Matteo Trentin (Tudor) won a crash-marred stage 4 sprint at the Tour de Wallonie. The Italian wound up his sprint from further back, passing his rivals and taking the win ahead of runner-up Timo Kielich (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and third-placed Emilien Jeannière (TotalEnergies) in Herve.
"This is very important. In the first part of the season I was good but not good enough to come home with the victory," Trentin said. "Finally, it came true."
Trentin earned enough time bonuses throughout the stage and at the finish line to take the race lead from Corbin Strong (Israel-Premier Tech), who only managed to finish fourth on the day.
"It was a secondary goal. We knew if I won the stage, I could take the jersey depending on the position of Strong. Today went according to plan. We rode smart and the whole team did a great job to set me up for this," Trentin said.
The fourth stage of the Tour de Wallonie offered 188.5km from Verviers to Herve with short but steep climbs over Côte de Saint Jean-Sart, Thier des Forges and Côte de la Redoute before reaching a final, short finishing circuit with a climb to the finish in Battice/Herve.
A breakaway of four emerged early in the stage that included Michael Gogl (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Cole Kessler (Lidl-Trek Future Racing), Lorenzo Milesi (Movistar Team), Liam Slock (Lotto Dstny) and William Blume Levy (Uno-X Mobility).
The five riders held two minutes on the peloton with 50km to go, but that gap was slashed to just 50 seconds in the final 20km.
Several teams, including Intermarché-Wanty, TotalEnergies, Israel-Premier Tech and Groupama-FDJ, led the chase from the peloton behind as overall leader Corbin Strong (Israel-Premier Tech) sat safely among the field.
The breakaway split apart in the closing kilometres, and Slock was the last remaining rider caught by the field with three kilometres out.
Counterattacks resulted in a new three-rider move with Samuel Watson (Groupama-FDJ), Per Strand Hagenes (Team Visma-Lease a Bike), and Benoît Cosnefroy (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale). Still, it was short lived as a reduced field barrelled into the last kilometre.
TotalEnergies, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale and Movistar, launched lead-outs first, but a crash in the field with 500 metres to go disrupted the sprint.
Emilien Jeannière (TotalEnergies) was the first to sprint, and it looked as though he might take the win, but he was caught and passed on the line by stage winner Matteo Trentin (Tudor) and runner-up Timo Kielich (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
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