Tadej Pogacar's 100th win as a professional rider was a perfect synecdoche of the other 99, partially in how he won it and partially because of who finished second and third on the day. In an interview just after crossing the line, he characterized Tuesday's Stage 4 of the 2025 Tour de France as "pure racing," a correct assessment and unintentional self-endorsement. The race is on, and the purest racer of his generation has struck first.
Stage 4 was a roiling affair, with five small categorized climbs and several more uncategorized hills in the finale. The terrain alone would have made it difficult for anyone to stay in contact with the peloton without riding hard, and the character of that peloton made the task extra onerous. Once poor woebegone Lenny Martinez was scooped up with around 20 kilometers left in the race, Alpecin, then Visma, then UAE each took turns drilling it at the front in order to shear as many hangers-on from the group as possible. It worked, and once UAE's Jhonatan Narvaez led the group onto the Rampe Saint-Hilaire at a furious pace, everyone in the peloton and the world knew what was coming. Who needs stagecraft when you have strength? Narvaez gave way to Joao Almeida, who cranked up the pace until the steepest part of the ramp, when Pogacar took off flying.
With five gently rolling kilometers between the top of the climb and the finish, it's worth asking what the intention of the move was. Pogacar was targeting Mathieu van der Poel and Jonas Vingegaard, for different reasons, with the same attack. The climb is neither hard enough nor the run-in short enough for Pogacar to have reasonably expected to take serious time on Vingegaard, who still had his bodyguard Matteo Jorgenson with him to collaborate with anyone else willing to chase. But there is still a utility in testing Vingegaard, forcing him to race with you, and establishing a psychological edge this early in the race; Pogacar did basically the same attack last year on the San Luca on Stage 2.
As for van der Poel, he'd just beaten Pogacar in a similar finish two days earlier, and with his co-leader Jasper Philipsen having just crashed out in the green jersey, he was free to go hard for more stage wins. Pogacar is a fine sprinter who has beaten van der Poel before, though if you are a better climber than a guy who has a longer record of winning sprints, it's a good idea to soften up his legs.
And so Pogacar escaped, cracking Vingegaard right near the top of the climb. The gouge was not so severe that it was worth rivening any further, and after Vingegaard made it clear that he was not going to help Pogacar get to the line, the race came back together. In a fascinating mini-skirmish between top domestiques, Jorgenson let one fly but Almeida grabbed the reins ahead of the sprint.
The group that contested the finish was small and elite, and therefore its composition feels extremely meaningful. Young Scottish hotshot Oscar Onley managed to hang on in the front group, and—in what counts as the first positive development for the French at this year's Tour—so did Romain Gregoire. Remco Evenepoel and Mattias Skjelmose came in three seconds later, and Red Bull teammates Primoz Roglic and Florian Lipowitz came in well after that.
As for the sprint itself, van der Poel broke first, only for Pogacar to come around his left and win by a stunning margin. Van der Poel barely held off Vingegaard for second. The race was exactly what Tour organizers were hoping for: a classics-style romp with a breathtaking finish despite, or perhaps because of, terrain that one would think of as selective in a Grand Tour. It obviously was selective, and there was a selection, though only because of how it was raced.
The way this race shook out has me looking forward to the Mur de Bretagne stage on Friday, and also the first real mountain stage on Monday. The latter, Stage 10, features seven climbs, none above Cat. 2. A hard day, yes, but not the sort that would scream "big general classification day" in another era. But we're not in another era. We are lucky enough to see Visma and UAE racing the hell out of each other, which means big things can happen every day at the Tour.
