Étoile de Bessèges: Continental rider Joppe Heremans foils WorldTour riders to win stage 4

Van Rysel Roubaix's Joppe Heremans sprinted to victory on stage 4 of the Étoile de Besseges, launching early but holding on for the win in a punchy finish in Vauvert.

Heremans' win is his first as a pro, and a meaningful victory for the Continental team, beating a peloton of WorldTour and ProTeam outfits.

"I still can't really believe it," Heremans said at the finish. "It's incredible to take my first pro win here in Bessèges. I'm really happy.

"There was really a lot of tension in the peloton. There was a last roundabout, you had to be in a good position, and I managed to be in an OK position, I think, top 15, and when you take your turn you just had to go all out from the bottom to the top. I got lucky with good legs and I could do my sprint and nobody could go [past] me so I'm really happy."

Race leader Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet Rose Rockets) took second for the third time in this race, whilst Paul Lapeira (Decathlon CMA CGM) finished third after his team did a lot of work in the finale.

The final surviving breakaway riders, Valentin Retailleau (TotalEnergies) and Clément Davy (Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur), were caught with just over a kilometre to go after spending the whole day out front, with the stage concluding in an expected sprint but with an unexpected winner.

Finishing second again, Kubiš will lead for another day, carrying a margin of 13 seconds over second-place Henri Uhlig (Alpecin-Premier Tech) into Sunday's final time trial.

How it unfolded

Stage 4 in the Gard started in Saint-Christol-lez-Alès and finished in Vauvert, covering 155km of largely flat roads, with two ascents of the 1km Côte d'Anduze marking the only categorised climbing before a finish on circuits.

A breakaway of three got away early in the stage, made up of Retailleau, Davy and Tommaso Bessega (Polti VisitMalta), and they built up a lead of two minutes, but the peloton kept them under control.

After the initial break formation, not much happened through the middle part of the race, with the leaders working well together and race-leading team Unibet Rose Rockets doing their duty in the peloton for leader Kubiš.

Going into the final 40km, the gap started to come down as the race approached the finishing circuits, cutting to 1:20 by 30km to go, with Alpecin-Premier Tech joining in the chase.

Passing the finish line for the first time with 19km to go, Bessega was the first rider to struggle in the break and he was soon swept up by the charging bunch as the gap fell below 40 seconds.

In the final 10km, Alpecin and Decathlon were doing the bulk of the work in the peloton in preparation for the sprint. The leading pair of Retailleau and Davy pushed on as far as they could, but despite their best efforts, they were caught before the final kilometre as the peloton charged into the finishing town.

On the finishing straight, Andrea Mifsud (Polti VisitMalta) launched early to try and go long, which lured Heremans into opening up early too, but despite taking the front with some 200 metres to go, the Belgian kept the power going all the way to the line to hold off a charging Kubiš and take the win.

Paul Lapeira took third and appeared to strike or gesture to Heremans after the line in some sort of complaint, but it did not appear that Heremans had impeded him on the narrow finish.

Results

Results powered by FirstCycling