Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) claimed his second consecutive victory in the Tour de Hongrie on stage 4, out-sprinting Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates) on an uphill finish in Etyek. Yannis Voitard (Tudor) was third on the stage.
"I don't know if I ever had this feeling in my legs before," Nys said after his victory. "I was dying completely in the last 150 metres. I looked back and I saw Hirschi coming and I was a bit afraid that he was going to come over. But I think we felt the same and we kept also the same pace.
"I can't describe how much I want to thank my team. They did everything so good to put in the right position and because they also gave me this confidence with this teamwork, and I can finish it off. I'm just a small part in this victory and it's just much from the team as it is from me.
"We went quite fast already in the beginning of the climb and I think it put everyone on the limit already. And in a perfect scenario, I wanted to have my sprint a little bit more explosive but the pace was so high that I could not really accelerate faster. And it was a long way to the finish line. It was really hard. It was painful," Nys said.
The 166-kilometre stage was fast and furious, with no breakaway able to go clear until well into the second hour or racing.
Salvatore Puccio (Ineos Grenadiers), Niklas Märkl (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL), Dusan Rajovic (Bahrain Victorious), Cees Bol (Astana Qazaqstan), Diego Sevilla (Polti Kometa), Matteo Moschetti (Q36.5), and Sergio Meris (MBH Bank Colpack Ballan) eventually opened up a gap and fought to stay away until 2.2km to go when the road tilted uphill.
Nys leapt away with 200 metres to go and only Hirschi could respond but the Swiss rider was unable to match the pace of the race leader.
Results
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