Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: Quinn Simmons blasts to victory on stage 4 from 10-rider breakaway with peloton breathing down their backs

After a brief delay due to a crash in the neutral, stage 4 got underway and started climbing straight away, with the peloton tackling the 4km Col de la Croix de l’Arbre straight out of the gate. With the stage looking like a breakaway-friendly day, the peloton was primed for a long battle for the break and that is exactly what happened.

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On the first climb, various attacks went, but a headwind and the aggression meant no group could get more than a few seconds at a time. The peloton briefly split over the top of the climb but was soon back together, as the fight for the break continued for well over an hour.

The trio of Quinn Simmons of Lidl – Trek, Andreas Kron of Uno-X Mobility and Jordan Jegat of Team TotalEnergies take off (Image credit: Getty Images)

After the first climb, the lumpy roads were not quite hard enough for a move to get away, so the next real attempts didn’t start properly until the second climb of the day, the Côte du Temple, after 60km had already been done with no break in sight. Quinn Simmons was one of the day’s main aggressors, attacking multiple times right from the start, and he crested the Temple climb first as the elastic just started to break, taking with him Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies) and Andreas Kron (Uno-X Mobility).

This certainly wasn’t job done, though, with groups chasing behind, battling to join the leaders over the Côte de Chougoirand and Col des Limites. It was on the Limites that the break became 12 as the three leaders were joined by Marco Frigo, George Bennett (NSN), Samuel Watson (Netcompany-Ineos), Pablo Castrillo, Raúl García Pierna (both Movistar), Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Lars Craps (Lotto Intermarché), Mattéo Vercher (TotalEnergies) and Jan Castellon (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA).

Alex Baudin of France and Team EF Education – EasyPost competes in the peloton in the yellow leader jersey (Image credit: Getty Images)

Finally, after more than 90km of racing, the break seemed established, and with some strong riders in it, but even as they cooperated over the Côte de Lérigneux and Côte de Roche-en-Forez, the peloton were keeping them pretty close, only around a minute and a half ahead.

Heading into the final 50km of racing, all of the day’s climbing was done with only a descent down and then a flat run-in to Montrond-les-Bains left. It seemed like many teams did not want this to be a breakaway day.

With 39km to go, Sam Watson lost control on a downhill corner and crashed out of the breakaway, and Bennett dropped away soon after, leaving just 10 in the lead as the gap dropped under a minute.

Injury to knee of Sam Watson (Netcompany Ineos) visible at the finish of stage 4 (Image credit: Getty Images)

The break was working as hard as possible to try and stay away, but with the chance of a sprint definitely on the cards, it was a hard task to hold off the peloton with more and more teams joining the chase efforts.

With 20km to go, the gap was down to 40 seconds as Cofidis led the chase behind, but it wasn’t falling rapidly and they still held around 30 seconds with 9km to go, and then 18 seconds with 6km to go.

In the final 5km, it looked like the break should surely be caught, but they were simply so fast and strong that the peloton could not do much more to close the gap. Under the flamme rouge, Castrillo took up the pacing on the front with a huge sacrificial effort, and though the break went into the final kilometre with only a minutes’ gap, they somehow held off the scrapping peloton and contested for the win.

Finn Fisher-Black sets the pace of the breakaway (Image credit: Getty Images)

As soon as the sprint started, it looked like it would be between Simmons and Fisher-Black, and there was little between the two at the line, but the long effort from Simmons just edged out to earn him his first victory of 2026.

In the GC picture, there was little change as stage 1 winner Baudin defended his lead for another day, but that is set to change as the race ramps up in difficulty over the next few days and into the weekend.