Tour de France 2026: stage four updates as riders face extreme heat – live
Key events
Doyen of cycling journalism William Fotheringham reckons this could be a stage for veteran campaigners Michal Kwiatkowski or Magnus Cort. You can read his team-by-team guide here:
Yorkshire’s Tom Pidcock on the temperatures yesterday: “I don’t think I’ve done such a hard race in such heat before, it was ridiculous. Like a warzone.”
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The stage rolls out of Carcassonne in five minutes’ time. With its cobbled streets and crenellations which could have been drawn by a child, the fairytale fortified French city is unsurprisingly popular with tourists.
I’ve fond memories of it too: I watched England muller Panama 6-1 in the 2018 World Cup in a bar there. Jesse Lingard’s last goal for England, maybe?
Pogacar and Vingegaard may be on the exact same time overall, but the Slovenian struck an early psychological blow yesterday. UAE Team Emirates-XRG seized the race by the scruff of the neck when there was no real need to jump into action.
The distance he put into his rivals in a 300-metre sprint was very impressive. He looks imperious, ominous before the tougher mountain stages.
As Jeremy Whittle noted in his report, Pogacar’s 22nd Tour stage win fuelled talk of him closing further on Mark Cavendish’s win record of 35 but the Slovene batted away the suggestion. “It’s still far away,” he said.
“Maybe today was my last victory ever. I prefer to stay in the moment and enjoy this victory. I don’t want to think about Mark’s record. Just go with the flow.”
No big names have fallen out of contention yet, but an outsider under-performing yesterday was spellcheck-upsetting Cian Uijtdebroeks. The Movistar captain finished a minute behind Pogacar and also suffered cramps in the race-opening TTT.
The debutant, touted as a possible grand tour star a few years ago, is already 3min 24secs down on the sport’s Slovenian slayer. Ouch.
Breakfast news: we are also in south-west France, the part where they call a pain au chocolat a chocolatine. There are even bits of the nation, way out east, which call the delicious pastry a petit pain au chocolat.
A minefield for any suspecting tourist blithely walking into the local boulangerie.
Preamble
Through Cathar and cassoulet country we go for the 2026 Tour de France’s first fully French stage. It covers a lumpy 181.9km from splendorous Carcassonne to Foix over four categorised climbs.
There is not quite as much climbing on the menu as yesterday, but it will be even hotter, with temperatures expected to be reaching 40 degrees Celsius. Ah, the sweaty reality of a modern Tour taking place in July during the climate crisis.
Riders will be getting through water bottles into double figures and using ice socks down the back of their necks. Stage three winner and new race leader, Tadej Pogačar, has done plenty of heat training, but believes racing in the heat is “dangerous” if you don’t keep your body temperature down.
“It’s a logistic nightmare when it’s hot like today,” Pogačar said yesterday. “As a team, we really start to put a lot of effort into this … we have to bring so much water and ice to the riders. Three guys go back to the car to bring bottles and ice to keep cooling yourself.”
The sport’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has tweaked rules, authorising the use of feed bags in zones initially defined for the provision of bottles only on categorised climbs ie. racers can also carry water bottles in their musettes. Every little helps.
After three stages putting Tour de France contenders to the fore, this should be one for the breakaways. Okay, I said the same 24 hours ago and UAE Team Emirates-XRG proved me wrong, but I’m even more adamant today.
The Col de Montségur, topped 35km from the finish, will be a likely launchpad for stage-winning attacks.
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Contenders, then. A day like this will pique the interest of a range of riders: British champion Fred Wright (Pinarello-Q36.5) has already noted his interest to media. This medium-mountain day will also suit Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor) and Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), perhaps a quick, resilient sprinter who can climb well like Michael Matthews (Jayco Alula) or Alex Aranburu (Cofidis). And then there is always awe-inspiring Monument man Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech?)…
Got Pogi fatigue yet? Enjoying Channel 5’s highlights coverage in the UK? Send over your Tour thoughts, predictions, quips, questions and tangents to me here or on Bluesky.
