After two stages won in sprint finishes, Tadej Pogačar returned to his more familiar format of winning solo on Saturday as he strengthened his grip on the Tour de Romandie with victory on stage 4.
The World Champion, wearing the yellow jersey as overall leader, created daylight for the first time with a series of accelerations on the Jaunpass, climbed three times on what was billed as the ‘queen stage’ of the race.
After shattering the GC group just over 3km from the summit off the category 1 ascent, Pogačar got rid of the final rider on his wheel, Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), just over a kilometre from the top, before soloing downhill to the finish in Charmey.
Lipowitz crossed the line in second place, 14 seconds down, but it was still a remarkable ride by the German, who put even more daylight between himself and the rest of the podium contenders.
Third place was contested nearly two minutes later by a chase group that swelled to a 15 riders on the descent, with Pablo Castrillo (Movistar) clipping off in the closing kilometres to take the final podium spot ahead of Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS-Astana).
“It definitely was not easy,” Pogačar said. “The competitors today were really strong. It was really hard to drop Florian in the end, he was really strong, and also on the downhill he gave me really hard time, keeping the gap the same all the time. It was super hard, and I’m happy with the performance toady.”
The victory, aided by bonus seconds, sees Pogačar double his lead on the general classification, taking his advantage over Lipowitz from 17 seconds to 35 seconds.
With one stage and one summit finish remaining, it looks like a two-horse race, with a huge gap to the rest after everyone else conceded more than a minute on the climb and then another minute towards the end as the chase group swelled and then stalled.
Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious), who briefly rode away from Lipowitz as he reacted to the first Pogačar attack, remains third overall but now down at 2:23 back.
How it unfolded
The penultimate stage of the Tour de Romandie was the shortest road stage of the week, measuring 149.6km from Broc to Charmey.
The two towns are barely 10km apart, and the course was built around the Jaunpass, climbed from two different sides early on before a longer loop around the valley and up the Saanenmoser, and then back up the harder side of the Jaunpass before the descent to the line.
There was an early breakaway of eight riders: Roland Thalmann (Tudor Pro Cycling), Louis Vervaeke (Soudal-QuickStep), Andrew August (Ineos Grenadiers), Bauke Mollema (Lidl-Trek), Maxime Decomble (Groupama-FDJ United), Alexy Faure Prost (Picnic-PostNL), Michael Leonard (EF Education-EasyPost), and Marco Schrettl (XDS Astana).
However, the first ascent of the Jaunpass (the category 2 side), started after just 15km, and produced a shake-up to the day’s escape.
As the peloton exploded, multiple Grand Tour champion Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) was among the riders to go across to the break, along with Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-QuickStep) and Marco Brenner (Tudor). With August, Mollema, and Schrettl falling away, that left a group of six over the top of the Jaunpass for the first time, with Thalmann taking maximum mountains points ahead of Brenner.
It was a similar story as the group hit the harder side of the Jaunpass, with Thalmann once again beating Brenner to the maximum haul of KOM points. Back in the peloton, it was Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates doing the work.
They came down and back to the start in Broc after 65km, with the gap at three minutes. Vervaeke claimed the intermediate sprint in Broc and another just up the valley in Les Moulins, which marked a steady drag towards the day’s penultimate climb, the second-category Saanenmoser.
This saw another shake-up in the break, as Decomble and Thalmann couldn’t hold the pace. Brenner was also missing from the group and was later confirmed to have abandoned, leaving four out front.
Vervaeke led the race over the Saanenmoser and shouldered much of the work on the run down towards the familiar Jaunpass on behalf of his teammate Paret-Peintre.
As the final climb (8.1km at 7.9%) began with 25km to go, their lead had been reduced to just over a minute. Vervaeke pulled aside immediately, while Leonard soon lose contact but never fully dropped and chipped away around 10 seconds behind Roglič and Paret-Peintre.
The stage, though, was being set for Pogačar, with Pavel Sivakov whittling down the bunch with a huge turn on the front. After a much shorter and sharper turn from Felix Grossschartner, Pogačar made his move, around 3.5km from the top.
Martinez was able to follow the seated acceleration, with a small gap to Lipowitz and Jorgen Nordhagen (Visma-Lease a Bike). As they caught and passed Roglič and Paret-Peintre, Pogačar issued another acceleration and created daylight, but not for long. Martinez might have been slipping back but Lipowitz was suddenly looking much stronger, even riding his way up into Pogačar’s wheel.
The German remained there for a good kilometre or so, but when Pogačar rose from the saddle and kicked hard 1.2km from the top, he had to relent, and the yellow jersey was alone. Still, Lipowitz limited the damage to 20 seconds by the top - much better than the minute Martinez ended up conceding as he was caught by Nordhagen, Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers), Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla), Sergio Higuita (XDS Astana), and Yannick Voisard (Tudor) near the top.
On the fast descent, Pogačar made no mistake, maintaining his advantage over Lipowitz. Behind, Rodriguez crashed but was soon back on his bike, while the chase group was caught by another one to swell to 17 riders.
The final few kilometres were flat but Pogačar maintained his margin until the line. Behind, Castrillo and Fortunato stole away as the group stalled to contest third place between them.
Results
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