Race jury decides gives American same finish time as stage winner Jakobsen
EF Education First's Tejay van Garderen managed to hold on to his race lead, despite crashing in the closing kilometres of stage 4 of the 2019 Tour of California (Image credit: Getty Images)
The stage was won in a bunch sprint by Fabio Jakobsen – Deceuninck-QuickStep's third stage win in a row at this year's race – with UAE Team Emirates' Jasper Philipsen taking second and three time road race world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) in third.
Unfortunately for Jakobsen, all the talk was about the race jury's decision to award van Garderen the same finish time as the front of the race, despite him initially having lost 50 seconds, which would have handed the race lead to Jakobsen's teammate Kasper Asgreen.
Van Garderen crashed with seven kilometres to go, then missed a turn after having taken teammate Lachlan Morton's bike – with its differently routed brake cables – and was then held up by the crash with just over three kilometres to go.
"The mass crash near the finish of stage 4 was just outside 3km to go," the race jury said in their official ruling. "The commissaires have decided to treat the crash such that all riders affected by the incident and the road blockage will receive the field time."
Check out the highlights of what happened in the video above.
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