Race report from Johnny Weltz
Today was the big day for the GC guys as the hard 20km climb of 2000m would only leave the best to battle for the win.
We had a very fast start, as right from gone four guys broke off. We did have Cozza in it, but after 20km they where brought back. Then a group of eight riders took off and the field let them get a gap of 3.30. That is when the peloton started to chase. It went on like that for all day on a hard circuit.
At the bottom of the last climb with 20km to go the gap was down to 1.30 to one lone survivor of the break, Sanchez. Then the front group exploded immediately with only the strongest in it –we had Dan and Timmy, as well as Christian for a while.
With 5km to go Dan took things in his own hands with a super hard attack — he was 55 seconds down on the overall leader Valverde, who couldn’t follow Dan! Valverde had a teammate to lead the chase as he couldn’t move, so it stayed a 15 second gap in between Dan and the race leader all the way to the finish.
The early breakaway guy took the stage win ahead of Dan by a few seconds in front of him, and the Valverde group some ten seconds down. This brought Dan to second on GC after a super performance, and as Dan said, really solid support from his teammates!
Team Garmin-Slipstream, stage 4 results
1. Julian Sanchez 4h46.29
2. Dan Martin +0.06
43. Timmy Duggan +6.11
46. Christian Meier +6.53
87. Martijn Maaskant +18.54
108. Svein Tuft
109. Steven Cozza
123. Trent Lowe
148. Mike Friedman +22.52
Team Garmin-Slipstream, GC results
1. Alejandro Valverde 13h49.38
2. Dan Martin +0.15
39. Christian Meier +9.59
59. Timmy Duggan +21.35
93. Trent Lowe +35.19
98. Steven Cozza +37.37
123. Svein Tuft +44.41
136. Martijn Maaskant +47.29
150. Mike Friedman +51.23
