Tirreno-Adriatico: Lutsenko takes dramatic stage 4 win

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Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) won the fourth stage of Tirreno-Adriatico in dramatic fashion after crashing twice in the final 20 kilometres.

The Kazakh rider won from a four-rider sprint but had been almost a minute up the road after attacking solo. He was caught following his second crash inside the final two kilometres, but had just enough left to win the sprint to the line, beating Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) and Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott).

Yates kept hold of his overall race lead and has a seven-second advantage over Roglic with Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) now 50 seconds down.

“I crashed twice in the last 20km. It made it very difficult for me. Fortunately, there was my teammate, Jakob Fuglsang, in the three-man group behind. I crashed again so I'm really happy that I made up with a stage win for this very bad day. It gives me more motivation for tomorrow and the big classics,” Lutsenko said

The first Kazakh rider to win a stage in this race, Lutsenko broke from the lead group with some 30 kilometres to go. He never had a lead of more than a minute, but he clung tenaciously to it. The difficult closing 10km circuit nearly ended his hopes when he crashed into banking on the side of the road, on the first time around, when he misjudged a corner on a descent. The adrenaline rushing, he quickly got back up and managed to maintain a good lead.

On the second lap, with less than two kilometres to go, and with a gap of only 14 seconds or so, he crashed again. His bike slid out from under him and this time he hit the road. He was up and going again almost instantly, but the small gap was disappearing rapidly.

Somehow, he managed to stay away until only 600 meters were left to go when he was caught by Roglic, Yates and teammate Jakob Fuglsang. The four played cat-and-mouse up to the final meters, but it appeared that it would go down to a sprint for the line.

Roglic went first, with Lutsenko in the middle and Yates on the left side. Lutsenko was the fastest sprinter in the group, but he had been battered by his two crashes. Nevertheless, he had the power left to outkick his companions and take the stage win.

How it unfolded

The 221km stage was a lumpy one, with the real difficulties coming in the second half of the day. After about 20 km, the day's break group formed with Nans Peters (AG2R), Mirco Maestri (Bardiani), Marcus Burghardt (Bora-hansgrohe), Joey Rosskopf (CCC), Krists Neilands (Israel Cycling Academy), Luis Mas (Movistar), Giovanni Visconti (Neri Sottoli), Jenthe Biermans (Katusha-Alpecin), Robert Power (Sunweb) and Jasper Stuyven (Trek Segafredo).

The field was happy to let them go, and the group worked well enough together to build up a lead of nine minutes. Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) wouldn’t make it to the finish line after he climbed off midway through due to stomach complaints.

The day's first climb, the Villa del Monte, featured gradients up to 19 per cent, and as expected, the gap started dropping. With 75 km to go, it was down to five minutes.

It was a windy stage and while it did not directly cause too much concern to the peloton, it blew dirt onto the road and a series of crashes followed. Jumbo-Visma’s Tony Martin and Laurens De Plus both hit the deck, as did Ian Boswell (Katusha-Alpecin). Martin and De Plus were able to continue, but Boswell would be forced to abandon.

With about 35 km to go, the lead group was caught by a small group which had escaped from the field. Lutsenko was active in the group and with 30 km to go he took off on his solo flight. Teammate Fuglsang was in the following group of favourites and held the pace down.

The vicious climb on the circuit course cut the peloton into smaller groups and Lutsenko, despite his mishaps, hung on almost to the end. Though he was caught by the chasing group, he dramatically finished off his day's work in the best way.

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