Critérium du Dauphiné: Remco Evenepoel crushes the clock on stage 4 individual time trial and takes overall lead

Time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) blasted to victory and the overall race lead on stage 4 of the Critérium du Dauphiné, completing the 17.4km individual time trial in 20:50 to take his second win in the discipline this year.

Evenepoel takes over the yellow jersey from stage 3 winner Iván Romeo (Movistar), and made gains on his two main GC rivals Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

Vingegaard finished second on the stage, 20 seconds down on Evenepoel, whilst Pogačar took fourth, ceding 48 seconds to the Belgian at the halfway point of the race.

Evenepoel came across the line 37 seconds faster than previous leader Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike), who was knocked off the hotseat but held on for third on the stage.

"It was actually a tough one, it made me think of stage 7 of the Tour last year, a flat run-in and then the climb," Evenepoel said at the finish, referencing another TT he won last year.

"This one was a bit steeper, a bit harder, but my goal was to go as fast as possible until the intermediate, and then after that just try to get a steady pace to the finish line. I think the advantage I had was that there was a lot of headwind in the valleys before and after the climb so I used that to really take the benefit of my position and of the power that I can do, and then in the climb I just went as fast as possible."

There is some contention over whether the figure is actually correct, given some wins struck from the record, but Soudal-QuickStep are celebrating Evenepoel's win as their 1000th victory, with special t-shirts and caps made for the occasion.

"I'm very happy with this victory, number 1000, as the cap says, of the team. So I'm very proud to have done it," Evenepoel said. "I think it's one for Patrick [Lefevere, team founder] and the whole past and everything that he did for the team. This victory is for him and all of his career."

The mid-week time trial brought significant changes in the GC, with gaps beginning to emerge between the 'Big Three', with some others climbing the rankings too.

After gaining time on stage 3 and finishing fifth in the TT, Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is up to second overall, just four seconds behind Evenepoel, whilst Iván Romeo's effort sees him still in third, nine seconds down.

Vingegaard is up to fifth, 16 seconds adrift of the leader, whilst Pogačar in in eighth, 38 seconds down on Evenepoel. Matteo Jorgenson also jumped 19 places to ninth, just a second behind Pogačar.

Green jersey Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is still fourth overall, 14 seconds down, with the chance of yellow not an impossibility with a punchy stage still to come on Thursday.

How it unfolded

Wednesday's time trial offered a 17.4km test from Charmes-sur Rhône to Saint-Péray, with a 1,800-metre rise in the middle that added around 200 metres of elevation into the otherwise straightforward parcours.

Setting off in reverse-GC order, the first riders didn't set particularly meaningful markers, and it wasn't until Tobias Foss (Ineos Grenadiers) finished that the real first benchmark time was set. He stopped the clock at 22:00, and remained in the lead for the first part of the day.

It was Rémi Cavagna (Groupama-FDJ) who eventually set the next best time, clocking in at 21:57. A few GC riders and climbers started to finish soon after Cavagna, but none troubled the French specialist's time, with Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) both finishing 51 seconds down on Cavagna.

Jorgenson, however, smashed the Frenchman's time, going fastest by 28 seconds after a full-out effort to put himself into the hotseat. But with Evenepoel setting off soon after Jorgenson, as well as Pogačar and Vingegaard, it seemed a given that the American's impressive time would likely still fall.

Predictably, Evenepoel took a whopping 37 seconds out of Jorgenson's time, stopping the clock at 20:50, a time that, eventually, no one would beat. Vingegaard stopped the clock at 21:11, beating his teammate Jorgenson but still 21 seconds adrift of Evenepoel.

Pogačar was the slowest of the three big GC contenders, perhaps surprisingly, ceding 49 seconds to Evenepoel to finish fourth on the stage and move into eighth overall.

Stage 3's GC time winner Florian Lipowitz also put in a strong ride, finishing fifth on the stage which, combined with his exploits on Tuesday, sees him sit second overall, only four seconds back on Evenepoel and a clear GC contender after his runner-up finish at Paris-Nice.

There are still four stages to go in France, but many GC riders are now over a minute down on Evenepoel, and it looks like the overall may be largely contested between the riders currently in the top 10, which includes the 'Big Three', Lipowitz, Eddie Dunbar (Jayco AlUla) and Harold Tejada (XDS Astana).

Results

Results powered by FirstCycling