12:10 PM
138.3km to go
We have our first attacker – Brent Van Moer of Lotto Soudal. The peloton splits a little but in the end it’s Van Moer and a rider from Cofidis – Pierre-Luc Périchon – at the front on their own.
12:07 PM
140.6km to go
Alpecin-Fenix at the front now that the pace has picked up and the race has started after 10km or neutralised riding. Not sure that protest will have had much of an effect, really.
No breakaway yet.
12:00 PM
144km to go
Pretty much a relative “go-slow” in the peloton at the moment, however. No actual racing.
11:54 AM
Greipel was one of the most vocal critics yesterday
The “protest” lasted seconds, really. Barely a minute, before Alaphilippe got things going again. Curious indeed.
11:49 AM
We’re approaching kilometre 0
Christian Prudhomme waves his yellow flag at the front to get things going… but the riders continue… and whilst not at a rapid pace, it doesn’t look like the crawl that was talked about earlier.
What’s happening here? Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step) is at the front in his green jersey, and Andre Greipel (Israel Start-Up Nation) approaches to have a word with him – and a quite animated one at that – and a little while later they actually do stop. Not sure what the situation was but it was far from a united peloton, there.
11:36 AM
Fair to say that Roglic is fairly taped up after yesterday’s crash
11:35 AM
Can Alpecin-Fenix make it three out of four today?
After Van der Poel’s victory on stage two and Tim Merlier’s on stage three.
Seems that the rider protest will see the riders stop at kilometre zero, ride for a bit at an incredibly slow speed (5-10km/h) and then resume racing. Will be interesting to see how and if that pans out.
11:24 AM
A reminder of the points, mountains and young rider classifications ahead of stage four
11:03 AM
MvdP gets to ride this again today
10:28 AM
What about this rider protest, then?
10:12 AM
Yesterday’s stage three highlights
If you can call them that, that is.
09:57 AM
Today’s stage profile
No categorised climbs today, so Ide Schelling (Bora–Hansgrohe) will retain the King of the Mountains polka dot jersey as long as he finishes. One intermediate sprint which comes at Vitre, around 114km into the 150km-long stage.
08:37 AM
Good morning
And welcome to our liveblog for stage four of 2021’s Tour de France, starting in Redon and finishing in Fougères after 150.4km – with just over 1,300 metres of climbing. So, a pretty flat stage that should suit the sprinters, of which Mark Cavendish is one this year. He actually won in Fougères six years ago. Chances of history repeating? It would be nice, would it not? Or at the very least a nice story.
Going by the chaos and carnage over the opening few days, however, I think what everyone will be wanting is a calm, quiet and crash-free stage. Stage three was especially troubling and there were talks of a protest by the riders after numerous casualties throughout the day, but especially in the final 10km or so.
Here’s Tom Cary with a brief recap from his stage three report from Monday:
Britain’s Geraint Thomas was among a host of big names to hit the deck, although the Welshman – who managed to get back on his bike and finish after the race doctor popped his dislocated shoulder back in – could hardly blame the parcours for his crash. Thomas fell just 30km into the stage at a relatively quiet moment in proceedings.
A super-fast, technical finish, one which had been flagged up by riders beforehand as potentially dangerous, saw two big crashes inside the final 10km as the roads got narrower, the pace got higher, and the stress levels in the peloton went through the roof. With the sprint teams wanting to deliver their sprinters to the finish, and the general classification teams trying to keep their leaders towards the front, at least until the 3km point at which GC times are taken, there were all the necessary ingredients for chaos and that was what we got.
Race favourite Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma), who has looked in fine fettle in the first two days, was taken down inside the last 10km. He ended up losing over a minute in the general classification and finished the day with serious road rash and a bruised coccyx.
At least Roglic is still in the fight. Jack Haig, the Australian who was leading for Bahrain-Victorious, came down hard on a fast downhill section with 3.9km remaining and stayed down. His race is over. With each crash causing the race to bottleneck, there were chaotic scenes on the run-in. Tadej Pogacar, last year’s winner, was involved in the third crash. He ended up coming home 29 seconds behind stage winner Tim Merlier, along with Thomas – who did brilliantly in the end to lose only that much time – and most of his GC rivals.
As it was, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) keeps the yellow jersey after three stages, with the incidents in the past few days throwing the general classification wide open, with many of the contenders losing time as well as skin.
Here’s how the general classification stands at the start of stage four.