Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana: Adam Yates wins stage 4

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Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) won stage 4 of the Vuelta a la Comunitat Valenciana at Alcala-Alcocebre, beating Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) on the tough uphill finish. Pello Bilbao (Astana) rounded off the podium, while his teammate Ion Izagirre took fourth and the race lead.

Yates led a group of attackers from the peloton midway up the 4.2km climb, after Merhawi Kudus (Astana) had caught the last man standing from the break, Silvan Dillier (AG2R La Mondiale).

As the double-digit gradients bit, Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) struggled to keep up, and it became clear that he wouldn’t hang on to the leader’s yellow jersey.

After an attack from Jesús Herrada (Cofidis), Yates was the next to go, jumping away in the final kilometre. Valverde tried to follow but didn’t react quickly enough to catch and pass Yates, who hung on to take his first win of 2019.

Just a few metres back, the Astana duo of Bilbao and Izagirre crossed the line together, with Izagirre almost certain of overall victory – his first at a stage race since the 2015 Tour de Pologne – ahead of tomorrow’s flat final stage. He goes into Sunday with a seven-second lead over compatriot and world champion Alejandro Valverde.

How it happened

The hilliest day of the race, stage 4 was always likely to decide the order of the general classification, with four classified climbs featuring. An uphill finish in Alcala-Alcossebre was the major climb of the day, measuring 4.2km in length, with an average gradient of 8.9 per cent and brutal double-digit gradients along the way.

Three men got away early on after a hectic opening to the stage which saw a break get up the road before being brought back by Burgos-BH, who were keen to place mountain classification leader Diego Rubio out front.

Rubio was joined by Silvan Dillier (AG2R La Mondiale) and João Rodrigues (W52-FC Porto) in the break of the day. The first climb of the day – a first category climb to Culla – saw Rubio duly seal his mountain classification victory. He would take the second climb, before dropping back with 55km to race, his job done.

Meanwhile, back in the peloton, Dimension Data did all the work on the front in aid of race leader Boasson Hagen. They restricted the gap to a maximum of 4:30, which Dillier enjoyed when he went it alone with 30km to go.

On the run-in to the final climb, Dillier demonstrated the same fighting spirit and time trial ability we saw at last year’s Paris-Roubaix, holding the gap at around four minutes for kilometre after kilometre in the face of work by Dimension Data and Mitchelton-Scott.

At the foot of the final climb, Dillier’s lead was down to a minute, but that soon evaporated as Movistar pushed the pace on the lower slopes. The attacks were stop and go on the inconsistent gradients until Yates pushed on, dragging nine men out of the peloton with him.

In the end, the British rider was not only strong enough to lead the way, but he was also strong enough to finish it off too, sweeping to his first victory since the final stage of last year’s Critérium du Dauphiné. Only Valverde could hold his wheel, but the world champion didn’t have enough to overhaul him.

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