2020 Tour de France Stage 4 Results & Recap
Stage 4 of the 2020 Tour de France is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Roglic has arrived at the Tour
Slovenian Primoz Roglic proved he is back in action as the one to beat at the Tour de France after winning stage 4's mountaintop finish at Orcières-Merlette today. Tadej Pogacar and Guillaume Martin rounded out the podium.
"It was quite a fast day and quite a hard stage," Roglic said after the stage. "Again, the guys did a good job for me. I was in a good position the entire time. I had a nice speed for the finish. I'm very happy. I'm not in the yellow jersey, but that's the news I have to accept. We stayed safe, and the win makes it an even better day. We have to continue like that. It's nice to be back after the crash at the Dauphiné, but I already proved on stage 2 that I was ready for the Tour."
Race leader Julian Alaphilippe, finished in fifth, and kept yellow jersey for yet another day. The Frenchman remains four seconds ahead of Adam Yates (Mitchelton Scott). Roglic shot up to third, seven seconds in arrears.
"I had the double goal to retain the yellow jersey and to win the stage," Alaphilippe said. "It would have been special to win a second stage. I have no regret because the team perfectly executed the plan, I gave it all and I've been beaten by stronger than me. Moreover, I'm happy with my shape even though it's hard to compare with last year. We won't be able to keep that rhythm for three weeks. Soon it won't be up to us to control the race."
Second on the day, Pogacar moves to the top of the best young rider classification.
"It's really nice to be with the best on the Tour de France," Pogacar said. "The team did a great job to keep me safe. Roglic was really strong today. Had I sprinted right from his wheel, maybe I could have matched him. But you never know. I'm happy for him. And it's good to be second behind Roglic. I'm satisfied. The White jersey is something I want to achieve. But the Tour de France is still long, there is a lot of road to cover until we reach Paris."
From the gun, six riders shot out of the peloton: Nils Politt and Krists Neilands (Israel Start-Up Nation), Mathieu Burgaudeau (Total Direct Energie), Alexis Vuillermoz (AG2R-La Mondiale), Tiesj Benoot (Sunweb) and Quentin Pacher (B&B Hotels-Vital Concept) and quickly established a maximum of four minutes.
After Benoot took a corner wide and crashed with 24km to go, he returned to the peloton, seemingly unscathed, save for bruises and scrapes.
The break of six continued on until just inside 20km to go, when Neilands took off on the côte de St-Léger-les-Mélèzes. With the peloton looming, the rest of the breakaway returned to the bunch to prepare for the final climb. The Latvian gained a 35 second lead, but was also brought back right before the final Cat. 1 climb.
Jumbo Visma played no games on the 10.6km climb. Wout van Aert and Sepp Kuss did a fantastic job setting up Roglic for the final kilometres. \n
Get our full coverage of the Tour de France and every race we cover with our mobile app! The apps have over 100 additional exclusive features, including our award-winning Time Machine feature that lets you pause/rewind/replay the entire app to sync with delayed race video, integrated Fantasy Cycling, push notifications, an integrated news feed, live GPS tracking, world-class commentary, and our animated interactive maps and profiles.
