Time to get some answers. Will Boily be able to defend, will Machado claim the race as his own or will someone else disrupt the party?
Thre riders were allowed away despite a multitude of attempts: Jensen, Lane and Siskevicius
They pass the first KOM in peace and quiet with Siskevicius first.
77 km and a gap of 4'00 RBC Pro Cycling is doing a great job controlling teh breaks advantage in defense of the GC lead.
Lane rides over the Cat. 3 first. Again uncontested.
60 km and 2'45
The hard pace makes the peloton crack. Main names lost behind are Valls, Infantino and Le Gac.
50 km and 3'14
40 km and 2'53
The peloton is back together Buff - Polska and Project: Africa have taken over in front of the peloton.
30 km and 2'45
20 km and 2'42
Looks like the break might actually make it - and at this rate they might even challenge the GC as they are all less than three minutes behind.
15 km and 2'52
Jensen attacks and Siskevicius looks cooked.
Lane counters and going into the final 10 km of climbing he has a small gap.
The peloton is trailing by just over three minutes.
The chase had come to a complete stand-still untill Benett and Boily decided to spice things up at the foot of the final climb.
Vinhas reels them back in for Machado only to see laengen start a new wave of attacks featuring pretty much all the big names except Machado, who still relies on Vinhas.
And when Vinhas is on this kind of form that's perfectly understandable. Amazing work
In the meantime Lane have built almost a minutes gap to Jensen, who has half a minute to Siskevicius and 2'40 to the peloton. Nazaret pushes on and gets a small gap with 5,5 to go.
All the big names follow and now we even see Machado at the front.
Still a bit complacent though as he abandons his attack and just takes the lead of the peloton, which tears it into pieces.
As Lane enters the final 700 m Nazaret have caught up with Jensen.
This is the situation:
I'm terribly sorry but the screenshot with times and composition of the many small groups at this point apparently didn't register.
The key is that Lane has a good gap down to Nazaret and Jensen and then follows many small groups with most of the big names and only very small gaps in between.
Machado in 4th group I believe.
Lane soldiers on to take a great win.
Nazaret with a very stong final climb takes 2nd while Jensen sees all the big names catch up with him at the final corner.
Machado proves with a very strong last part of the climb that he could have set things straight today if he had bothered.
The many small gaps made sure to really rattle the GC as well.
Lane takes yellow while Machado dros to 5th - still within half a minute of the lead though so he should be content not having to have his team work that hard yet and still having the overall win very much within grasp.
Volta a Portugal - Stage 4 
