2013 Tour de Romandie - Stage 4 Results

Simon Spilak (KAT) won the queen stage of 2013 Tour de Romandie when he got away on the final climb with GC leader Chris Froome (SKY). Froome now leads Spilak by 47 seconds, with Rui Costa (MOV), who sprinted to third on the stage, sitting at third overall, 1:21 back.

Marcus Burghardt (BMC) sealed the mountain classification jersey and Matthias Brandle (IAM) won the sprint classification. The fight for young jersey classification is still on with Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) leading Wilco Kelderman (BLA) by 1 second. But the Dutch rider is a far better time-triallist than Pinot and is expected to overhaul the deficit on Sunday’s ITT stage.

Race Report

The day was played out in terrible weather conditions that had earlier forced race organisers to shorten the route by 4km and skip the planned second climb of the Col de la Croix. Significantly, the finale was changed from a downhill to a summit finish.

Marcus Burghardt (BMC), Arthur Vichot (FDJ), Tom Dumoulin (Argos-Shimano) and Matthias Brandle (IAM) broke away from the peloton in the early stages and had opened up a gap of 4:30 by the 50km mark.

However, the group split apart on the second climb of the day, the category-one Col de la Croix, with Burghardt initially going clear on his own, only for Vichot to catch and then pass him.

The Frenchman amassed a lead of over one minute on his fellow escapees, but was joined by Tony Martin (Omega Pharma – Quick-Step) with 35km to go after the German had attacked out of the peloton and swiftly bridged to the leader.

The duo were over a minute ahead of the peloton leading on to the final climb to Les Diablerets, but both men started to wilt, with first Vichot and then Martin being swallowed up on the lower slops by a peloton being driven on by Team Sky’s López, Porte and Froome.

Kiserlovski immediately darted up the road and was soon joined by Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) and Marcel Wyss (IAM Cycling).

Spilak also attacked out of the peloton and after both López and Porte had dropped away following huge individual efforts, Froome had little other choice but to give chase.

He effortlessly bridged to Kiserlovski, Pinot and Wyss 8km out and kept driving on to subsequently catch up to Spilak, who had also overtaken the trio.

Froome and Spilak instantly started working together and built an advantage of over 40 seconds by the time they reached the 3km-to-go marker.

A chase group formed behind but they failed to close the gap, leaving Froome free to permit Spilak the stage win, safe in the knowledge his race lead had been significantly increased.

Information from Team Sky website used in the report.