Tadej Pogacar won Stage 4 of the Tour de France to reclaim the yellow jersey as he opened up a lead of more than half a minute on defending champion Jonas Vingegaard and his other chief rivals.
Pogacar attacked from a select group inside the final kilometre of the mighty Galibier climb before racing clear down the twisty descent to the finish in Valloire as the race crossed into France after three days on Italian soil.
Richard Carapaz cracked with six kilometres of the Galibier climb still to go to lose his grip on yellow after only one day, finishing some five minutes back.
The Ecuadorian was among a string of high-profile victims of a blistering pace on the climb set by Pogacar’s UAE Emirates teammates, who whittled the pack down to just a handful of contenders before the Slovenian, who bided his time to attack wary of a powerful headwind, made his move.
Vingegaard was quick to respond, but a gap of few bike lengths had opened up by the time Pogacar claimed the bulk of the bonus seconds on offer at the summit, with Remco Evenepoel third at the top before Carlos Rodriguez and Primoz Roglic.
That trio would catch Vingegaard on a descent that included several corners left wet by snow melt, but Pogacar was stretching his lead in front as he came home to claim his 12th career Tour stage win.
“I’m super happy,” Pogacar said. “This was more or less the plan and we executed it really well. It was like a dream stage, to finish solo is incredible.
“I wanted to hit it hard today. I know this stage really well. I’ve been training here for a lot of weeks already and it was like a home stage passing through Sestriere.
“It was nice to get the bonus seconds on top. I was confident at the start, I had good legs and I had to try.”
Evenepoel crossed the line second to pick up bonus time, with Pogacar’s teammate Juan Ayuso sprinting for third to deny Roglic any extra seconds, and Vingegaard crossing the line another two seconds back in fifth.
Pogacar now leads overall by 45 seconds from Evenepoel, with Vingegaard third, 50 seconds down. Roglic sits fifth with a 74-second deficit, two seconds ahead of Rodriguez in sixth.
Vingegaard had been able to follow Pogacar’s attack on the San Luca on Sunday, but here there was enough of a gap for Pogacar to smell blood.
However, Vingegaard came into this Tour undercooked after his horror crash in the Basque Country in April and will still believe he can come good later in the race as long as he keeps Pogacar within reach.
The finale to the 140km stage from Pinerolo, which packed in more than 3,600 metres of climbing, brought back memories of Tom Pidcock’s stunning descent down the Galibier on his way to winning on the Alpe d’Huez in 2022.
But any hopes of a repeat for the Olympic mountain bike champion were dashed as he was dropped as the gradients ramped up in the final seven kilometres of this Alpine beast, which tops out above 2,600 metres.
With Adam Yates pressing on the pedals in service of Pogacar, his twin brother Simon was also dropped early on, with the Jayco-Alula leader shipping four minutes as attention will turn to stage-hunting.
Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal also faded well before the summit to leave Rodriguez as the sole carrier of the Ineos Grenadiers’ general classification hopes.
