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Emergency measures were implemented by the Tour de France organisers to combat the crushing heatwave that has settled on this year’s race as the riders tackled stage four at the end of which the cancer survivor Torstein Træenhad stolen the yellow jersey and built an eight-minute lead on the four-time champion Tadej Pogacar.

On a day best spent in the shade by a languid pool, the peloton was fried by 40-degree-plus conditions over 181 gruelling kilometres and four categorised climbs as they raced towards Foix through the Aude and Ariege regions.

The UCI said that it and the Tour organisers, ASO, had decided to “soften the provisions governing rider feeding in light of the extreme heat forecast over coming stages of the Tour”.

As the former world champion Mads Pedersen sped clear to win the sprint into Foix with ease, it was a memorable day for Træen, the 30-year-old who was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2022.

The Norwegian’s diagnosis was revealed after a random doping control showed abnormalities. He underwent immediate surgery but returned to racing with a clean bill of health later that season. After his successful surgery to remove a tumour, he posted: “I got 99 problems, but cancer ain’t one of them (any more).”

“Most of all I am grateful to perform at the Tour,” Træen said after taking the maillot jaune. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

Ninth overall in the Vuelta a España last year, he is now leading the world’s biggest bike race by almost eight minutes from Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, who are both on the same time overall.

The emergency measures on Tuesday’s stage included extra water bottles and more drinks motorbikes than usual implemented on a trial basis, given the extreme weather shrouding the Tour.

“When we go to France or Spain we all know it’s going to be hot and we have a good cooling protocol,” Pedersen said. “I’m pretty sure if it was dangerous or unhealthy there would be no racing.”

Træen said that he was “doing pretty well” surviving the heat. “Sometimes it’s better to be in the breakaway than in the peloton, as it’s easier to get drinks up to you.”

But the UCI has again been criticised for not going far enough. “It’s the least worst option,” Pascal Chanteur of the professional riders union said of the additional measures. “It’s not fixing the problem.”

“When the temperature goes over 40 degrees, the government takes measures to protect the public,” Chanteur said. “The riders are in the population, they’re working outside, exposed to the conditions. We can no longer race in conditions like this.

“I want the teams, the organisers, the UCI, to agree to changing race start times, from June to September, to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change. The priority is the health of the athletes.”

It has long been part of the Tour’s tradition of survival and sufferance that canicule conditions – broiling heatwaves – have to be endured. That may soon change.

Riders have fallen victim to extreme heat in the past, including the British former world champion Tom Simpson, who collapsed and died in 1967 due to a combination of heat exhaustion and amphetamine use.

Since late May, professional racing has been staged in furnace conditions with increasing numbers of influential figures lobbying for a change to the structure of high summer races. “This is something that will change racing,” Jonathan Vaughters, manager of Ben Healy’s EF Education-EasyPost team, said of the high temperatures. “Some riders will deal well with it, some won’t. Some teams won’t too.”

Vingegaard’s manager, Richard Plugge, said that the heat posed a greater threat to the spectators than the riders. “The riders are fit,” Plugge said. “They are used to riding in the heat and we cool them well. We give them ice vests at the start and ice socks in their jersey. But if the public is standing next to the road for five hours in scorching heat, that’s something else. That’s dangerous.”

But Plugge also suggested that the Tour would lose an essential part of its appeal, of being raced in the heat of the day, if the stages were moved to a significantly earlier start time. “People watch it at four or five in the afternoon, as they finish work, after school. If it starts at nine in the morning, they can’t do that.”