Tour of the Alps stage 4: breakaway rider Jasch takes shock first pro victory as queen stage disappoints

Relative unknown Lennart Jasch won stage four of the Tour of the Alps on Thursday. The Tudor rider was the strongest from the early breakaway on what turned out to be an anticlimactic queen stage. Matteo Sobrero (Lidl-Trek) and Federico Iacomoni (Team UKYO) came close but couldn't reel the German in. Giulio Pellizzari remains the race leader.

Stage three had been won the day before by Tom Pidcock, who found an explosive sprint despite a difficult day in the legs. The big story that day, however, was a serious crash early in the stage — one that claimed Lorenzo Finn (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) as its main victim.

Race leader Pellizzari was therefore without his young compatriot for Thursday's mountain stage. He still had Aleksandr Vlasov as another key lieutenant in the team. On paper, stage four — with 4,100 metres of climbing — was perhaps the hardest stage of this Tour of the Alps. Like Wednesday, though, the weight of the route was concentrated in the early part of the course.

There was no early breakaway from the gun. The pace, though, was exceptionally high. On the Passo Bordala (14.8km at 6.9%), the day's first climb, the peloton cracked. Race leader Pellizzari missed the split and was left chasing with his teammates.

His helpers closed the gap without too much trouble, and the Italian was never seriously in danger. Once the peloton came back together, numerous attacks followed before five riders finally got clear: Lennart Jasch (Tudor), Rainer Kepplinger (Bahrain Victorious), Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost), Christopher Juul-Jensen (Jayco AlUla) and Simone Raccani (Team UKYO) rode clear from a peloton that had been whittled down considerably.

In the peloton, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe and Pinarello-Q36.5 largely controlled the race, as they had in previous stages. The break was given no more than three minutes. With 50 kilometres to go, it fractured. Jasch proved the best climber of the group — though he knew the finish was still a long way off.

On the descent they came back together, with Quinn losing contact for good. Whenever the road went up again, Jasch was strongest, and with 25 kilometres to go he went clear for good. Juul-Jensen and Kepplinger did not give up immediately, but could not match the former speed skater.

From the peloton, Juan Felipe Rodriguez (EF) launched a chase. The Colombian couldn't bridge the one-minute gap to Jasch alone, hovering around 30 seconds back as the peloton followed 20 seconds further behind. Things looked good for the German — until a string of attacks landed on the final uphill stretches.

Pidcock accelerated first, then Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe put both Vlasov and Pellizzari on the road. Tudor teammates Mathys Rondel and Michael Storer did fine work on the descent to protect Jasch, but they couldn't cover every move. With six kilometres to go, Jasch still held a 20-second cushion and dared to dream.

Sobrero and Iacomoni timed their jump from the peloton well, but didn't close in on Jasch quickly enough. Tudor's blocking work had taken the pace out of the peloton entirely. The two chasers came to within ten seconds with two kilometres remaining — but not close enough. Jasch crossed the line for his first professional victory. Sobrero came through to finish second.