Mads Pedersen sprinted clear from a breakaway to win the fourth stage of the Tour de France as defending champion Tadej Pogacar lost the yellow jersey and slipped to fourth.

Dane Pedersen timed his run for the line at the end of the 181.9km stage to perfection as temperatures reached 40C in southern France.

Uno-X Mobility rider Torstein Traeen is the new race leader after finishing eighth in the stage – almost 13 minutes ahead of the peloton.

Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek team-mate ⁠Quinn Simmons ‌was second on the road, as the route took the riders from Carcassonne to Foix, with Movistar’s Raul Garcia Pierna third.

Four-time champion Pogacar – who loses the yellow jersey after just one day for the third year in a row – was 33rd in the stage and trails the new leader by seven minutes 53 seconds.

Riders put blocks of ice down their tops as they battled the severe heat that has hit southern Europe this week.

The pack were allowed to carry bags of ice and water instead of individual bottles as an experiment.

Traeen – the third Norwegian to wear yellow – was treated for cancer in 2022., external

He is not considered a major contender for the overall Tour title but was emotional on the podium.

“It’s quite hard for me to understand how big this is, but you can see from the faces of my old coach how special it is,” Traeen said.

“You don’t really understand what’s going on, maybe in a couple of days it sinks in, but for now I’ll just have to enjoy it.

“I saw the guys in my team from the podium, you can see how happy they are, it’s always emotional.”

Pedersen said everyone involved in his team helped with efforts to keep him cool.

“We just have to live with the heat, and do what you can to cool down,” he said.

“Luckily, the cars in the breakaway are closer to us than in the bunch, and that makes things easier.

“When we are talking about team effort, we are not talking of riders only – there are many people of our team on the roadside, waiting to give bottles and ice sockets to help us deal with the heat.”

Stage five on Wednesday is a mostly flat route suiting sprinters, before the race hits the high Pyrenees mountains on Thursday.