The Tour in 10: Stage 4, Tour de France 2026

The God's Medicine team is definitely not going loopy this early in the Tour. And we definitely are still giving you the stage recap for Stage 4 and the preview of the first big sprint stage, Stage 5. 

Transcript

Godsmedicinecycling 0:00

Should we clip that and open?

hannah 0:03

That maybe we should clip. Should I keep going? I think I can get a couple more.

Godsmedicinecycling 0:08

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God, how does a person be so talented?

hannah 0:15

Askmads Pedersen.

Godsmedicinecycling 0:19

Hello everybody, and welcome back to God's Medicine Cycling Podcast. I am your host, Lauren, here with my co-host, Hannah, and we're all here for the Tour in 10. Let's get into it, and a reminder, it's just spoilers from here on out

hannah 0:33

Before the stage started, the notable news of the day was Arnaud De Lie abandoning the tour for the Lotto team. He has since confirmed that he's had a stomach infection. Obviously, he was really suffering, so honestly, I'm glad he's going home. Uh, feel better soon, Arnaud. as Lauren said, we are spoilers first, and I'm gonna start spoiling right now as one of the major narrative takeaways from today's stage is Torsten Trænh for Uno X going into the yellow jersey with a significant margin over the rest of the GC contenders. Some other things we saw today that we wanted to mention include Trek's absolutely immaculate teamwork. That was really stunning. Mads Pedersen looking very sharp as well as Biniam Girmay. And Kevin Vauquelin, who had a bit of a rough start the first couple of days of the tour, battled it out in the breakaway today to get himself back into the fight. Stage four, Carcassonne to Foix was a hilly stage with a sprint finish that the breakaway won in exhilarating fashion. Our stage results are Mads Pedersen in first, followed by teammate Quinn Simmons. Then we have Raul Garcia Pierna, Marco Frigo, De Bruyne for Alpecin. Kevin Vauquelin finishes sixth. Sean Quinn for EF Education finishes in seventh. We'll get to him in a few minutes. Torsten Trænh in eighth. Pablo Castrillo for Movistar in ninth, and Matthias Vacek completes the little trek trio in the top 10 of today's results. There are major shakeups in the GC after today. As I mentioned, Torsten Trænh is now in the yellow jersey for Uno X. This is a huge result for them. In second place about 30 seconds back, is Sean Quinn. Then we have Matthias Vacek, Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Ramses De Bruyne for Alpecin is in sixth. He really shot up those rankings. Remco Evenepoel drops into seventh. Isaac Del Toro on eighth. Juan Ayuso in ninth, and Paul Seixas in 10th place. The green jersey also saw some shakeups. There's a lot of GC guys still in this, but Mads Pedersen is now leading the points race with 103 points. The other sprinters who jumped into the top 10 are Biniam Girmay in sixth place on 39 points, and Jasper Phillipsen in ninth place on 30 points. So these guys are all on the board now. For the King of the Mountains, Alex Baudin keeps the jersey with 12 points. Alex Molenaar really contested the KOM today and has 10 points, and Nicolas Pradam has nine. Matthias Vacek moves into first place in the white jersey race ahead of Ramses De Bruyne, who really had a day for himself. Isaac Del Toro drops into third place

Godsmedicinecycling 2:58

Just to update you as well on the time difference, what we're looking at back to Tadej Pogačar is 7:53. So this is a big gap. This is not a sort of a 30-second, two-minute type of deal. Moving on to how we got such a big gap. It all started where all good things start, in the break formation.

hannah 3:18

That's right

Godsmedicinecycling 3:19

early today. We had a very big group of 34 riders going up the road. We're not gonna list them all, but they included Jan Tratnik, Mads Pedersen, Quinn Simmons, Matej Vacek, Sean Quinn, Michael Valgren, Kevin Vauquelin, Michael Matthews, Jasper Philipsen, Torsten Trænes, Bini Girmay, Marco Frigo, and Romain Grégoire. Once this break formed, the peloton just eased off the gas and they let that group go ahead and do all of the battling within each other. There were two KOM contests in this first part of the race and both were won by Caja Rural's Alex Molenaar. I feel like he's kind of doing a little Jonas Abrahamsen moment, get

hannah 3:59

I think so

Godsmedicinecycling 4:00

the points that are maybe not as high in the mountains to grow a bank. And then we had the intermediate sprint. We have 25 green jersey points, and that is clearly why we had those sprinters in the break. We had Biniam Girmay beating Philipsen to the line, and Pedersen finishing in third. Bini is looking sharp. It is early days, but we may need to offer an apology for doubting him in our preview pod. Well done today, Bini. After the sprint, it was none other than Bora rider Jan Tratnik and Little Trek rider Matej Vacek who went ahead off the front. At this point, the break had enough time on the peloton that We already knew there were two guys in contention for taking the yellow jersey, being Torsten Trænes and Sean Quinn. However, it was Alex Kirsch who successfully bridged to Tratnik and Vacek and left the poursuivants to organize themselves, which they did, before the last climb with EF using Georg Steinhauser to take a monster pull and get the gap down to seven seconds by the start of the Category 1 climb

hannah 5:01

Tratnik and Vacek were absorbed into the group with 40Ks to go, and then Michael Valgren went shreddy spaghetti for EF to launch Sean Quinn, who took the front with three kilometers left on the Cat 1 climb. Quinn couldn't get any separation from Train. He needed about 27 seconds. But very impressively, Mads Pedersen really hung in there on this climb as EF was cranking. He got major assists from his teammates Simmons and Vacek. Simmons was policing the front and taking the tempo down at every possible opportunity. He did a great job, and Vacek made sure that Pedersen was on his wheel the entire way up. These guys were really the MVPs of the day in my book. Rolling attacks continued the rest of the way up the climb. Marco Frigo took the KOM points on this one, and the group was greatly reduced once they hit the descent. So the major players for the finale were Pedersen, Quinn Simmons, Vacek, Sean Quinn, Kevin Vauquelin, De Bruyne, Train, Frigo, Castrillo, and Garcia Pierna. Movistar with their duo of Pablo Castrillo and Raul Garcia Pierna were attacking a lot towards the end, but neither rider seemed to really have the legs to get separation, and Trek was handily shutting down every move Kevin Vauquelin tried it at the 11th hour and dive-bombed Mathias Vacek on the inside of the last turn. He did successfully squeeze Vacek out of giving Pedersen a sprint lead out, but it did not matter. Pedersen opened his sprint early and absolutely dusted the field for the stage win

Godsmedicinecycling 6:24

moving on to our stage preview, stage five sees the peloton take on ever so gently rolling terrain over 158.3 kilometers from Lanne-Mezzan to Pau. There is an intermediate sprint which should have an organized lead in at 103.1 km, and only one categorized climb, Côte And only one categorized climb, Cote de Bellics, clocking in at 1K with an 8.8% average gradient appearing at 132.7 kilometers. This is a short, climb that the bunch is likely to get over without anyone losing serious time because it is only a kilometer. And with a flat lead into the finish at Pau, most likely we will see a big sprinter's contest. Although someone enterprising could certainly try to make a break for it on either this or one of the two punchy hills that appear just about from the finish for a late attack. With all to play for in the green jersey race so far, however, and many teams motivated to get that first big sprint stage win, we would expect anybody off the front to be reeled in

hannah 7:28

Absolutely. This is most likely going to be a shorter, faster stage, and as you said, we're probably gonna have the first big bunch sprint of the race. So we'll both see how a lot of the GC guys and their teams choose to handle getting to the finish in a sprint stage, which can often be very chaotic, as well as the major contest for the fast men and some big green jersey points on offer. This stage may see a more classic approach to letting a break go out early in the stage rather than the constant fighting of today and yesterday, as between the sprinters teams and the easier terrain, it will not be difficult to reel in a small group that has a few minutes before the intermediate sprint. We basically are expecting to not see GC action on this stage. UAE and Visma should be happy to hand over pacing duties to the sprint trains as the stage develops. This is especially important because stage six coming up is a mountain stage, a real mountain stage. And unless there's a GC threat trying to go off the front tomorrow, it's probably smarter to keep everybody fresh

Godsmedicinecycling 8:27

But will UnoX be happy? Questions

hannah 8:33

UnoX, UnoX is going to have the best day out tomorrow. They've got a sprint stage. They can just show off the jersey, have a nice time. Maybe Soren Kragh Andersen stage win. What? Who said that?

Godsmedicinecycling 8:44

Maybe Sor- Soren Varenskjold's stage win on top of the yellow would be pretty nuts. Let's talk about our other movers and shakers for this stage. I mean, you have to throw it out there, all the major sprinters. We're talking Olav Kooij, Tim Merlier, Jasper Philipsen, Biniam Girmay, Mads Pedersen. And we haven't seen Merlier come out to play that much because he does not like when things go up, but I think he will contest this stage

hannah 9:07

I agree. I think the same of Coy. We haven't seen those two basically at all. Well, we saw him earlier going into the group photo today, but he looked fine. He just looked like he was not interested in being on a mountain. somebody else we haven't seen, uh, on a team that has not been looking so hot, Bahrain has had a bit of a rough start to the tour. but maybe they'll try to get something done for Phil Bauhaus. Who knows?

Godsmedicinecycling 9:25

I'm gonna put it out there, Filippo Ganna in the break. Okay? I don't know why he would do it, but I'd like to see it

hannah 9:32

you already know who we're gonna say. It's not Ilan Van Wilder this time. It's Michael Matthews. Might he try to get in on the action? Do we just really like him and we're so excited to see him back in the Peloton that we're gonna predict him from every stage? In our defense, he's doing really well. He had a great day out today, actually. Like, he was really strong today

Godsmedicinecycling 9:50

Yeah, he was For anyone else, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I mean, I think we, we might even see a decent breakaway go off the front again today because I don't think anybody is going to get any significant distance given the flatness of this stage. That is all from us today. Thank you so much for tuning into God's Medicine for the Tour in 10. We will be back again tomorrow with our recap of stage five and preview of stage six. As a reminder, you can send us money at any time you like, um, that is very easy to arrange. We would love a cool 10 mil, I think, so we can focus on releasing one podcast a day for one month out of the year, as our sort of service to society. Thank you so much, and we will talk to you tomorrow. Yeah, I think, I think we can all tell how I'm feeling. And it, it's, bl, bl, bl, bl, bl. Who's a madman? Help us.

hannah 10:48

There's a madman. Help us. Save

Godsmedicinecycling 10:50

us. Save us.

hannah 10:50

us.