Tour de France Stage 4 Predictions: Mads the man ahead of 20/1 Top Ganna

Tuesday’s Stage 4 of the 2026 Tour de France sees the peloton spending its first full day in the host nation as the riders take on the 181.9km route from Carcassonne to Foix (live from 12:30pm BST on TNT Sports 1, highlights from 7pm on Channel 5).

Tadej Pogacar is in the familiar yellow jersey after his 22nd stage win on Monday, thanks in part to a great lead-out by UAE teammate Isaac del Toro. Will the four-time champ keep the maillot jaune or hand it over for the time being? My Tour de France Stage 4 predictions are below.

Tour de France Betting Odds

Mads Pedersen is a 5/2 chance to win his first Tour stage in three years, with Alpecin-Premier Tech’s Mathieu van der Poel at 6/1.

Jasper Philipsen and Mathias Vacek are 12/1 and 16/1 respectively, with a foursome following at 20/1 in the form of Magnus Cort Nielsen, Michael Matthews, Filippo Ganna and Biniam Girmay.

Cycling Odds

Tuesday’s parcours offers the chance of a lengthy breakaway, with the stage being categorised as ‘hilly’ but that doesn’t mean the fast guys might not be involved come the flamme rouge.

With the last of the four categorised climbs coming around 35km from the end, there might be a tendency for some teams to back their sprint squads. Yet in truth, the two Cat 2 mountains should leave them with too much tiredness in their legs to hang with any group that has gone up ahead.

There are a couple of smaller climbs to begin with, the Cat 4 Col de Bedos (3.3km at 4.4%) and Cat 3 Col du Paradis (5.8km at 4.1%).

Those two Cat 2s, though, will dictate the day’s events. The Col de Coudons is a 10.7km drag at an average 5.5%, with slopes reaching more than 12% towards the summit.

And then there’s the 6.9km Col de Montsegur, which averages 6.6% of elevation but has four separate sections of 12% or more.

Opportunists will be at the ready, then. Otherwise if there is anything close to a pack developing near the front then that last 30km or so will be a downhill lead-out for a sprint finish.

Mads Pedersen @ 5/2

Lidl-Trek’s Pedersen has exactly the kind of skillset for this kind of stage to play into his hands. The Cat 2 climbs should be a piece of cake for him, and he also happens to be one of the better sprinters when it comes down to it.

The profile of Tuesday’s stage is not too dissimilar from that of his first Tour win in 2022 into Saint-Etienne, when he was one of six riders to breakaway and hold a five-minute advantage over the rest of the peloton.

His other Tour win, one year later, was on a route which had just enough undulation to keep the pure sprinters out of the picture, and the same might well play out into Foix.

Filippo Ganna E/W @ 20/1

That 2022 breakaway win for Pedersen came with ‘Top Ganna’ one of the half-dozen up at the front.

And the Netcompany INEOS rider is just the sort of guy to make the most of a day like this, which has many of the hallmarks of a classic one-day race.

While the Italian only has one non-TT win among his eight Grand Tour stage triumphs, that did come after a 175km breakaway in the 2020 Giro d’Italia. Add in the fact that he has twice come second to Van der Poel at Milano-Sanremo, and the parcours could well appeal to the 29-year-old.