The fourth stage of the Giro is about as flat as any stage gets in this year’s edition of the race, and at ‘only’ 204.1km, it is far from the longest flat stage. There is a lumpy early section that leads on to the 15km-long Passo del Bracco. After that is a fairly fast descent and then a long flat section. The finale is only broken up by the fairly short climb of Montenero. Will we see a repeat of yesterday’s performance with two of the favourites, Ricco and Schleck, leaping out of the peleton to steal some time on the others?
The bookmakers seem to believe that it will be a mass sprint and as such their money is on: Matthew Goss Luke Rowe Nolan Hoffman Óscar Guerao Pardie Grillo Michael Vanderaerden
The action starts off early. Given the success of the two previous day’s breaks it isn’t surprising that many people are eager to be up front today. First out of the gate are: Wiggins Ascani Tendero
Wiggins was in the break on the second day and Tendero was in the break yesterday. Both men are clearly on very strong form. Hoping to go with these guys are another four riders: Navardauskas Weiss Christensen Stenersen
B&O may be onto a good thing here, trying to sneak two of their time trialists into a break that also contains a couple of other top rouleurs. Indeed, it seems to be part of the team plan for the race, because Stenersen was in the second stage breakaway and Christensen was out on course. Santander aren’t pleased by this group, however and they don’t give them much room to work with. These four are reeled back in. Santander might be thinking of the three Colombia riders in the break yesterday and the devastation they caused.
This is clearly the case because Navardauskas, Weiss and Christensen try to get away again and this time they are given much more lee-way. The front three riders hook onto their back wheels.
Navardauskas struggles to maintain the pace over the short, steep climbs and quickly loses contact with the riders up front. As he starts to drop, three more riders leap out of the pack. They are Goddaert Howard Schär
Howard was also in the second stage breakaway. Clearly he is looking to take the pressure off his team, so that they don’t have to work for Vanderaerden. Goddaert might be up here to help Navardauskas make his way back up to the front group, or he might be trying something in his own right.
It is clear that these eight riders are the only ones who are going to try their luck in the break today and the peleton is happy to let them try. Of them all Christensen is the best placed on GC, in 5th place only 8” down on our leader Sebastian Lang. Wiggins has 3 mountain points and might want to challenge for the leadership in that competition. There are 11 points on offer by taking both summits today but it will be a hard ask. Christensen and Howard are both in striking position in this classification, too, on 1 and 2 points respectively.
At the base of the climb, the lead 5 riders have a 1’01” lead over the chasing 4, and another 3’39” on the peleton behind them, lead by Sony and Santander.
Navardauskas starts to lose contact with the second group on the road not long after the base of the climb and he slips back towards the peleton. Valiantly, however, he keeps struggling to stay ahead of the docile pack behind him.
The climb up the Passo del Bracco is fairly uneventful. At the peak the chasers still haven’t caught up to the lead riders so the front 5 will try to climb for the points on offer. Surprisingly, Wiggins does not participate. He is probably struggling as he is not a climber at heart. Tendero takes it ahead of Weiss and Ascani.
The rain has started and that, as always, means danger for the riders out on course. On the way up the climb, Alexandr Nepomnyachsniy is the victim of a nervous peleton, and he falls over badly. It quickly becomes clear that he can’t carry on and so he withdraws from the Giro d’Italia. He would have been a useful lead-out man for his teammate Forero today.
The situation over the peak of the climb today is:
24”
2’55”
1’44”
4’54”
Leaders
--->
3 Chasers
--->
Navar.
--->
Pack
The chase group catch up pretty quickly on the descent and so finally the break of the day has fully formed together.
After Nepomnyachsniy falls over, the peleton is clearly nervous and this, ironically, causes even more crashes. The first man to come off his bike is Alexander Wetterhall. Fortunately, however, he gets straight back up and back in the group, not losing any time.
The next victim of the slippery conditions is Jason Donald. He isn’t quite as lucky as Wetterhall and, though he is fine to continue, he does not get back into the pack.
Not a lot happens on the long, flat run through the middle of the stage. Anza and Renäng do most of the work for Sony, trying to give Grillo a real chance today. Their work succeeds in catching Navardauskas and bringing him back into the peleton. He was unlucky to not be having a good day today.
At the sprint point 60km from the end of the stage, Christensen takes the sprint from Weiss and then Tendero. This serves to move Christensen up on GC so that now he is only 2” down on Lang’s time. Getting in the break today proved to be a very canny move from him.
The sprint has the effect of splitting the front group and the four riders ahead don’t seem willing to let the other four into the race. The ones who make the cut are Christensen, Weiss, Tendero and Wiggins. It will be much harder work to maintain this group, but it does drastically increase their chances of winning from a small group finish. With 45km to go, after a 15km effort to bring the two groups back together, the situation is as follows:
1’06”
1’07”
2’13”
Leaders
--->
Chasers
--->
Pack
The chasers start to run out of steam and Sony bring them back into the fold. Anza and Renäng are still doing almost all the work on the front, and they are really eating into the gap of the leaders. The gap is now down to 1’26” with 37km to go.
Up front, this causes some panic. Christensen and Weiss attack out of the group of 4, splitting them into two groups of four. Wiggins remains calm, however, and single-handedly manages to bring them all back together after a fairly short chase. Realising the strength that he has today, Wiggins goes again himself. He can’t maintain the pace for too long, however and Weiss in turn brings him back. With 22km remaining the front 4 are all together, but only have a 32” lead.
Down to 16km remaining and Santander make the catch of the front riders, and things look almost certain for a bunch sprint, provided Santander can keep it together over Montenero. Before they get there, however, disaster befalls one of the teams here! Marco Marzano falls! He gets back up on his bike, but the pace is high and he will have to hurry. His teammate Flügel drops back to help him. Similarly, Theo Bos is dropped with the high pace at the very start of the climb. Carmuese send back everyone to try to pull him back to the front in time for the sprint.
The peleton is mercifully quiet over the peak of the climb, with 9.5km to go. Arroyo takes out the points ahead of Del Nero and Pavarin. Santander are still setting the pace, but Wiggle are making themselves conspicuous at the front and they will be looking to make up for a couple of really disappointing days. Just over the top, Marzano is brought back into the pack by his assistant, but Bos is not so lucky and his team are caught out behind the peleton.
The high pace and the wet results cause another rider to come off their metal steed. This time it is the other VolksWagen GC contender Vadim Ratiy. What a disastrous day for them! There is not much time to mourn for him however, as the next crash is not far behind. As Ratiy comes off his bike, he bumps Devolder, who loses control and ploughs across the pack, causing riders to come off left, right and centre. The first man to do so is Tendero, followed by Samoilev, who knocks over Bellotti and in turn forces pink jersey Lang off the course! After this, there is just a cascade of riders who either come off their bikes or are seriously delayed. The pace is too high up front for these riders to come back into contention, and Santander aren’t going to slow down to let them back in. The list of all the riders who go down are:
Morabito, Ulissi, Bernaudeau, Ljungblad Sergent, Colom Mas, Mayo Devolder, Bellotti, Kadri Camaño, Nelson Kocjan Tendero Samoilev Wiggins Lang Christensen Medvedev Passalacqua Ratiy
Festina was hit really hard by this; though thankfully for them Fothen was not caught up in the crash. It is hard to tell how this will affect Ulissi’s performance in the coming couple of hilly stages, however, where he will be one of the top favourites. Devolder and Ratiy were the only real GC contenders in the crash.
Up front the sprint is starting in spite of everything going on around them. The sprint train is as follows, with 2km remaining: Merino Criado Guerao Hoffman Goss Gatto Rowe Grillo Guarnieri
Merino can’t lead out for as long as he is required to, and so Guerao is forced to go early. This is obviously not what he wants. Hoffman, Goss, Gatto and Rowe continue to follow his wheel while Grillo starts to go around them. He is looking very fast today!
Out of nowhere on the right comes the figure of Simone Ponzi! He is taking advantage of the confusion and is absolutely storming forward. He comes equal to Guerao under the 1km to go kite.
Goss realises that he can’t allow this to happen and leaps off the wheel of Hoffman. As fast as Ponzi was looking, he has nothing on Goss’ turn of speed, who starts to pull well ahead of the others.
Grillo, Hoffman and Rowe all realise that they may have missed their chance and launch their own sprints. None of them are looking as good as Goss today, who keeps steaming on ahead.
Once again, a complete surprise presents itself, as the slight figure of Ricardo Ricco comes from behind everyone and kicks up towards the front. He comes past the Rowe, Grillo and Hoffman, and pulls even with Ponzi, who looks like he is struggling.
Matthew Goss crosses the line in first place, taking the sprint win that has thus far been eluding his team. Ricco comes past Ponzi and gets a thoroughly remarkable second place. With this absolutely amazing form he has to be the top favourite to win the race from here. Ponzi holds on for third ahead of Grillo, who edges out Rowe. Wiggle will have to be content with two riders in the top 5 and no one in the crash today. Ginanni makes it yet another puncheur in the top 10 and he comes in ahead of Hoffman, Guarnieri, Schleck and then Gatto. It would be hard to find a more mixed-bag in the top 10.
Ricco’s time bonus, combined with the number of top GC places in the crash puts him in pink going into the hilly stages, where he will hope to hold onto it. He also puts on the points jersey. Malori gets the young riders jersey and will be very excited at that prospect, given his relative lack of experience.
In terms of GC contenders caught behind the crash, most of the big names were well placed in the front group and so managed to lose much time. Marzano and Ratiy both lost 4’20”, as did Devolder. Other than these three the only other big climber to lose a lot of time was Jaim Suaza, who went back to help Bos to the finish and thus lost 8’42”, as did most of his team.
