When a sport is dominated by powerhouses, the underdog storyline becomes that much sweeter. On Stage 4’s hilly path from Carcassonne to Foix, the cycling world saw a changeup.
After multiple attacks were pulled in, a 34-man breakaway finally escaped. If you do not follow cycling, that is an absolute train as far as breakaways go. This group contained a multitude world-class riders including the likes of the Americans Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek and Sean Quinn of EF Education-EasyPost, Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek, two former green jersey winners in Jasper Philipsen from Alpecin-Premier Tech, and Biniam Girmay of NSN, the legendary Michael Matthews of Jayco AlUla, and Kévin Vauquelin of Netcompany Ineos.
The intermediate sprint put Girmay ahead of Philipson by 25 minutes in the green jersey category. Around that same time, at close to 100km, the peloton began to cool its pace, as it became abundantly clear that they would not be catching this breakaway.
As the cycling world began to evaluate who was in this breakaway and the possible grand champion implications, a couple names appeared to be in the heat of battle to become the new overall leader of Le Tour. One stood above the rest: Torstein Træen of Uno-X Mobility. He had quietly taken the overall lead in an unprecedent coupe.
The American Sean Quinn knew he was under 30 seconds behind Træen to lead the entire race, and began to push the breakaway to his advantage. Even at one point secretly asking the other American in the group, Quinn Simmons for an assist, to which Simmons replied that he had another job to accomplish. In the end, the constant attacks did successfully rip the breakaway in two.
After failing to pull away, the lead pack remained together around the final corner. In cycling, measurements are everything. You can successfully pick who is stronger than who in any given sprint. In that final turn, there was never a doubt that the mighty Mads Pedersen would not win as he dusted the field while his teammate Quinn Simmons celebrated second after his mission was successful.
The largest story of the day remained the Norwegian Torstein Træen of Uno-X Mobility stealing the Maillot Jaune from Pogacar, as the peloton finished the race 13 minutes after the breakaway. With that large of a gap, Træen, who may never have truthfully thought he would wear the sacred yellow jersey, will most likely wear this for the next several days.
With Pogacar citing his out of character day to a horrible headache while enduring the 100 degree weather, it begs the question, did Superman have a bad day, or did this weather just unlock his kryptonite ?
