Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) soloed to victory on stage 4 of Paris-Nice atop Mont Brouilly, while Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla) held on for second place to move into the yellow jersey as race leader.
The race’s trek through the Beaujolais was expected to provide a clear showdown between Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe). Instead, more shades of nuance were added to the overall picture of this race as Buitrago and Plapp stole a march on the favourites in the finale.
On a typically cold and damp Paris-Nice afternoon, Plapp sparked what proved to be the winning move when he pressed clear of the yellow jersey group on the penultimate climb of the Col du Fût d’Avenas, with Buitrago bridging across to him shortly before the summit with 22km still remaining.
The pair had just a dozen seconds or so in hand on the chasers at that point, but it would yawn out to 40 seconds ahead of the 3km haul to the finish up Mont Brouilly following something of an impasse in the yellow jersey group.
Evenepoel set his Soudal-QuickStep teammate Ilan Van Wilder to work midway up the climb and the Belgian champion later launched two rasping accelerations, but those efforts didn’t suffice to bring back the two leaders.
Buitrago danced clear of Plapp with 1.3km still to climb, but the Australian champion managed his resources smartly on the upper ramps of the climb, and he came home just 10 seconds down in second place.
Evenepoel kicked from distance, but he was pipped to the last of the bonus seconds by Matthias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), who took third at 37 seconds.
Behind, Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) and Roglič lost a couple of seconds to the Belgian in the closing metres, while overnight leader Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) had to settle for 10th at 46 seconds.
In the overall standings, Plapp holds a lead of 13 seconds over Buitrago, with McNulty third at 27 seconds, while Evenepoel moves up to fifth, 30 seconds off the yellow jersey.
“I didn’t really expect it today, but I came in with fantastic condition and when I saw Roglic put the pace down on the climb, I decided to try,” said Buitrago. “In the end you never how things will play out. I’m very happy with the victory today.”
Buitrago and Plapp have now placed themselves firmly among the contenders for final overall victory, not least because the forecast for snow at the weekend has cast some doubt on Saturday’s pivotal summit finish at Auron.
When Evenepoel picked up six bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint with 32km remaining, it looked as though he would move to within striking distance of the yellow jersey on Mont Brouilly. After the finish, he admitted to frustration at how the inertia of the favourites’ teams had allowed Plapp and Buitrago steal a march.
“Some tactics from UAE were a bit strange, to let the guys go all of a sudden,” said Evenepoel, though an acceleration from his own teammate Louis Vervaeke had ultimately teed up Plapp’s attack on the Fût d’Avenas.
“We’re going to have to sit down and have a good think about the tactics. I don’t want to blame anybody, but it was just a bit unfortunate for everybody. Nobody is happy with two strong riders taking 40 seconds out of nowhere.”
UAE had four riders atop the standings after their victory in Tuesday’s team time trial, but Finn Fisher-Black and Jay Vine have dropped away after their work on behalf of McNulty and João Almeida here.
“It was a filthy day, with the weather and the roads, so positioning was important,” McNulty said. “We were trying to pull back Buitrago and Plapp with just Jay [Vine]. I felt better than expected. Considering I was sick after UAE, I was quite happy with how I was.”
How it unfolded
At the start in Chalon-sur-Saône, Evenepoel was again at the centre of attention, discussing the UCI’s decision to ban his ‘Head Sock’ time trial helmet and clarifying his comments about former teammate Tim Declercq following the previous day’s team time trial.
For another young Belgian, meanwhile, that effort had marked the end of Paris-Nice. Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny), still suffering from his crash at Le Samyn last week, was a non-starter on Wednesday along with his compatriot Oliver Naesen (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale).
Once the race got underway, another man with designs on the Classics began to struggle, and a clearly ill Michael Matthews (Jayco-AlUla) abandoned after a frantic opening hour of race.
By that point, the day’s early break had taken shape, with Jasper De Buyst (Lotto-Dstny), Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-EasyPost), Christian Scaroni (Astana Qazaqstan) and Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies) forging clear after the category 2 Côte du Mont-Saint-Vincent.
The quartet struck up a decent working alliance, building a maximum lead just shy of four minutes before the UAE Team Emirates squad of race leader McNulty set about policing affairs in earnest at the head of the peloton.
The brisk pace and the rugged terrain of the Beaujolais combined to see the break’s lead gradually shrink after the Col de Boubo and Côte de Vauxrenard, while the reinforcements provided by Bora-Hansgrohe at the head of the bunch were a clear indication of Roglič’s ambitions. “Every day is a GC day, eh,” he had shrugged at the start.
The break fragmented definitively on the category 2 Col de Durbize, where Scaroni pressed on alone, but the peloton was closing in rapidly by the time the race made the first of two ascents of Mont Brouilly.
Indeed, the bunch would split on the descent of Mont Brouilly under Bora’s forcing, with João Almeida among those briefly caught out, and the intensity continued until the intermediate sprint at Régnié-Durette with 32km to go, where Evenepoel out-kicked Roglič and Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) to the maximum six seconds.
Despite losing Marc Soler, UAE Team Emirates took over the reins on the day’s toughest climb, the category 1 Col du Fût d’Avenas, but the race took on a different tenor with a shade over 3km to the summit, Evenepoel dispatched his Soudal-QuickStep team to work on the front.
Shortly afterwards, Vervaeke went on the attack with Plapp on his wheel, and the Australian pressed on alone shortly afterwards, building a lead of 20 seconds over the reduced peloton.
The yellow jersey group began to fragment on the upper portion of the climb, with Buitrago bridging across to the Australian, while David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), a faller 800 metres or so from the summit, was forced into a desperate and ultimately forlorn chase to make it back up to Evenepoel et al.
When Plapp and Buitrago crested the summit with 12 seconds in hand on the chasers, it looked as though the race would be knitted back together ahead of the final haul up Mont Brouilly. Bora, UAE, Ineos and Soudal-QuickStep all had riders in the front group, but that served only to make each squad a touch more reluctant to commit to the chase.
“We had the jersey so they were going to look to us,” McNulty said. “But there’s more than us trying to win the stage or the GC.”
Results
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