Favorites stage 4 Tour de France 2024 | Gala performance on the Galibier, who's in?

After three days of Italy they reached one on day four France. The riders can look back on a tough, exhausting weekend in the Boot, where high temperatures made it demanding days. Add to that the method of racing and the distances (three times over two hundred kilometers) and you're talking about a very tough start. And given the profile of stage four, the riders are not off the hook yet. 

Indeed, we start in Pinerolo, in the province of Turin. This time not for two hundred kilometers, but "only" 138 kilometers. The A.S.O. is once again showing that it wants to move away from the traditional principles of a Tour de France: the times when we could first sprint five or six times and then reach the Alps are over;

From the start, the road actually goes straight uphill, officially still uncategorized. After ten kilometers they then begin the forty (!) kilometer climb towards Sestrieres, whose normally relatively easy start the organization has now made a little more difficult by laying an intermediate sprint in Castel del Bosco after eight kilometers of climbing (and nineteen in total).

If, say, Mads Pedersen wants to get the full marks here, his good climbing teammates will have to make it difficult for Jasper Philipsen and co. Not to mention Fabio Jakobsen and Mark Cavendish, who showed in the first days that they have to choose their own pace early.

Towards Sestrieres we reach an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, but it is mainly a runner where the leading group will be formed and sprint for the first real mountain points. After a ten kilometer descent, the Col de Montgenevere, the border between Italy and France, immediately follows. It is 8.3 kilometers long at an average gradient of 5.9 percent and has a particularly steep second kilometer, but is otherwise doable.

We then head into the valley toward Briancon, to begin the Lauteret/Galibier. A name like a bell of course, with its profile of 23.1 kilometers of climbing at 5.1 percent to a whopping 2642 meters altitude. Then again, the center of gravity in terms of gradient is overwhelmingly in the second section, when the riders are now riding at altitude.

We are not there yet at the top of this Galibier, as the finish line is nineteen kilometers later in Valloire. The first part of this descent still contains quite a few curves, but all in all many riders have already ridden the Galibier several times. In the last kilometer it flattens out a bit, after which the riders - who still have to pay attention in the technical final kilometer - have reached the finish of this peppered mountain stage;

Climbs
50.4 km: SESTRIÈRES (39.9 km at 3.7%)
71.1 km: COL DE MONTGENÈVRE (8.3 km at 5.9%)
120.7 km: COL DU GALIBIER (23.0 at 5.1%)

Times
Start: 1:15 p.m.
Finish: around 5:20 p.m.

There was brief talk last month that the Galibier might be scrapped due to snow, but in the run-up to the Tour, those claims also disappeared like snow in the sun. Tuesday it will be 11 degrees Celsius on top of the col, while temperatures in Valloire are already heading toward 20 degrees Celsius. The wind is mostly against in the finale.

Everyone - riders, team managers, analysts and so on - was talking in advance of this Tour de France about the damage UAE-Team Emirates and Tadej Pogacar would want to do in the first few days. During the opening weekend in Italy, this coup surprisingly failed to materialize, noting that the Emirates team as a whole did not seem quite on point.

Adam Yates did do a good lead on Sunday - as did Tim Wellens on Saturday - but Marc Soler, Pavel Sivakov, Joao Almeida and Juan Ayuso do not seem to be at their best yet. Possibly they want to keep the last two in the classification for longer and thus opted for a somewhat defensive tactic, although Pogacar did of course attack on Sunday.

One man was swiftly on the wheel: Jonas Vingegaard, Danish Dynamite of Visma | Lease a Bike. A nice touch after the injuries he had to deal with, and then the punchy ride in and around Bologna wasn't even really his area. That's just where we'll get to this Tuesday: the high Alps, where he'll feel right at home.

Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) joined later on Sunday, also showing that they are in good shape. Behind them, a group of 20 riders clumped together, so they are not yet out of contention either. Primoz Roglic, seen as one of the big contenders on behalf of BORA-hansgrohe, will be looking for revenge;

The first name that springs to mind is Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers), but teammates Egan Bernal and Carlos Rodriguez as well as Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) and Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) also have good downhill skills;

However, everything falls and steels with the tactical choices of the teams of the two top favorites, who may also choose to send people forward. At UAE-Team Emirates they can do so with the aforementioned names like Yates, Almeida and Ayuso, Visma | Lease a Bike also has Matteo Jorgenson high up in the standings. Roglic (Vlasov and Hindley) and Evenepoel (Landa) also have shadow leaders. Other good climbers who are high on their team's behalf alone will have more to choose from.

We shouldn't discount the early breakaway in advance either, as it also had its share on day one and two. Someone like Romain Bardet probably won't get more freedom right away, but perhaps some men who are a bit farther away or don't pose a threat will: puncher Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny), for example, or guys like Ben Healy, Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost), Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) andKévin Vauquelin (Arkéa - B&B Hotels).

Top favorites:Tadej Pogacar (UAE-Team Emirates) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike)
Outsiders: Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step), Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers) and Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious)
Long shots: Primoz Roglic (BORA-hansgrohe), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Carlos Rodriguez (INEOS Grenadiers), Adam Yates (UAE-Team Emirates), Matteo Jorgenson (Visma | Lease a Bike), Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost), Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) and Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa - B&B Hotels)