Tadej Pogacar explodes Tour de France with victory on stage 4 after dropping Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel at Col du Galibier

UAE Team Emirates fully committed to attacking stage 4 of the Tour de France, but it was to a lot of avail. Tadej Pogacar attacked the mythical Tour mountain to drop Jonas Vingegaard and took his first win of the race, jumping back to the yellow jersey and gaining significant time on his rivals.

The start of the fourth stage was not overly hard but the pace was very high right from the start with plenty riders trying to make it into the breakaway. This briefly led the peloton to be split, with Primoz Roglic being caught out, but this was then resolved by BORA. Not all riders returned however.

17 riders formed the day's breakaway including Mathieu van der Poel, Alexey Lutsenko, Stephen Williams, Oier Lazkano and Warren Barguil. A group that remained cohesive throughout the afternoon, but always with a small gap as UAE Team Emirates pushed the pace from early on the keep the gap stable and Visma under pressure.

It wasn't until Lazkano attacked with 32 kilometers to go that there were serious gaps in the front group, with the Spaniard going solo off the front but not being able to extend his gap to the peloton where UAE used Tim Wellens, Marc Soler and Juan Ayuso to set up a tough pace in the first pace of the climb to the Col du Galibier.

In the toughest final 8 kilometers Adam Yates, Juan Ayuso and João Almeida took turns in the head of the group, decimating it until it was down to less than 10 riders. Simon Yates and race leader Richard Carapaz were dropped early on when the pressure was on.

Yates was also dropped, and the UAE duo kept pacing the group until 900 meters to go to the summit, where in the steepest section Tadej Pogacar put on an attack, initially followed by Jonas Vingegaard, but not all the way to the summit. Vingegaard was around 5 second behind at the summit, with Remco Evenepoel around 10. Ayuso, Almeida, Carlos Rodríguez, Mikel Landa and Primoz Roglic had lost around 30.

But in the descent these gaps would not close, but instead extend. Evenepoel specially could not handle the very technical and fast descent at the same speed as the new race leader; whilst Rodríguez definitely flew down the mountain, with Roglic and Ayuso following him all the way into catching Vingegaard whilst Evenepoel struggling.

Pogacar took a glorious win in Valloire and has once again raced into the yellow jersey, winning his first race since the Giro d'Italia. Losing 35 seconds, Remco Evenepoel sprinted to second place with Juan Ayuso coming home third; and Jonas Vingegaard losing a few seconds in the final meters.

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