Tirreno-Adriatico: Quintana wins stage 4 atop Terminillo

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Nairo Quintana (Movistar) repeated his dominant 2015 performance in Tirreno-Adriatico's high mountains on Saturday, dancing away with two kilometres to go to win atop the Terminillo climb.

The Colombian timed his effort perfectly, waiting until the final five kilometres to begin pushing the pace, and then with two kilometres to go left Geraint Thomas (Sky) and Adam Yates (Orica-Scott) behind, wiping out earlier attacker Simon Spilak (Katusha) in the process.

BMC's Rohan Dennis and Tejay van Garderen could not keep pace, and the leader's jersey left the team for the first time in the race, and landed on the shoulders of the Movistar man.

"I wasn't sure of what I could do today as I had been sick a few days ago but our tactic was to have someone ahead before I launched my attack and that's what happened with Castroviejo," Quintana said. "The advantage I have on GC now is significant. It gives me some confidence ahead of the second half of the race."

Thomas put in another valiant effort to take second on the stage, 18 seconds behind Quintana, and moved into the GC's top 10. Yates rolled in six seconds further back for third on the day.

Quintana now leads the race by 33 seconds over Yates, with Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) third at 56 seconds. Thomas managed to wipe out a large portion of the disastrous deficit of Sky's team time trial, moving into 8th overall at 1:23.

How it unfolded

The queen stage of Tirreno-Adriatico to the top of the Terminillo went off in much more pleasant weather conditions than last year, where snow punished the riders on the final climb. It was short sleeves and sunshine for the bunch as they headed out from Montalto di Castro, with 187 arduous kilometres ahead.

A group of six got away shortly after the start and quickly built up a large gap: Davide Ballerini (Androni Sidermec), Mirco Maestri (Bardiani CSF), Alan Marangoni (Nippo-Vini Fantini), Matvey Mamykin (Katusha), Marko Kump (UAE Team Emirates) and Romain Gioux (Novo Nordisk).

With a fearsome climb at the end of the stage, the field was happy enough to let this sextet go, and the gap reached a high of just under 11 minutes near the halfway point of the stage.

The group easily galloped through the first intermediate sprint and La Colonetta, the first climb of the day. The gap got large enough that Ballerini, starting the day as 103rd at 10:15 down, moved into the virtual race lead.

The gap started coming down after the midpoint, with the wind playing a role, and BMC gambling with the other teams. The American team were willing to sacrifice two riders to do the early lead work but also looking to force the other teams to take on some of the work.

The peloton was able to take it relatively easy, while the lead group had the pressure of hoping to get through to the end. In the last 50 kilometres, the gap dropped steadily. With about 35 kilometres to go, Sunweb moved to the front and went full-out, and the gap then plummeted.

The lead group split with 23 kilometres to go, with Mamykin, Ballerini and Kump moving to the front. Mamykin crashed out of the group on a turn, and soon Kump was dropped, leaving Ballerini to fend off the peloton on the climb.

The mountains classification leader's time out front came to an end with 13 kilometres to go, as the attacks began in the peloton, with Nibali's Bahrain-Merida team opening up the throttle.

A group led by Michal Kwiatkowski (Sky), Katusha's Simon Spilak and Maurits Lammertink, Jonathan Castroviejo (Movistar) and Roman Kreuziger (Orica-Scott) swept up Ballerini, who struggled to hang on before dropping back.

Lammertink was next to drop back from the ill-fated move, and then his teammate Spilak attacked with 11 kilometres to go, pulling Castroviejo and Kwiatkowski with him.

Bahrain-Merida took control of setting the pace on the lower slopes, but Spilak and Co. steadily extended their lead to 50 seconds halfway up.

The lead began to come down, and then an acceleration from Spilak with 6.8 kilometres left to go distanced Castroviejo, while behind, Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) attacked from the peloton. The Dutchman's move was quickly neutralised by FDJ's Sebastien Reichenbach for Pinot.

Fabio Aru (Astana) couldn't hold the pace and was distanced as Reichenbach pulled off. Soon an attack from Egan Bernal (Andoni) put the cat amongst the pigeons and drew the overall contenders to the fore.

With 4.2 kilometres remaining, Adam Yates put in a dig that was marked by Geraint Thomas (Sky) as BMC ran into trouble, with race leader Dennis unable to keep pace. Ahead, Spilak had dropped Kwiatkowski, and the former world champion was quickly passed by the GC contenders.

Quintana danced across to the move with Rigoberto Urán (Cannondale-Drapac), while Tejay van Garderen briefly latched on but could not hold the wheels.

A brief truce allowed Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R La Mondiale) to get a closer look before being dropped by a Quintana acceleration brought the group back to four with Urán, Thomas, and Yates.

With 2.2 kilometres to go, Quintana put the final acceleration in, and brought Spilak into view. Under the two-kilometre banner, Spilak's lead fell to Quintana's furious pace, and the Colombian powered away to the stage win and race lead.

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