When Your Fork Snaps And when the Tour de France Hits 104
Stage 4 of the Tour de France is the reminder every cycling fan loves and every GC team fears: one day can rewrite the race. We talk through the full Stage 4 recap from Carcassonne to Foix, including the brutal numbers, the four categorized climbs, and the oppressive 104°F heat that forces teams to rethink pacing, hydration, and risk. When conditions get that extreme, “normal” tactics break down fast, and today’s choices reshape the general classification in a big way.
The headline is a massive breakaway that gets real freedom. We explain why GC teams sometimes refuse to chase, what that decision signals to the peloton, and how it effectively concedes the stage to the move up the road. From there, it’s a masterclass in execution: Lidl-Trek place riders perfectly, launch at the right moment, and convert the chaos into a stage win for Mads Pedersen, with Quinn Simmons adding a big moment for American fans. We also run through the jersey shakeups, including the new yellow jersey, and what the updated classifications mean for the days ahead.
Then we get into one of the harshest rules in pro cycling: the Tour de France time cut. We break down how it’s calculated off the winner’s time and what it looks like when a rider misses it and gets pulled from the race. To top it off, we share a piece of Tour de France history that sounds unreal by today’s standards, when riders had to repair their own bikes with no outside help and could even be penalized for the smallest assistance. If you like smart, fast Tour breakdowns with a side of cycling lore, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a quick review.
Adam and Michael’s friendship has grown through years of shared miles, challenges, and laughter on the bike. Their passion for cycling has carried them through life’s twists and turns, creating a bond full of stories, jokes, and unforgettable rides. In their podcast, they bring that same spirit to the mic—sharing adventures, trading banter, and welcoming listeners into their cycling community. Whether tackling steep climbs or cruising open roads, their conversations capture the fun, friendship, and freedom that cycling brings. Tune in for stories that celebrate the ride and the camaraderie that makes it unforgettable.
and Remember,
It's a Great Day for a Bike Ride!
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1 SPEAKER_00: One stage can change a tour.
And today, stage four reminds everyone exactly why the tour to
France is the greatest race on earth.
Under blistering heat, a daring breakaway, uh rewrote the
general classification, a familiar face sprinted to
victory, and for the first time this year, we got a brand new
man in yellow.
Welcome back to Road Adventures of Cycling Men of Leisures, Tour
de France, uh Leisure Breakaway, a mini podcast series we're
putting together during the Tour de France.
I am Michael, and over across the way, virtually at least, is
my good friend Adam.
SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen from Eastern Time Zone, happy to
be here.
Adam.
SPEAKER_00: We won't hold it against him.
It's okay.
Nobody does.
It's great day today.
It was just insane.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna take the next couple of
minutes to break down everything you need to know from today's uh
182-kilometer battle.
Um which included uh new stage winner, Jersey Shakeups.
We'll talk about the biggest moments of the day and what lies
ahead for tomorrow.
So are you ready?
I'm ready.
All right.
Well, let's ride into stage four, shall we?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I feel like I should give you the old uh I'll
just give you the beginning here.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there we go.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Stage four, it started out at uh Carcassan and
ended in Foy, uh 181.9 kilometers to all of our
American friends.
That's 113 miles.
Elevation, they gained about 2,900 meters or 9,500 feet over
four categorized climbs.
And let me tell you, the weather did not help today.
The average temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius.
That's 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
So this is hot.
It has been, and I know you know they've been uh taking the
temperature off the tarmac and things like that, and it's like
20, 30 degrees hotter right next to the road.
So, I mean, it is just intense there.
Uh, the organizers today did add some extra water stations and
cooling measures because of the extreme heat.
Um, but this morning we had 184 riders start.
Um, excuse me, that'd be 183.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I was gonna I was gonna say correction.
SPEAKER_00: Uh had 183 because we did have one dropout.
Nobody dropped last night.
Uh no one abandoned during the stage, although we did have one
person who didn't make the time cut, and we'll talk a little bit
about that uh in just a second.
Um, it was pretty pretty exciting.
They had a 34-rider breakaway, which got out early, and the uh
Peloton allowed them to build up this massive advantage.
Um, general classification teams, including UAE and uh
Vizma Lisa Bike, they basically chose not to chase, uh, which
basically when they decided not to chase, they basically
conceded the stage to the breakaway.
Um Little Trek executed nearly a per perfect tactical uh race.
Uh they were able to place multiple riders right up there
in the breakaway, and uh they were able to launch uh their
rider into victory.
And today we had mods uh Patterson uh who was able to
capture the stage.
Um he was in the breakaway, and what is even better is his
teammate Quinn Simmons uh finished second, and uh the
reason why I say that is Quinn Simmons is one of the very few
uh American or US writers who are in the Tour de France this
year.
So that was that was pretty cool.
Um the average speed for the winner, 27 miles per hour.
43.5 kilometers.
Now I know for a guy like you, Adam, you know, that's standing
still, but for Mortals like myself, we don't achieve those
kind of things.
SPEAKER_01: We are talking about downhill like we did in Georgia,
right?
27 miles an hour.
I can do that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was uh four category climbs that they
had to do.
Um, the problem with it is they had to do the climb before they
could do the descent.
So, no, there was nobody uh Ubering them to the top just to
have the fun ride down.
SPEAKER_01: They uh wait a minute.
I did not Uber.
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
You did not Uber.
Uber would insinuate that you in fact paid somebody.
You did not pay anybody to take you anywhere.
All right, move on.
All right, well, today uh the jerseys did get mixed around
because the two leaders actually fell seven seconds behind.
Um, but uh the new overall race lead goes to Torstein Train.
Um Mods Pederson uh got the green jersey, Alex Boudine
Bodine, uh the King of the Mountains, and uh uh Muteas
Basek.
There we go.
Got it right, had to read it out of my phonetics here.
Uh took the best young writer jersey, and that again is uh
writers participating in the Tour de France who are under the
age of or who are 26 and under.
I said one person is no longer with uh the tour this year.
Uh that's Kellen O'Brien, who's on the Jaco team.
He was eliminated by the uh the race judges because he missed
the time cut.
And we haven't really talked about the time cut, uh, but it's
this mathematical equation that says when the the first cyclists
get to the finish line, they do their mathematical equation.
They're saying everybody else needs to finish within this time
frame.
So it's not like, well, you have all day and all night to get to
the end thing.
No, they have a cutoff, and basically if you don't make that
cutoff, basically uh team uh the uh Tour de France judges
basically come over and pulled your uh your number off the back
of your jersey and and you're over.
So uh Jaco is is minus one one team member.
So it's you lose, you know.
But I mean when you're looking at that distance, 100 degrees,
kudos for being out there, man.
SPEAKER_01: For sure, for sure.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do you got?
SPEAKER_01: All right, so I got a couple things.
First of all, our good friend Wade Paul wants us to talk about
how Quinn Simmons is the best writer out there, and he sent me
a very funny emoji of uh a guy with a mullet next to a truck
leaning on there and says, uh, how did you know I'm a Quinn
Simmons fan?
So, Wade, uh, we are honoring your request.
Um, and after uh I sent the picture to Michael, Michael
said, Go ahead, Adam, take a second look at him.
And so I looked at the actual Quinn Simmons, I see where
you're coming from.
SPEAKER_00: So um mullet of hair, earring, mustache.
Yeah.
He is uh 100% representing America.
So I also have to say, so that was impressive.
SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, I mean, uh I would come in dead
last.
I mean, I walked in Georgia.
I did not take an Uber, but I definitely walked.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the uh little judge would have walked up and
ripped your number.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, that's for sure.
Um all right, so now for the interesting piece.
Um uh this was actually sent to me again.
Um, I love that the community is following along and sending us
stuff, so thank you, thank you.
Um so today the writers have mechanics, teams of mechanics.
So we learned yesterday that um the you know over a hundred
tires they keep ready to go, and and and but today I have some
information about mechanics.
Um in the tour's early decades, from about 1903 to roughly
1920s, race rules forbidden any outside assistance, and riders
had to repair their own bikes with tools they carried
themselves.
No team cars, no support staff, no swapping bikes.
Uh the most famous example is Eugene Christophe, I believe
that's how it's pronounced, in 1913.
He descended uh the tournament while uh uh uh connection from
victory, his front fork snapped.
He walked 10 kilometers down the mountain to a village in Santa
Maria and found a blacksmith forge and repaired the fork
himself, taking about four hours.
He was then penalized additional minutes because a local boy
pumped the bellows for him, which counted as an outside
help.
He lost the tour over it.
Bad luck struck again in 1919, fork broke while he was wearing
the first yellow jersey.
Uh other facts from this era said riders often carried spare
tubular tires wrapped around their shoulders.
Some rode 300 plus kilometer stages starting in the middle of
the night, and early rules even required riders to finish on the
same bike they started with.
Uh the tour founder Henry Desgrande.
Is that how you say that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that how you say it?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I looked up all my names.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
Well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I still got them right, but I
looked them all up.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if I can make my computer pronounce this,
but um wanted the race to be a test of the individual
endurance.
He was famously hostile to teamwork and technology, and he
resisted until 1937.
Uh now, of course, we know there's team cars and and
standard fixture after World War II.
Today each team re runs multiple support vehicles with pro
mechanics and spare bikes.
So I just figured I would share that uh interesting history uh
information.
SPEAKER_00: So well, it's kind of sounding like this guy is
doing something wrong because everything is his fork kept
snapping.
So I'm I'm wondering exactly how he was riding that bicycle or
whatever, or maybe fork snapping was just like a common bicycle
thing back then, but just seemed like he had a lot of issues with
his fork.
SPEAKER_01: Remember when we were kids and we would stick
like a stick in the wheel to do an endo?
Maybe he was trying special tricks.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think he was trying to do tricks, but
uh hats off to him for you know getting on the forge there and
pounding and out.
So hey, I got I if you run out of things to talk about or to
look up, I think it would be interesting if you maybe
provided some insight into the nationality of writers.
Because I think there's only like five Americans on different
teams, and I would be interested to know, and I think our
listeners and viewers would be interested to know, you know,
what country is most represented?
I mean, amongst all the teams.
I mean, how many Danes are there?
Uh, how many French people are there across all the different
uh teams?
So I'm not necessarily looking at teams, I'm looking at
countries represented on the tour, and I'd be interested to
know, say, like what the top three teams.
I mean, uh, you know, it's not Mexico or South Africa or you
know, one of those.
It's but I would be interested to know exactly what countries
those are.
SPEAKER_01: So perfect, which brings me to my next point.
Uh oh.
Uh if you are paying attention and you're part of the
community, and there's something that you would like me to look
up or mention on the show, uh, please send me a message.
Many of you already are, so uh, I love it.
So uh first one on the list is Nationality of Tour de France
writers.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I think that would be good.
And I didn't talk to you beforehand, but now you know.
So uh, you know, and I and I do have to thank everybody out
there in our community.
Uh we've been getting lots of great feedback.
Uh, you know, they've been sending us texts and messages
and things like that.
Um, getting a lot of people saying they really enjoy it.
It's making the tour de France more fun.
We're getting some people that are like, I've never paid any
attention to it, but now you guys are making me interested,
and I want to kind of start uh you know, understanding what
this is all about.
So uh keep sending your feedback if you have questions.
Uh Adam would be happy to do some research.
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
Uh I have to take this moment to say that the uh pushing of this
has been shared to the point where we gained a few Instagram
uh followers here.
We our our numbers have gone up and a few Facebook numbers have
gone up.
So thank you for for our new members on social media.
So uh I'll look up anything you want me to look up, and uh I I
will continue following along and learning how to pronounce
everything.
SPEAKER_00: All right, that sounds good.
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the show break up.