Dan Martin has kept his general classification hopes alive at Giro d'Italia on a day when some highly fancied riders fell by the wayside while a handful of others gained time on the Irishman.
Martin (34) is an outside bet for the final podium when the race ends in Milan but he has a bigger chance of making the top 10 - while hopefully collecting a stage win along the way.
Today he saw some of his challengers ride away from him and eke out 11 seconds over him. However, Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) also put time into others; some of it quite significant and gained over very big names.
Today's entertaining stage 4 was a tale of two races - the breakaway men vying for victory on the day and the race leader's jersey while the general classification men back in the bunch attacked each other for the first time, with gaps opening.
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The 187km stage from Piacenza to Sestola was run off in wet and cold conditions, with 1,800 metres of climbing in the final 100km. A 25-man breakaway forged clear early in the day and from it just 10 riders would survive all the way to the finish.
Joe Dombrowski (UAE-Team Emirates) and Dan Martin's team mate, Alessandro De Marchi, proved the strongest of the breakaway. But they prevailed only after two of the other breakaway men - Rein Taaramae (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert) and Wicklow-born Chris Juul-Jensen (BikeExchange) - got clear of the large escape group and looked for a time like they would make it all the way.
In the end Taaramae and Juul-Jensen were recaptured by the remains of the breakaway on the 4.3km Colle Passerino climb, peaked less than 3km from the finish. Once the two leaders were caught, the remains of the breakaway shattered on the climb, with Dombrowski and De Marchi pulling clear.
However, Dombrowski had enough to distance De Marchi and win the stage by 13 seconds from the Italian, though De Marchi took the race lead thanks to his 2nd place.
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The remains of the peloton also split on that final
climb, with sections up to 19 per cent. Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) lit it
up first before Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious) got across to him and did the
real damage.
Sensing Landa was determined to go all the way, any of the big favourites who were able to follow him did so. Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech) and Hugh Carthy (EF Education-Nippo) all got across to Landa and Ciccone.
Once they were clear, thanks mainly to Landa's work, Bernal seized the chance and also went to the front to drive the pace. In the end those five finished just 1:37 down on the stage winner.
Those five general classification riders who proved strongest on the final climb gained 11 seconds on a group of seven containing many other big names including Dan Martin. The Irishman was with Simon Yates (BikeExchange), Davide Formolo (UAE-Team Emirates), Alberto Bettiol (EF Education-Nippo), Romain Bardet (Team DSM), and Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep).
Other fancied riders in the GC battle lost 34 seconds to the Bernal-Landa group and 23 seconds to the Martin-Yates group. They included Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo), Jai Hindley (Team DSM), Marc Soler (Movistar), Pavel Sivakov (Ineos Grenadiers) and Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe).
George Bennett (Jumbo-Visma) and Joao Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) were the big losers today as both faltered in the finale; Bennett losing 1:29 to the Bernal-Landa group and Almeida losing a whopping 4:21.
Race leader this morning, Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) was unable to cope with the climbs and wet and cold conditions today and he finished some 21:08.
Nicolas Roche (Team DSM) finished in 75th place today some 12:36 down on the stage winner but safely in the knowledge that his team mate Bardet rode strongly today while his other team leader, Jai Hindley, was also solid.
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