Træen could be pretty sure he would be going into yellow as long as he finished within 30 seconds of Quinn, and so the tactical battle became about who would take the day's other prize: the stage win. With strength in numbers, a lot of the work fell to Lidl-Trek, who kept a high pace to deter other attacks.

The pace was really rapid in the finale with a real fight on for the stage win, with everyone knowing that if they went with Pedersen to the line, they likely couldn't beat him in a sprint, but equally struggling to attack against the page set by his team.

The Movistar duo of García Pierna and Castrillo tried repeatedly in the final 9km, but kept being shut down by Vacek, Simmons and Frigo. Going into the final kilometres, it was clear that it was going to be a sprint to the line, and Vacek deftly led out Pedersen to deliver him to the victory, with Simmons' completing the 1-2 to put the cherry on top of the cake for Lidl-Trek.

The GC picture

As well as Træen's vault up the standings, the other most notable beneficiary of the breakaway was Kévin Vauquelin (Netcompany Ineos), who started the day 21:45 down on Pogačar and Vingegaard but ended it just over eight minutes down on them, potentially breathing some life back into his GC hopes.

The other GC favourites all finished together, so there is no change in their standings relative to each other, though they have all dropped down the standings. As for what will happen with the yellow jersey in the coming days, Træen really only has one rival in Quinn, who could grab the lead with an attack, but otherwise the Norwegian could enjoy at least a couple of days in yellow with his healthy eight-minute lead over most of the serious GC contenders.

Results

General classification after stage 4

Points Classification

Mountains classification

Youth classification

Teams classification