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Tour de France organisers have insisted that Tuesday’s fourth stage, from Carcassonne to Foix, will go ahead, despite furnace conditions in southern France and predicted temperatures of over 40C (104F).

The 182km stage, scheduled to run through the heat of the afternoon, comes after the Tour’s third stage to Les Angles was held without the usual publicity caravan and only small numbers of fans, to avoid increasing the risks posed by wildfires raging in the eastern Pyrenees.

But those concerns did not derail Tadej Pogacar, whose UAE team controlled the closing kilometres of the stage, reeling in the last remaining escapee, Alex Baudin, to set up the four-time champion for his 22nd stage win and first yellow jersey of 2026.

Pogacar won the stage from a strained Jonas Vingegaard with a typically explosive acceleration. That took him level on time with the Dane, but his stage win also ensured that he reclaimed the overall race lead.

Already, the Slovenian and his team seem to have a psychological stranglehold on the race. Vingegaard, whose Tour started so promisingly, is in danger of slipping behind his old rival.

“We love to race and we’re here to race for the victory,” Pogacar said. “We saw there was a possibility to go for the stage and take yellow and that’s exactly what happened.”

But Pogacar described the continuing heatwave as a “logistical nightmare”. “When its hot, like today, we really start to put a lot of effort into bring water and ice up to the riders. Three guys have to go back to the [team] car and this makes a big difference.”

“This year, we have trained in the heat with a support car behind, but then some days you do three hours without a car, and you think you are really shit because you overheat. Cooling is really important. It’s dangerous if you don’t keep your body temperature down.”

Pogacar’s 22nd Tour stage win fuelled talk of him closing further on Mark Cavendish’s current win record of 35, but the Slovenian, despite, being in such dominant form, dismissed the suggestion.

“It’s still far away,” he said. “Maybe today was my last victory ever. I prefer to stay in the moment and enjoy this victory. I don’t want to think about Mark’s record. Just go with the flow.”

After two celebratory finishes in Barcelona, the Tour’s return to France was a moribund affair. Once the peloton was through the border crossing with Spain at Puigcerda, the crowds at the roadside thinned out.

“My mum had messaged me saying she couldn’t come to see the stage, but then at 20 kilometres to go, it was full of people,” Pogacar said. “But it was a little bit sad to just see photographers and not the usual big crowd around the finish area.”

At Les Angles, the remote village just below the final climb, cafes and bars were almost deserted, giving the finish the air of a ghost town. The town’s mayor, Michel Poudade, suggested that both the Tour organisation and the prefecture had gone “too far” with their safety measures.

“It’s sad and it’s disappointing,” he said. “This is a village of 680 people. It’s heartbreak. There are businesses here that are going to really lose out.”

“We expected 20 to 25,000 people here. That’s all gone, all at once. I think things could have been done differently. Everyone’s been building up to this for a year.”

The mayor said that no compensation has yet been offered to the small resort town, although the Tour may plan to return soon, to make up for the town’s disappointment.

But the risk of further wildfires remains and 61 French regions are now on orange heatwave alert. Temperatures as high as 41C (105.8F) are expected in Languedoc-Roussillon in the coming days, which, with stage finishes in Foix and Pau on Tuesday and Wednesday, seems certain to have an impact on the race.

“The safety of the riders and the public is our priority,” the local prefecture reiterated and while some of the riders claim to have acclimatised to the sweltering conditions, the risks to roadside spectators remains. The French authorities have given permission for stages to be cancelled, but only in “exceptional” conditions.