Stage 4 - will Croket be able to hang on? He managed to defend his shirt surprisingly well on Stage 3 with a 2nd place after Bennati.

What's for sure is that wind is likely to make a change on this stage, just like all the stages so far.

Today's break ended up consisting of Cardoso, Mironov, Barth, Reckweg, Mangel, Meier, Lorenzetto, Walker and Mouris. Both Keizer and Castano attacked afterwards, but never managed to catch the front riders - only Walker who'd been dropped.


White Bear Steyr seemed to have everything under control, though, and didn't need any help in reducing the gap. Eventually, they did get some assist, though, and with 33 km to go, the first three riders were caught. In front, there were several attacks, but none had the strength to stay away from the peloton, and with 18 km to go, it was over. Despite heavy wind, there were no splits in the peloton on this stage, and instead, the peloton could - united- start setting up the sprint trains with 10 km to go.


Sprint started with 2.5 km to go. One train had Martin Pedersen leading out for Vantomme, Croket and Bennati. another had Alex Rasmussen leading out for Serebriakov and Loddo. A not so strong train had Ladagnous leading followed by Kolesnikov - and Boonen.


1 km to go, and it's Boonen leading with Croket second, and a strong fight for third by Davis, Steegmans, Serebriakov and Bennati.


It's an easy win for Tom Boonen! Steegmans takes 2nd with less than a wheel in front of Bennati, Serebriakov fourth and Crocket fifth.


Stage Result:

1	Tom Boonen	Warner Brothers	3h02'40
2	Gert Steegmans	Rabobank	s.t.
3	Daniele Bennati	La Gazzetta dello Sport	s.t.
4	Aleksandr Serebriakov	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne	s.t.
5	Lars Croket	White Bear - Wild Horse	s.t.
6	Allan Davis	American Suzuki	s.t.
7	Jurgen Van Loocke	Festina - Seiko	s.t.
8	Jean-Patrick Nazon	M&M Cycling	s.t.
9	Wouter Weylandt	Warner Brothers	s.t.
10	Ahmad Haidar Anuawar	M&M Cycling	s.t.
11	Alberto Loddo	Lipton Ice Tea	s.t.
12	Borut Bozic	Crédit Lyonnais	s.t.
13	Anthony José Brea	Festina - Seiko	s.t.
14	Samuel Dumoulin	Crédit Lyonnais	s.t.
15	Maxime Vantomme	Philips - Hummel	s.t.
16	Tomas Vaitkus	M&M Cycling	s.t.
17	Alex Rasmussen	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne	s.t.
18	Matthieu Ladagnous	American Suzuki	s.t.
19	Ismaël Kip	British Airways - Martini	s.t.
20	Martin Pedersen	Philips - Hummel	s.t.

Overall Classification:

1	Lars Croket	White Bear - Wild Horse	9h35'55
2	Daniele Bennati	La Gazzetta dello Sport	+ 1
3	Gert Steegmans	Rabobank	+ 13
4	Aleksandr Serebriakov	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne	+ 20
5	Tom Boonen	Warner Brothers	s.t.
6	Pim Ligthart	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne	s.t.
7	Eros Capecchi	Rabobank	+ 25
8	Matteo Bono	La Gazzetta dello Sport	+ 28
9	Vladimir Bileka	White Bear - Wild Horse	+ 30
10	Ahmad Haidar Anuawar	M&M Cycling	+ 35

Points Classification:

1	Lars Croket	White Bear - Wild Horse		57
2	Gert Steegmans	Rabobank		52
3	Daniele Bennati	La Gazzetta dello Sport		51
4	Tom Boonen	Warner Brothers		47
5	Eros Capecchi	Rabobank		25
6	Allan Davis	American Suzuki		24
7	Aleksandr Serebriakov	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne		23
8	Maxime Vantomme	Philips - Hummel		20
9	Ahmad Haidar Anuawar	M&M Cycling		14
10	Sergio Marinangeli	La Gazzetta dello Sport		14

Youth Rider Classification:

1 Lars Croket	White Bear - Wild Horse	9h35'55
2 Aleksandr Serebriakov	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne	+ 20
3 Pim Ligthart	Virgin Media - Caisse d'Epargne	+ 20
4 Eros Capecchi	Rabobank	+ 25
5 Ahmad Haidar Anuawar	M&M Cycling	+ 35