Tour de Suisse: Richeze wins stage 4 in Champagne

With the final corner coming just over 100 metres from the finish line in Champagne, received wisdom said that the first man through that point would claim the honours on stage 4 of the Tour de Suisse.

Etixx-QuickStep left nothing to chance. Max Richeze led his teammate Fernando Gaviria into that sharp right-hand bend, and that was where they stayed all the way to the line, claiming a fine one-two for the Belgian squad, with world champion Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) claiming third to retain the overall lead.

Richeze joined Etixx-QuickStep this season to serve as a lead-out man and mentor to Gaviria, and the South American pairing formed a seamless partnership here. Having already advised Richeze to try his own luck on the previous two days, Gaviria made no effort to come around his teammate once the win was assured here, and Richeze became the first Argentinian to win a stage at the Tour de Suisse.

Sagan – in the yellow jersey of race leader rather than his usual rainbow bands – was third into the last corner and though he ate up much of his deficit in the final metres, he left himself with too much to do and had to settle for third. His hopes of a third successive victory dashed, Sagan can console himself with another day in the overall lead.

On watching the television images afterwards, Sagan might consider himself fortunate, too, that he wasn’t brought down by Sky’s Danny van Poppel, who almost clipped the world champion when he attempted to move ahead of him on the final bend. Van Poppel was forced to sit up but mercifully avoided coming a cropper.

The incident ultimately had no impact on the top three positions on the stage, but it did allow for a two-second gap to open up to fourth place finisher Tom Van Asbroeck (LottoNL-Jumbo), who came home ahead of Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo).

The combination of the time gap and the four-second bonus for third place means that Sagan extended his lead over Jürgen Roelandts (Lotto Soudal) and Silvan Dillier (BMC) to nine seconds, while Richeze moves up to fourth, a further eight seconds back.

The stage, a 193-kilometre hike from Rheinfelden, was the final opportunity for the fast men at this race before the high mountains rear into the view in the latter part of the week, and there was little chance that the sprinters’ teams would allow the chance to pass them by.

Early move

Matt Brammeier (Dimension Data), Nick van der Lijke (Roompot - Oranje Peloton), Jérémy Maison (FDJ) and Lukas Jaun (Team Roth) slipped clear in the opening kilometres of racing and quickly established a lead, but their gap was never allowed to linger far north of four minutes, with first Tinkoff and then Etixx-QuickStep putting their shoulders to the wheel to keep tabs on the move.

With 40 kilometres remaining, the gap was down to two minutes, and although the quartet put up fierce resistance in the final hour – Brammeier was particularly generous with his efforts – there was an air of inevitability about their fate.

There was a palpable injection of urgency to the efforts when Jaun was distanced with 22 kilometres remaining, but that coincided with a firmer marshalling of the troops in the main peloton, as Orica-GreenEdge and LottoNL-Jumbo also began to contribute to the chase.

The gap had dropped inside a minute with 12 kilometres to go as the three leaders tacked the final climb of the day, but the sight of riders being shelled out the back of the peloton – Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) among them – was indicative of the rising intensity in the main field.

The neo-professional Maison attempted to slip away alone with five kilometres remaining, but he and his companions were swept up by the main peloton with a shade under four kilometres to go.

That more or less coincided with Etixx-QuickStep’s lead-out train stepping up to the mark and stamping their authority on proceedings. The Czech duo of Zdenek Stybar and Petr Vakoc swapped mammoth turns on the head of the peloton, while Richeze and Gaviria sat snugly behind.

Sagan, for his part, was wisely tucked in on Gaviria’s wheel, but though he chose the right train, the Slovakian perhaps erred in opting to remain in situ all the way to the final bend instead of seeking to move up when the opportunity arose with 300 metres to go.

Easier said than done, perhaps, particularly given how keenly Van Poppel and Stuyven were competing for Gaviria’s rear wheel in the final kilometre. By that point, Richeze had taken up the reins, ostensibly to lead out Gaviria, but when he reached the final 100 metres in front, he kept on going to claim the win.

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