Tour de France 2025 Stage 4 LIVE - Tadej Pogacar denies Mathieu van der Poel and Jonas Vingegaard with barnstorming 100th career win in Rouen

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) brought up his century of professional wins in style by outsprinting yellow jersey Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) in a nail-biting finale to Stage 4 of the Tour de France in Rouen.

After an expert lead-out by his Portuguese team-mate Joao Almeida on the final ramp to the line, Pogacar put on the burners on the home straight to surge past Dutchman Van der Poel and take the seventeenth Tour stage win of his career.

By digging deep to take second place ahead of Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), Van der Poel retained the yellow jersey by the narrowest of margins ahead of Wednesday’s all-important individual time trial in Caen, for which Vingegaard will be among the favourites.

Vingegaard was the only rider capable of matching Pogacar on the final categorised climb of the day, the super-steep Rampe Saint-Hilaire – the fifth of a series of spicy climbs to pepper the final hour of racing in the undulating 175km schlep through Normandy.

The two riders sat up and were caught by a select chase group inside the final four kilometres before both Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) put in opportunistic attacks ahead of the final rise to the line.

But Pogacar kept his cool and timed his sprint to perfection – emerging from the back wheel of the tiring Van der Poel on the home straight to stamp his authority on the 112th edition of the Tour.

Despite what we initially thought, Tadej Pogacar did not take the yellow jersey with that 100th career win. Van der Poel keeps the fabled jersey despite the two riders being tied on time.

1 Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck)
2. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) "
3. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) +08
4. Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) +19
5. Kevin Vauquelin (Arkea-B&B Hotels) +26
6. Enric Mas (Movistar) +48
7. Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) +55
8. Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) "
9. Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) +58
10. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) +1:02

Primoz Roglic is 13th at 1:27 while his Red Bull team-mate Florian Lipowitz drops to 19th at 1:49.

"I think today I hope everyone was on the limit. I tried an attack on the last climb. Jonas followed me and everything came back together. Joao [Almeida] then did an amazing job to lead me out at the end – and I’m super happy and proud of the team today. To win at the Tour is incredible, in this jersey even more, and to have a hundred victories is amazing. With so many good riders in such a final you’re always a bit on the edge and nervous about what will happen, In the end you have this adrenaline with this pure racing, and I enjoy it. We will see tomorrow [with the time trial], which is the real test."

Here's how the swashbuckling Slovenian brought up his century...

1. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)
2. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck)
3. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike)
4. Oscar Onley (Team Picnic PostNL)
5. Romain Gregoire (Groupama-FDJ)
6. Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)
7. Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) +03
8. Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) "
9. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) +07
10. Kevin Vauquelin (Arkea-B&B Hotels) +10

It's worth adding that Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) took 11th place at 30 seconds ahead of a group that included Enric Mas (Movistar) and Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) at +32.

What a way to bring up your century! It looked like Mathieu van der Poel had pulled it off but the world champion had something left in the tank and rounded the yellow jersey on the home straight to take the win. What a lead-out from Joao Almeida there. And it’s Jonas Vingegaard who takes third, I think.

The American rolls the dice but he’s reeled in by Almeida, who is working for his team-mate Pogacar, but has the yellow jersey on his back wheel…

The Belgian has a pop from a group that also includes Pogacar, Almeida, Vingegaard, Jorgenson, Gregoire, Van der Poel and Onley. Skjelmose, Mas and Vauquelin are close behind.

The leaders get caught by a select chase group that includes Onley, Van der Poel, Jorgenson, Evenepoel and a few others – and it’s Matteo Jorgenson who puts in an attack before he’s reeled in by Joao Almeida and it comes back together ahead of the finale.

Roglic we're hearing is around 20 seconds down, while Mas and Skjelmose are somewhere in between.

At one point it looked like the Slovenian had cracked the Dane, but Vingegaard digs in and the pair go over the top with a small gap over their chasers. Evenepoel leads the chase and it may come back together.

Benoot takes over from Campenaerts – by which time, Van der Poel and Narvaez have come right up. And it’s the Ecuadorian champion who comes to the front to lead out the world champion, who has Joao Almeida with him too. Van der Poel and Evenepoel are right there on this stinging ramp.

Pogacar then throws down the hammer and only Vingegaard can match him! "They’re on another level, they’re on another planet," screams Rob Hatch. Wow.

The riders hit the Cat.3 Rampe Saint-Hilaire, which is just 0.77km but peaks at 12%. It’s Visma who lead the strung-out main pack of contenders onto the climb as they look to take advantage of the relative isolation of Pogacar, Van der Poel, Evenepoel, Roglic et al. What an addition to the Visma stable Victor Campenaerts is proving himself to be.

By final, I mean the final categorised climb - because the finish plays out on an uphill ramp too.

And not Visma-Lease a Bike look to use their numerical advantage with a collective upping of the tempo. It’s Victor Campenaerts doing the heavy lifting with Vingegaard in his wheel, plus three other Visma riders all lending a hand.

And Ben O’Connor is going to drop from the top 10 today. The Australian crashed badly at the end of the first stage and he’s clearly still suffering from it. Wellens leads the pack over to take another KOM point and secure the polka dot jersey for another day.

The Cat.3 Cote de la Grand’Mare is 1.8km at 5%. And all of a sudden, Pogacar only has two team-mates with him – Wellens and Narvaez. They’re on the front with Vingegaard and Van der Poel tucked in behind. This leading pack is down to around 50 riders.

The team-mates of the yellow jersey aren’t letting UAE have it all their own way, with Vermeersch and Groves infiltrating the front and disrupting the tempo as the peloton swings through a series of twists, turns and chicane-like roads. Amazingly, no one goes down. And we’re about to start the next climb.

The polka dot jersey and his UAE team are setting a fast tempo on the descent of this climb ahead of the penultimate climb of the day. Can Tadej Pogacar notch his 100th pro win today? It looks like he’s going to give it his best shot.

It looks like Wellens is going to add another KOM point to his polka-dot tally but Tobias Haaland Johannessen edges clear to pocket the point. As soon as Martinez was caught, he slipped back to domestique mode to help pace his Bahrain team-mate Santiago Buitrago back to the main group after he was caught up in that last crash.

This next climb – the Cat.4 Cote de Bonsecours – is only 0.9km at 7.2%. But there’s a memorial to Jean Robic at the top to mark the place where he attacked to win the first post-war Tour in 1947.

And Julian Alaphilippe has finally made his way back to the group of main contenders after his earlier mechanical.

The Frenchman has all but been caught on a fast and technical downhill section ahead of the next climb. We’ve just seen Ben Healy off the back, so the Irishman must have been caught up in those crashes.

The pace has gone up and up on the front of the pack as the washing machine cycle goes crazy ahead of the next climb. Martinez still has 17 seconds – and then there’s a crash in the middle of the pack at one of these many pinch-points. Half a dozen go down, but many more are caught out and slowed down. This is fairly chaotic. Valentin Paret-Peintre of Soudal Quick-Step seems to be the worst off.