Today’s fourth stage of the Tour of the Alps marked the queen stage of this year’s edition. The riders had to take on six hard climbs during the 141.3 kilometres between Laives and Borgo Valsugana, the perfect setting for another exciting GC battle. After a fast start, Gijs Leemreize made the jump into the break of the day, while the rest of the team was doing a great job to look after Romain Bardet in the chasing peloton. The pace remained high all day and the breakaway didn’t get much more than a three-minute advantage on the bunch. Most of the attackers got caught back along the way and the team’s focus switched back to Romain when the attacks amongst the favourites kicked off. He showed a strong performance, stayed calm, and was able to stay with the best all day. While Carr took the win after a long solo out of the breakaway, Romain battled to a solid 7th place for Team dsm-firmenich PostNL from the chasing group. Ahead of the final day, he now sits in fifth place in GC, still in contention to jump on the podium.
Speaking after the stage Bardet expressed: “I am a bit disappointed about how things went in the final today. I feel like I missed an opportunity to gain some time and positions in the GC and sprint for a better result. I felt good on the last climb and we managed to open a small gap, but it went back together on the last downhill. One last chance tomorrow, where we will go for it again.”
