Ethan Vernon wins stripped-back Catalonia stage as Evenepoel comes through day safely

The organisers of the Spanish stage race said they had no other option. “Due to the activation of a Level 3 VENCAT warning, with wind gusts of up to 90 km/h forecast at the summit of Vallter, the Volta a Catalunya has been forced to shorten the route of its 4th stage, scheduled for Thursday 26 March.”

In practice, that meant the stage was reduced by around 23 kilometres and finished more than 1,000 metres lower than originally planned. That automatically gave the faster riders an extra opportunity compared to the stronger climbers in the Catalan race.

That was not the only talking point after Wednesday, as Remco Evenepoel had spent much of the previous finale on the attack alongside an unwilling Jonas Vingegaard before crashing late on. Fortunately for everyone, and especially for the Belgian, Evenepoel was able to start the shortened fourth stage. In fact, he even picked up bonus seconds in the opening part of the day.

Matthew Fox (Lotto-Intermarché) and Rui Oliveira (UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who had already lost Jay Vine) did not start when the stage rolled out at around 1 p.m. local time. From the moment the flag dropped, the attacks came thick and fast.

Eventually, four riders were allowed clear: breakaway specialist Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché), Koen Bouwman (Jayco AlUla), Merhawi Kudus (Burgos-BH) and Samuel Fernandez of Euskaltel-Euskadi. But the first two soon realised their move was unlikely to succeed and sat up again, which made the chase a lot easier for the peloton.

INEOS Grenadiers and Uno-X let the remaining duo dangle out front, but it was clear almost throughout that the stage was heading toward a sprint. With 18 kilometres to go, the breakaway’s race was definitively over, just before an intermediate sprint. Tom Pidcock picked up a few points and seconds there.

Just after that sprint, Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) briefly tried to move clear, but the other GC teams quickly shut that down.

At almost the same moment, Bart Lemmen (Visma | Lease a Bike) and Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) crashed without too much damage. Jonas Vingegaard, who was positioned right at the back, just managed to avoid the incident on the run-in to the expected sprint finish.

The sprint teams moved to the front on the broad Catalan roads inside the final three kilometres. NSN looked particularly well organised, although Dorian Godon was also close by. The Frenchman could not come around Vernon after the final corner, and so the Briton took the stage win.