Tour de Hongrie: Groenewegen sprints to stage 4 victory

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Dylan Groenewegen (BikeExchange-Jayco) won stage 4 with an emphatic sprint on Saturday at the Tour de Hongrie. He distanced race leader Fabio Jakobsen (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl), who finished second on the stage. Rudy Barbier (Israel-Premier Tech) finished third.

Into the final corners, Team BikeExchange-Jayco and QuickStep-AlphaVinyl controlled the front of the field. Groenewegen launched his acceleration 300 metres out and exploded to the front to gain a gap to all chasers.

“The legs are really good all week, but the results were not there. Today we made a new plan. The team did an amazing effort for me. I’m really happy with my teammates that they could put me in a good position," the Dutchman said, earning his third stage win of the year.

"Two hundred metres before the finish, I had very good legs for the sprint too. I was going and I saw nobody. The whole team was really strong. I’m really happy."

Stage 4 started in Kazincbarcika for 177km, with three categorised climbs and three intermediate sprints that would traverse one big and two smaller laps to bring the race back to the northern Hungarian town for the finish.  

Just 20 kilometres had tumbled away when a breakaway of four riders had opened a gap of 1:30: mountains classification leader Aaron Van Poucke (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Emil Dima (Giotti Victoria-Savini Due), Toon Vandebosch (Alpecin-Fenix) and Josu Etxeberria (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA).

Van Poucke scooped up all the KOM points on the stage, at the second-category climb in Farkaslyuk and twice on the loops over the category 3 at Tardona, to gain a sizable advantage headed into the final day.

The peloton did not let the break gain too much time, and brought them back with 23km to go and set up Team BikeExchange-Jayco for the win.

"It’s a really important win, it’s been a difficult season, we had two wins with the sprint train already but after that we had a lot of sickness and I also crashed [here], but today we had a bit of luck,” Groenewegen said.

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