THEMOVE - Tour de France Stage 4 | The Sir Wiggo & Johan Show

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Johan Bruyneel and Sir Bradley Wiggins peel back the curtain on the tactics, strategy, and pivotal moments that shaped Stage 4 of the 2025 Tour de France, offering sharp analysis and insider perspective you won’t hear anywhere else. Join: No race? No problem. JOIN keeps you riding stronger, just for the love of it. Discover your path at https://join.cc/themove Download JOIN today and transform the way you train. Ketone-IQ: Take your shot: Get 30% off your subscription, plus a free gift with your second shipment at https://Ketone.com/themove Ventum: Enter Ventum Trivia of the Day for a chance to win the Grand Prize: $5,000 of store credit towards any Ventum bike. Don’t want to leave it to chance, 10% off sitewide using the code THEMOVE10 or 20% off any NS1 road bike build with code NS120  https://ventumracing.com/themove/

Today's stage was a dominant performance by Tadej Pogacar, his 100th victory in the World Champions Jersey, which was phenomenal. It was, you know, we're running out of superlatives to describe Tadej, but he made the race today. He put his team on the front before that last climb, and they were really going to launch the attack. We all knew he was going to launch that attack.

And when he did, Yunus was the only one who could stay with him up to a certain point. Yunus cracked slightly, then came back to him. But then for Tadej to go again in the bunch sprint in the small group finish and beat Mathieu van der Poel in an uphill finish like that just shows his class. I mean, this guy is getting closer and closer to how we remember Eddie Merckx. He's Merckx-esque in terms of his greatness. I'm the 2012 Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins. And I'm Johan Bruniel. I directed my teams to nine Tour de France victories.

Welcome to the Sir Wiggle and Johan show. Our daily show where we dive deep into the tactics behind every stage of the Tour de France. Okay Bradley, let's talk about today's stage, stage four, our show as every day is presented by Ketone IQ. We're going to talk later about it. But Bradley, what's your opinion of today's stage? Today's stage was a dominant performance by Tadej Pogacar, his hundredth victory in the world champions jersey, which was phenomenal. It was, you know, we were

running out of superlatives to describe Tade, but he made the race today. He put his team on the front before that last climb and they were really going to, but to launch the attack. We all knew he was going to launch that attack. And when he did, Eunice was the only one who could stay with him up to a certain point. Eunice cracked slightly, then came back to him. But then for Tade to go again in the bunch sprint in the small group finish and beat Mathieu van der Poel in an uphill finish like that just shows his class. I mean, this guy is getting closer and closer to how we remember Eddie Merckx. He's Merckx-esque in

terms of his greatness. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's crazy how he how he does it. You know, I mean, I'm also really blown away, Bradley. I don't know what you think about how easy and comfortable he looks in the Peloton until he really goes for it 100%. He just looks chill. He avoids all the problems and crashes. We never see him have a problem. And that goes with having good legs. You know, you've got good legs. You seem to miss all the problems and issues, but Tade, you know, and he's been very restrained the last few days, hasn't he?

We expected this kind of attack maybe a few days ago in Boulogne-sur-Mer now, but he's ridden the perfect race up to this point now. And it's panning out to be certainly a two horse race as we expected, but more than ever now after today. And I think it will be confirmed tomorrow, maybe after the time trial is that he is now the clear favorite for this race. But Eunice is very close. The only sort of dent in Eunice's armor is that slight crack 100 meters from the summit today. Yeah. Which was a bizarre one because he had the legs to come back to Tadej. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm personally, I mean, I'm personally not reading too much into it. You know, it's obviously favoring Tadej this 10% explosive climbs. I think it was very telling that he could come back, that, you know, he got dropped, he came back. That says a lot about Jürgen Züngrard's form. Anyway, before we go into more details, Brad, let's talk about our first sponsor of the day. Yeah, first sponsor. I want to talk to you a bit about JOIN today. So JOIN is the number one training app that puts a professional cycling coach right in your pocket.

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Join.cc forward slash the move. Okay, before we go into Bradley into the, you know, the action of the favorites in the final, I just want to talk a little bit about, you know, first of all, we have the typical breakaway of four riders, four strong riders, who took up the majority of the stage. And I think we could see today, what we talked about two or three days ago, you know, that the break was, they had two or three minutes and the peloton didn't chase and just by the nervousness in the peloton, they got reeled in. Yeah, yeah, that was it. It was no, through no fault of their own, you know, the nervousness and the anxiety

in the peloton and the crashes again, we saw today. And the natural, you know, people, you know, preparing themselves for what was coming in that final, you know, everyone wanted to be in the front. And it just, you know, that forced the momentum and the speed of the Peloton went greater and greater and greater as everyone was trying to stay in the front. And, um, it was a shame for the breakaway because that was a really strong break, but it was inevitable really on a, on a day like today. I know George said on the main show yesterday that he thought this was a day for

the breakaways, but in this modern day cycling week, one of the tour de France, there was no other outcome in my mind that we wouldn't see a Finnish contested with the guys we've been talking about for the first week. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you would always say, okay, there's a guy like, like Ask Green there, very famous for having breakaways, make it to the finish. Abrahamson, very strong rider, extraordinary actually, the story of Abrahamson So because in the tour of Belgium, two weeks ago, he broke his collarbone. This guy broke his collarbone in a crash and he's at the start of the tour. I followed his training a bit. I mean, I don't know if it was a serious break or if it was a fracture, but two days after the crash, I watched the crash in tour of Belgium was a bad

crash. Two days after he was on the home trainer and four days after he announced he was going to the Tour de France and here he is already fighting for stage wins. But also what I really want to remark today was Lennie Martinez. Lennie Martinez was the first day he was the worst rider of the whole Palatine. He could not follow the wheels. Yet today he was in there. Yeah, apparently he's quite renowned for this. He's renowned for having really off days and then bouncing back in a matter of days or the next day and doing something special. We saw him at the Dauphiné in the Queen stage and I think the day before lost a matter of days or the next day and doing something special. I mean, we saw him at the Dauphiné in the Queen stage.

And I think the day before lost a packet of time. So, you know, but he's when he when he produced, I mean, this isn't the this isn't the last we've seen of him in this Tour de France, Lennie. But it was good to see him out there after stage one, because that was painful to watch on stage one. Yeah, it was finishing just in front of the broom wagon. It's not a nice experience. No, it was it was horrible.

He was by himself, you know, in the cars coming back, dropped again, really getting dropped by himself on flat roads. This is a guy who probably has, you know, a problem of getting into the rhythm. But today was not a real stage for him either, you know. I think we're gonna see him in mountain stages probably, or a few of them. I think he wanted to make a point and probably have a go at the Poco de Jersey, which is

now back with Tadej Pogacar. I want to talk about that a little bit later. But yeah, I mean, other than that, Bradley, as we expected, with 40k to go, you could feel the stress. UAE was taking control in the last 30 kilometers. Then we had Visma, Alisa Bike, really doing an unbelievable lead out for those last clients. Before we go into how developed the final of the race with Ade and Jonas and Mathieu van der Poel and others, I want to talk about ketone IQ. We all know that ketones are used widely through the

Peloton. Some teams, among them Vismalisa Bike, are using our brand ketone IQ. This is my preferred are using our brand, Ketone IQ. This is my preferred product here, my shot of 10 grams of pure ketones, clean shot of energy, no sugar, no caffeine. Ketone IQ has been working with Vismalisa Bike and it's been scientifically proven that ketones nowadays boost athletic performance in a placebo controlled study with trained athletes. Ketone IQ boosted average sprint power by 19%, peak power by 13% and cut fatigue by 10%, spiked blood ketones five times in just 20 minutes. They've also discovered, and this is very important for To The France riders, that ketones help for a faster recovery.

Ketone IQ teamed up with Vismalisa Bike and with the University of Leuven to explore recovery and high altitude adaptation and their findings are impressive. They found improved blood flow, higher muscle oxygenation for better endurance and stamina. So take your shot and get 30% of your subscription plus a free gift with your second shipment at ketone.com slash The Move. That's ketone.com forward slash The Move. Bradley, the race gets into the final. We have 40, 30k to go. It's crazy. We have a few crashes. gets into the final, we have 40, 30k to go. It's crazy. We have a few crashes. We saw one big crash again when the typical event from three lanes to two lanes. We had a crash. I don't know if Ben O'Connor was behind that crash. I saw him being dropped. I don't know

if it was because of the crash or because of the crash he had before. Do you have any info on Ben O'Connor? Yeah, no info on Ben yet, but certainly you could see, I mean, I saw him with the, you know, the tape all up his back and stuff, you know, the Kinney, Kinney C tape, what it's called. So he's clearly struggling from that heavy fall, you know, he felt hard the other day. So yeah, it's a shame for Ben really is. Once again, we've seen another crash, where these kind of makeshift barriers are funneling the riders into a road that's you know, it's the speed of which you're funneling riders in. It's just I mean, we know what it's like, it's crazy. But once again, the likes of Tadei Bergaccio and people

like that, they miss all this, which is, you know, part of Tadej's genius really is always riding in a position the team have been fantastic with him. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing more on Ben at this stage. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Also Florian Lippovitz got dropped at some point. I think he was held up behind that crash and had to come back or something. Not a great start for him. He's a strong rider. It's 20 seconds here, 30 seconds there. I think ultimately it's not going to matter that much because I'm pretty sure that in the second half of the tour, he will come to the front. But yeah, not a good start for him and not a good start for Red Bull because Primoz lost time again too today.

Yeah, another 32 seconds. Yeah, and this is a stage that would be Primoz normally. This is Primoz's terrain, right? Did you see his comments that he's been making recently about, you know, kind of just wanting to get around? Yeah. Blowing it off, right? Yeah, I thought that was quite strange for Primoz, who's normally very clear and

concise about what he wants to achieve. I thought it might be a deflection tactic, but at the same time, his results don't reflect it being a deflection. Yeah, I mean, you know, it may be a tactic to say, okay, you know what, I just want to stay quiet, no pressure. I'm personally not convinced that his team and the team management are going to like these kind of comments and the sponsor. I mean, if this is a guy you pay several millions of euros, you don't want him to say, oh, you know what, I don't care. That's not, that's not the right way to do it. You know, what to say, what to say about UAE? The way they, they wrote fantastic Tim Welles is great again today. Yeah, you know, the Belgium the Belgium duo of Tim and Victor,

Victor wrote fantastic today. He really is. He's something special that boy. Yeah, Victor Campenaerts was a beast today. That that lead out to that 800 meter climb was just, I mean, you could see obviously they've studied the course to perfection like probably everybody else. But then to have a plan and to be able to execute that with the team, you have to have the power. And Victor did this by himself. I haven't calculated, but I think it was like three, four kilometers. They got to the point where it became really technical a few turns, then a tricky downhill and Victor just dropped them off at the bottom of that climb, which was amazing. But what to say about, I mean, this is for me, I mean, that guy, this guy's a genius.

Joe Almeida. Yeah, I mean, he is on paper the best stage race rider in the world this year, isn't he? Yeah, no, he's done a fantastic job. And it was, you know, that's one of the things with these two teams, you've got Visma and URA, they, you know, Almeida is going to be Tadej's biggest asset into the mountains in this Tour de France. And then on the other side, Visma, how good was Matteo Jorgensen today? I mean, that guy is just, I'm so in awe of him and the way he rides and he's a real calming figure for Eunice, but he's there every step of the way.

And you know, these guys, they're a joy to watch, but yeah, I did see comments afterwards when the plan was potentially at one stage of the kilometers ago that they were going to try and let Matteo win the stage or try and at least get him to win the stage. But it wasn't to be, but Almeida was fantastic today again. Yeah, there was one point I saw at 15 kilometers to go UAE where they were impressive. They had five riders with today. So four riders and today. And it looked like, okay, they're going to go now, right? They're going to go and not slow down. And all of a sudden they slow down because Jao Almeida was not there. I think Jao Almeida

was bothered by the crash and it took a long time. It took a long time because they started to go with, I wrote it down here, they started to go with 15 K to go and Al Maeda only made it to the front with 11 K to go. So there was four kilometers where he had to try to find his way. I mean, imagine Bradley, how strong this guy must be because the effort it takes to come from basically a lost position. And we all know that if they're going so fast, people are getting dropped. So you have to pass little groups. Yeah. He is by by far today that the the the champ, the champ of the stage that they wanted,, but it is thanks to Almeida.

Yeah, special shout out as well to Oscar Onley, the Scottish rider who was born today, again, 22 years of age, second Tour de France, won a stage in the Tour de Suisse, but that was a great ride for him. It was amazing and what I really, really was really really surprised is that Oscar only is one of the guys who's there who didn't need to come back. He was there all the time with the first guys. Yeah. He did not come back because I think it was Vokalan who came back and, uh, um, Romain Grégoire and another guy.

I don't remember the other guy now, but, but, uh, only was there straight away. He was never separated. So yeah, we go into that steep climb. You know, Visma leads it out, then UAE takes over, great pull of Narvaez and Tadej goes, right? Yeah. What were you thinking when you watched the stage? I was jumping up and down in the air when Tade went, but the attack was incredible. The thing with Tade is whether we're on a climb like this, it's 800 meters long, that's

11, 12 percent, or whether he's on a 15 kilometer alpine climb, he attacks the same way. It's 100 percent, throws all caution to the wind and he's going for it and he doesn't slow down. And it was, you know, it was a little bit of deja vu from that Dauphiné attack when Eunice, because it's always, it's always Tadej who's going with Eunice on the wheel trying his best to stay there. But I mean, today was just, you know, I mean, we're four days into the Tour de France and we're seeing the heads of the Tour de France come to the fore already. You know, I mean it's unprecedented what this guy's doing. I mean, you know, 10 years ago, you know, in your era, in Lance's era, you know, four

days in, we would never expect to see, you know, the heads of the Tour de France come to the fore this quickly, would we? No, it's especially not on a 800 meter climb, 10%. It's unbelievable to see that we have one climb of 800 meters, 10% and the two favorites are riding away from everything else. That's just something that's unique. The numbers on that last climb today, two minutes at 2800 van. just something that's unique. And the numbers, Johann, as well. The numbers on that last Glankensay, two minutes at 2,800 van. Yeah, that's crazy. I saw a little clip of Jürgensen speaking to Jonas

after the stage when they were warming down. And Matteo said, you know, I was seeing what I was doing in terms of power output. And then I watched both of you guys disappear and I couldn't believe it. So that's inside information of how good these guys are, right? Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah. Now, I personally, I'm not reading too much into Yona because, you know, there's been, and I know you guys talked about it on the move, you know, yeah, Jonas got dropped. Um, is it really getting dropped? Uh,

I think it's also, and there's, here's where you see, uh, in my opinion, that today is riding differently and smarter than in the past. In my opinion, he knew very well that if he makes it to the top, even by himself, Jonas is not going to be far away and he would never go full gas because he would not make it. He knew that Jürgensen was there. He knew that Mathieu was there who wanted to come back. He knew that Remco was there. So even today would not be able to make it. So I think he has matured in that point of view that earlier years he would have tried to keep going by himself and he didn't. Yeah, but it was a statement nonetheless, wasn't it? And either way, he's capable of efforts like that. And he knew that the guys behind would have to make twice as much effort

in getting dropped and also to recover over the top to come back to him. So we saw him go over the summit, he didn't keep that effort going as you said and he just rolled along and let the other guys come back up to him because his job was already done at that point. He took the edge off the riders behind the Mathieu van der Poelse's world. That was Mathieu's biggest problem was recovering from that effort like that to make the sprint finish as well. I agree. I agree. That's the reason why Matthew didn't win. He had to go so much over the limit on that climb. Yeah, that was Tadej's tactic. I still find it incredible, Bradley, to see that, you know, you have a guy here who's trying to win his, his, uh, his fourth to the France, right? That they put so much effort into trying such an early stage. Uh, and this is how things have changed, you know, it's, it's, and the day before a time trial on top of that, you know, is that,

you know, they go full and then it broke like, and tomorrow is the first real big appointment. So how fast they recover, right? But it's funny you say that, Johan, you know, because what happened 30 years ago today, we all know what happened 30 years ago today. Miguel did the same thing into the age the day before a time trial, didn't he? Yeah. And that at the time, I can remember watching at the time, it was unheard of that in the Tour de France, a rider like Miguel would show his colors that early.

And you obviously you won the stage took the jersey and the time trial the day after Miguel suffered in the time trial the day after if you remember, only one by five seconds, he nearly lost that time to be unreached in the ordinary. Exactly. That's true. That's true. I read I read because this week I've been contacted by several media because of this, especially here in Spain. And I read

an interview of Sabioun Zouei about that stage. And this was not planned. It's Miguel himself who decided during the stage, I think one of the earlier climbs, it was the old fashioned Liet-Raston-Liège parkour, right uh, Miguel had seen that a lot of people were suffering and he just gave it a try just to try the opponents. And by surprise he came, he was by himself, but it wasn't done, but he paid for it the day after because usually Miguel won time trials with three minutes, sometimes not two and a half, three minutes and he won by five seconds. So,. So anyways, today, I think both of the big favorites, they went both full gas. And so I think it's quite even.

So on tomorrow's time trial, who are you thinking for tomorrow? Well, I think Remco. Remco is the big favorite. You know, there's a lot of people who say, yeah, you know, Dauphiné, Remco took 25 seconds on one and 40 seconds on the other. So now it's double the distance. I think that's irrelevant. I think it doesn't translate to the same thing in the Tour de France. It's not the same course. It's flatter. So you can say, OK, is it better or worse? same course, it's flatter. So you can say, okay, is it better or worse? For Ramco, you really would say it's better, right? Because he's the most arrow of everybody and the best pure specialist. But I don't think he's going to take double the time he took from the Dauphiné.

What do you think? I mean, it's a different time trial. As you say, it's 33 kilometers, it's flat. There was a hill in the Dauphiné time trial, which was, you know, broke that rhythm up a little bit. No, I think we're going to talk about the same people. It's definitely going to be Remco, got to be the favorite. There's a question mark for me over Remco's, A, his confidence and B, his condition, you know, because we've seen slight chinks in his army has had a couple of tumbles in the first few days. Um, but I think Tade is upper level from the Dauphiné. And I think Tade will, you know, I think Tade, especially

after today, Tade will be out going out. I mean, he's, he's one time in the Tour de France in the past. So the Tour de France is where he performs. And I don't think we can read too much into Tade's Dauphiné performance and, you know, correlate it with how he does tomorrow. The one for me who will be interesting to see, and I've got a sneaking suspicion, you know, it could go Eunice's way tomorrow. Eunice, you know, if we take Tadej out of the equation, this is the best I've seen Eunice in the first week of any Tour de France he's done. No doubt. No doubt about that. The only reason we question whether, you know, we're still talking

about Eunice's second place is because of how good Tadej is. Eunice is better than I think any addition that he won in this race. So for tonight and the time trial, you know, we've seen him win a time trial on the Tour in the past. Eunice is time trialling better than he's ever time trialled and that was proven at the Dover day. So I think it could be interesting tomorrow. Younis could spring a surprise and shake this GC up a little bit, whether that equates to what happens in the mountains or not, I don't know. But from a first week standpoint, it'll be interesting to see Younis tomorrow. It would be great. It would be great. Now, going back to our discussion of yesterday, Brad, about the Polkadot jersey, giving away the Polkadot jersey and if it was for podium

obligations or for the skinsuit issue. We can forget everything we said yesterday. Today is back in Polkadot now. I think it was kind of, yeah, it was a logical scenario. I think they should have known also on beforehand because if the plan was for today to attack on that last climb, he was going to take the points and be back in the Pocodot years. Yeah. I mean, we were speculating when we yesterday and probably got it wrong. And it looks like that the main reason for that was he wanted to win his 100th win in

the world championship jersey, which I hadn't considered, but that's quite a confident stance, isn't it? To think that far ahead and think, you know what, if I win tomorrow or when I win tomorrow, I want to win in the world championship jersey, my 100th victory. It's crazy. It's crazy to think that you kind of design these scenarios on beforehand and that's the way you want to do it where the majority of the writers are just desperate to try to win a stage.

He wants to win his 100 stage and he had the pocket of Jersey. He wanted to lose it because he wanted to win in the rainbow Jersey. By the way, I did some research on the discussion we had yesterday about being able to use your own skin suits with your own fabric. It's forbidden. ASO is very being, I mean, quite a dictator in that matter, I would say. They forced you to wear the skin suits that there is. However, so that the technicians of that it's Santini, right? The brand, so the technicians of Santini go tonight to the

hotel of the yellow Jersey. And everybody else who is wearing another leader's Jersey can go there. And they have rollers there. They can bring their bike, they can be in the time trial position and they actually stitch there on the spot up to measure the skin suits. I still think however that it's not right. That in itself Johan is quite a process isn't't it? When you're, you've raced all day today and you've got to go and spend 20 minutes having exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, and as we said yesterday, you know, these big teams, especially the big teams, they,

they invest a lot of resource in trying to have the fastest fabric ever. And then on top of that, the comfort of your own clothing that you're used to, the Shammy, for example. Well, the Shammy, the contact point is, you know, we all know that's the most important part, isn't it? For any brand that's keeping, you know, back in my day when we had Sky, we were sponsored by Nalini, make all the kit, but I would have ASOS who were the best Shammy's. I would send all my shorts to ASOS and they would put ASOS chamois in my Nellie knee shorts.

And the contact point, even in time trial, you know how easy it is to get a saddle saw, especially on the time trial bike because the chair is high. It's the worst. It's the worst. You can really have, I mean, yeah, you can have rash and no, I still don't get it, but you know, ASO rules as we all know. So yeah, one last thing that I wanted to ask your opinion about. I know you're favoring Jonas for tomorrow. I remarked the difference in freshness today after the finish between today and Jonas. They both went full gas, of course, you know, they both went full of that last climb and they both went full of the finishing straight.

Tadej to try to win the stage, Jonas to try to not lose any time and take bonifications, which he did. So great job by Jonas again, the same top three, by the way, as two days ago, same three riders and the order is different. But today, I watched an interview of him and this was five minutes after he finished, you know, he was sitting there, the first the first the first interview takes off the helmet starts to talk fresh as a daisy. Unbelievable how fresh he looked straight recovered. And then straight after I saw images from Jonas at the finish getting drinks.

It was maybe two, three minutes earlier than that, but not much more. Completely destroyed, completely destroyed hanging over his bike. So I found it quite remarkable the opposite, being fresh and Jonas really went deep. If you look back actually to to because today was the first time they really were head to head on that steep climb. Last year, for example,

we all thought about stage two, Santa Catarina. And there was a lot of doubts about Jonas, his form, and he thought they tried and he was able to hang on. Also, so, you know, there's not much difference, you know. No, no. So we'll see. Anyway, we'll finish our show with the daily Ventum trivia. The question of yesterday for stage three was, history was made at the finish of stage three of the 2024 Tour de France,

what happened? The answer was many people thought it was about Mark Cavendish, it was not, it was Binyam Girimayi who became the first black African to win a stage at the Tour de France. Stage four question, you want to get that Bradley? Yes, stage four's question is, while not a famous summit in the tour, stage four features the Côte de Jacques-Encoutil, a 2.6 kilometer category four climb named after the French cyclist Jacques-Encoutil. What two things did Encoutil accomplish to get this climb named in his honor? Okay, well send your best guess or if you know the answer, just send your answer to Ventumracing.com slash The Move and you will enter to win this year's grand prize.

It's $5,000 of store credit towards any Ventum bike. If you don't want to wait for the end of the competition, which we will draw at the end of the tour, Ventum is also offering a standing discount during the whole duration of the tour. So you get 10% of the whole site with the code theMOOV10 or you get 20% of any NS1 bike with the code NS120. Tomorrow we'll be back with another question and you'll be giving the answer about charging a deal. Until then Bradley, thanks very much for joining.

As always, see you tomorrow. See you later. Bye bye.