Lidl-Trek's Jakob Söderqvist soloed to the stage victory and into the race lead on a chaotic, shortened and rainsoaked Queen stage of the Tour de Hongrie, surviving from the early break and conquering the steep Pécs climb.
His breakaway companion Adrián Benito (Polti VisitMalta) held on for second, whilst Luke Plapp (Jayco AlUla) took third from the chase on the stage in a strange finale that saw the final lap cancelled whilst the bunch were already on the penultimate lap.
With the cancellation coming at the very last moment – the stage went from nearly 30km left to 4km in the blink of an eye – the peloton's calculations of how hard they needed to chase went up in smoke and the riders burst into a desperate chase to bring back the break.
However, it was not enough, and Söderqvist held on to take the stage, and moved into the race leader, 40 seconds ahead of stage 3 winner Benoît Cosnefroy (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and 52 seconds up on Plapp.
With the last-minute nature of the cancellation, there could be adjustments to the GC or even complaints, but at the time of writing, Söderqvist was confirmed as the lead.
How it unfolded
As a result of heavy rain, the fourth stage was shortened, with around 40km removed from the route, taking out the opening loop to make a shorter run-in to the climbing circuit final.
The climb, which was to be the final climb, was only 1.8km but had an average gradient of 10.8%.
The break of the day got away after around 20km of racing, made up of Söderqvist, Benito, Max Kanter (XDS Astana), and Samuele Zoccarato (MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort). They got a gap of two minutes going into the first of four ascents of the Pécs climb, but Kanter was dropped and caught over the top, leaving three in the lead.
Despite some attacks behind, the trio survived over the next ascent too and into what was meant to be the final 30km. But then at the last minute, the final lap was cancelled, due to a number of crashes on the wet descent taking ambulances out of the convoy, making the next ascent of the climb the finale of the stage.
As a result, the chase increased in urgency, but the leaders were still a minute and a half ahead and it looked like there just wouldn't be enough road to catch the leaders. Söderqvist and Benito dropped Zoccarato with 2km to go, and the Swede then dispatched with Benito to go solo.
Behind, it was Luke Plapp who was leading a desperate chase, in a small group with Cosnefroy and Junior Lecerf (Soudal-QuickStep), and though the steep gradient was punishing, they just ran out of metres to reel in Söderqvist.
He took the win solo, with Plapp settling for third behind Benito, and the Swedish rider now leads the race with only one easier stage remaining – Saturday's chaos could turn into overall victory on Sunday.
Results
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