Tour de France 2023 stage 4 LIVE: Latest updates from sprint showdown

There’s been a fair bit of overnight criticism for the finish in Bayonne yesterday, with that bend inside the final few hundred metres nearly causing an incident as Wout van Aert launched his sprint to Jasper Philipsen’s inside. A jutting barrier didn’t particularly help matters, either.

Among those to question the safety of the run-in is Fabio Jakobsen, who came home fourth. Jakobsen was fortunate to survive a truly horrifying crash at the Tour de Pologne in 2020 and wonders if enough progress is being made to keep sprinters safe.

“I think we (the riders) and the Tour organisers need to look at the parcours and a finish like this,” the Soudal-QuickStep rider said to CyclingNews. “We all saw in the past what that can do, when a rider goes from one side to the other. If you create a chicane, riders want to go the shortest way, from left to right. For sure it’s not the nicest finish of the Tour.

“We can have long kilometres for finishes, just don’t use a downhill, don’t use a left, right in the last five hundred metres.”

Philipsen’s new, largely unwarranted nickname wasn’t the only odd bit of Netflix’s Tour de France: Unchained series, which while entertaining enough, didn’t quite manage to hit the mark, as Lawrence Ostlere explains.

We’ve still a little while before the action gets going today – I’d expect things to again be quite gentle, though there may be more of a fight to get in the breakaway after that small two-man group got away comfortably yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, that was Jasper Philipsen’s second consecutive win in a Tour bunch sprint, the Belgian following up his Champs Elysees triumph from last year. That Alpecin-Deceuninck lead-out train looked in good working order, with Mathieu van der Poel a vital carriage but Soren Kragh Andersen and Ramon Sinkeldam doing some handy freight carrying too. So much for “Jasper the Disaster”…

It’s been a fun opening three days of this year’s Tour, with the Basque Country fans adding plenty of colour, turning out in force as the race weaved up from Bilbao to Bayonne. The one blight, unfortunately, has been the tossing of tacks, with all-too-regular punctures a feature of each of the last two stages.

After yesterday’s twists and turns towards the sprint finish, the peloton’s fastest riders will hope for a much smoother run-in today at the Circuit Paul Armagnac. The open asphalt might just suit Mark Cavendish, with the Astana rider encouraged by a sixth-placed finish yesterday and continuing his search for that record-breaking 35th stage win.

Lawrence Ostlere spoke to some of Cavendish’s fiercest foes and closest allies to find out what makes the Manx Missile a Tour de France legend.

The sprinters will get another chance to go for glory at the 2023 Tour de France as Tuesday’s stage four offers a flat route and fast finish.

The 182km route begins in Dax, a small town in south-west France, before heading east across Landes to the region of Gers. There is an intermediate sprint in the middle of the stage for those hunting green jersey points, although it is unclear whether anyone in the peloton is dedicated to winning the points classification – the green jersey may well end up on the shoulders of whichever top sprinter makes it to Paris by default rather than design.

There is one categorised climb near the finish, the Cote de Demu (2km at 3.5%) and the latter half of the stage is a little lumpy, but not enought to deter any sprinters from reach the finish.

Follow all the build-up and latest updates from stage four of the Tour de France.