Tour de France 2024: stage four hits the mountains on road to Valloire – live

Good afternoon and welcome to our live, rolling coverage of stage four of this year’s Tour de France. And it’s going to get spicy.

Michael Butler will be our man in the saddle with you shortly, but in the meantime, we’ll cover the early miles as the riders roll out of Pinerolo for a 140km trek to Valloire. To start you off, here’s William Fotheringham’s rundown from his pre-race stage-by-stage guide:

Gone are the days when the Tour’s opening week was a stultifying succession of sprint stages: this is pure climbing. The first 50km are uphill, but the sting comes at the end; it’s unprecedented for the Tour to go over a pass as high as the Galibier this early on. If the defending champion, Jonas Vingegaard, is short of form we will find out here; the downhill finale will suit Tom Pidcock, arguably the fastest descender in the bunch.