Giro d'Italia: Carapaz wins stage 4 after GC riders hit the deck

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The first 228 kilometres of stage 4 of the Giro d’Italia to Frascati near Rome passed without incident but chaos broke loose once again in the final seven kilometres as crashes altered not only the complexion of the stage but of the Giro d’Italia as a whole.

Richard Carapaz (Movistar) claimed the spoils, producing a powerful acceleration on the uphill finish in Frascati, while 2017 winner Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) crashed hard and saw his hopes of overall victory dealt a near-fatal blow.

The peloton was split into pieces by two crashes in quick succession with just over six kilometres to go. Salvatore Puccio (Team Ineos) touched wheels to spark the first crash, before another spill, involving Dumoulin and Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), occurred at a roundabout less than a kilometre later.

That left Carapaz in a front group of 15 riders that contained, crucially, maglia rosa Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma). The Slovenian was the only other GC contender in there, and gladly extended his lead in the overall standings.

The front group contained most of the big-name sprinters, but the two-kilometre final climb, which averaged four per cent, favoured Carapaz, who surged clear with 400 metres remaining. Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) opened the taps in the final 200 metres and steadily gained on the Ecuadorian but eventually ran out of road. Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates), whose teammates had put Elia Viviani (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Pascal Ackermann (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Arnaud Demare (Groupama-FDJ) in trouble on the climb, claimed the final podium spot.

Roglic finished sixth, two seconds down on Carapaz, and helped himself to 16 seconds over Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida), and Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana), who finished in a small chase group, along with Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe), Bob Jungels (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha-Alpecin), Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo), and Tao Geoghegan Hart (Team Ineos).

Pavel Sivakov (Team Ineos) lost a further seven seconds, while Mikel Landa (Movistar) finished 36 seconds down and Ben O’Connor (Dimension Data), who went down in the first crash, lost 1:30.

The biggest casualty, however, was Dumoulin, who crossed the line at a snail’s pace 4:04 behind the winner, surrounded by his Sunweb teammates and with blood pouring from his left knee, from what seemed like chainring tooth marks.

Now 56th overall, 4:30 down on Roglic, the Dutchman’s chances of a second Giro d’Italia victory lie in tatters. That’s if he’s able to continue; the manner in which he crossed the line means his very presence in the race hangs in the balance. Initial x-rays confirmed he had not fractured any bones in his knee but there were concerns about his tendons.

While Carapaz, who collected 10 bonus seconds, made up for his time trial losses and moved to 16th overall, Roglic extended his lead over Yates to 35 seconds, with Nibali still third at 39 seconds and Lopez fourth at 44 seconds. Ulissi jumped to fifth, with Majka, Mollema, Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-Merida), Jungels, and Davide Formolo (Bora-Hansgrohe) rounding out the new top 10.

How it unfolded

Stage 4 was another day in the saddle that exceeded the 200-kilometre mark, serving up a lightly undulating 235km route from Orbetello to Frascati that contained one categorised climb – a modest category-4 ascent after 30km. On everyone’s minds, however, was the two-kilometre gradual climb to the finish line, which seemingly opened the door to a wide range of contenders.

A three-man breakaway formed in the early kilometres, containing some familiar faces from the stage 2 break in Marco Frapporti (Androni-Sidermec), Mirco Maestri (Bardiani-CSF) and Damiano Cima (Nippo-Fantini-Faizanè). By the end of the day Frapporti would be leading the Fuga Pinarello standings for most kilometres spent in the break, while Cima’s second and first placings at the intermediate sprints put him into the lead of that classification.

The trio built a lead of 12 minutes before the sprinters’ teams – notably Groupama-FDJ and Lotto Soudal – set about reducing the deficit. They brought it down to 6:30 with just over 100km to go but then it started to drift out again. The sprinters’ teams disappeared from the front, leaving Jumbo-Visma setting an easy pace that allowed the trio to move back out to nine minutes.

At that point, it looked like the break could stay away to contest stage honours, with the possibility of Frapporti – 6:19 down at the start of the day – taking the maglia rosa. However, after 10km or so, the stalemate in the peloton was cancelled as Bora-Hansgrohe sent a rider to the front to chase, along with UAE Team Emirates and then Deceuninck-QuickStep. The gap steadily fell thereafter.

With 20km to go Cima was dropped from the break, and 10km later so were Frapporti and Maestri as the peloton moved through the gears, GC and sprint teams jostling for position.

The tension led to a string of crashes. Firstly, James Knox (Deceuninck-QuickStep), who had started the Giro d’Italia brightly, hit the deck in a small crash for a second day running and lost nearly 13 minutes.

Then came the big crash with 6.5km to go. Puccio was near the front of the bunch when he touched wheels and so the group was naturally split, with O’Connor the only GC contender to hit the deck. More was to come, as several riders slid out on a roundabout 500 metres later, including Dumoulin and Yates. That left a group of just 15 riders out front, with the small GC chase group behind.

Ackermann, Demare, and Ulissi had teammates in the lead group and used them up on the run-in to the finishing climb. As the road went uphill, Valerio Conti (UAE Team Emirates) piled on the pressure and Viviani was soon dropped, and Demare too later on.

As they entered the final few hundred metres, just six remained to fight for the stage: Carapaz, Ewan, Ulissi, Roglic, Ackermann, and Florian Senechal (Deceuninck-QuickStep).

Carapaz went from range and surged clear as the others hesitated and missed their chance. Ewan, who won the uphill finish at Hatta Dam at the UAE Tour in February, was the strongest of the rest and completed the final 150 metres quicker than Carapaz but by that point the damage had been done.

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