Pedersen Sprints to a Lidl-Trek One-Two in Foix as Træen Seizes Yellow and the Peloton Gives Away Thirteen Minutes
Mads Pedersen won stage 4 of the Tour de France in Foix, sprinting clear of a ten-man breakaway after a masterclass in numbers and control from Lidl-Trek. Quinn Simmons made it a one-two for the American squad, with Movistar's Raúl García Pierna taking third after a punishing 181.9km run from Carcassonne through Cathar country and the Ariège. It was the former world champion's third career Tour stage win and, remarkably, his first victory of the 2026 season.
The bigger story came behind. Torstein Træen finished safely in the decisive front group and inherited the yellow jersey, taking the race lead from Tadej Pogačar after the main peloton rolled in around thirteen minutes down. It is a historic moment for Uno-X Mobility — the Norwegian team's first-ever Tour de France race lead — and for Træen himself, who adds yellow to the four days he spent in the red jersey at last year's Vuelta a España.
The day had been marked as the breakaway's first real chance, and the escape that formed was enormous — more than 30 riders, mixing sprinters chasing points with climbers and GC outsiders hunting time. Biniam Girmay narrowly took the intermediate sprint at Quillan, but the decisive moment was UAE Team Emirates-XRG's inaction: Nils Politt and Florian Vermeersch rode a controlled tempo rather than a chase, and once the gap passed four minutes it never stopped growing. Starting the day 5:06 down, Træen became the virtual leader long before the finale.
The category 2 Col de Montségur — 6.9km at 6.1% cresting around 40km out — broke the move apart. EF Education-EasyPost drove the pace through Michael Valgren to set up Sean Quinn's own yellow-jersey ambitions, while Movistar's Pablo Castrillo and García Pierna repeatedly stretched the group. Pedersen suffered near the 11% ramps at the summit, but Simmons and Mathias Vacek paced him back on the descent, and a front group of ten formed for the run to Foix.
From there Lidl-Trek simply had too much. Every Movistar attack was closed by Simmons or Vacek; Kévin Vauquelin's late dig in the final corner came to nothing. Pedersen opened his sprint from the front and won by several bike lengths, dedicating the victory to departing team boss Luca Guercilena. The stage haul also carried him into the green jersey with a lead of 48 points, while Vacek took over the white jersey of best young rider and Lidl-Trek moved top of the team classification.
Træen now leads Quinn by 28 seconds, with Vacek third at 3:50 and Pogačar down at 7:53 — a buffer that could keep the Norwegian in yellow deep into the second week. For Pogačar and UAE, surrendering the jersey was a calculated release of pressure rather than a defeat: what matters is that Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel gained nothing on the road, and the favourites' private war resets behind the new leader.
After the GC fireworks of Barcelona and Les Angles, Foix delivered the first great breakaway heist of this Tour — one afternoon that changed the yellow, green and white jerseys and the team classification in a single stroke. The sprinters get their first clear chance into Pau on Wednesday before the race returns to the high mountains at Gavarnie-Gèdre.
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