Filipe Cardoso is a revered domestique on the Efapel team but never gets the chance to chase much success. But today, he did an amazing job to win stage four of the Volta a Portugal, finishing up the Sierra de Graca climb.

He was in the eight-man breakaway and dropped his rivals one by one until he lost mountains leader Bruno Silva on the descent from the first cat one climb of the day. He time trialled all the way to the final climb and it was only his teammate Joni Brandao and race leader Gustavo Veloso (W52) who could bridge to him on the climb. He then somehow found the strength to win the sprint ahead of Brandao as Velsoso extended his GC lead once more.

The fourth stage of the Volta a Portugal was the toughest of the race so far, featuring two cat 1 climbs, with one of those a summit finish. The days break went away after just 13km and contained eight men: Filipe Cardoso, Oscar Gonzalez (both Efapel), Bruno Silva | LA-Aluminios), Jim Van Der Berg (Parkhotel Valkenburg), Johannes Weber (Stuttgart), Sten Van Gucht, Joeri Calleeuw (both Verandas) and Timur Maleev (ISD).

Jetse Bol (De Rijke) chased the group at a minute back while the peloton was over four minutes down. At the first intermdiate sprint, Cardoso beat Silva and Gonzalez to the points. At the first mountain sprint, classification leader Silva extended his advantage further, leading Van Gucht, Weber and Cardoso over the third cat climb.

By the feed zone, the gap was 6:15 to the field as Bol had been taken back by the peloton. A few minutes later, Cardoso crossed the intermediate sprint ahead of Maleev and Silva. Van Der Berg fell off the pace of the break as LA-Aluminios controlled the peloton.

As the gap came down, Silva and Cardoso attacked and gained a gap was 27 seconds on Van Gucht, who was 33 seconds ahead of the rest of the break. The bunch followed at 1:50. In the field, Marcos Garcia (Louletano) and Heiner Parra (Caja Rural) attacked.

Over the first cat climb, Silva beat Cardoso and Van Gucht was third. Calleeuw led Gonzalez, Weber and Maleev over from the break while Garcia was next and Fabricio Ferrari (Caja Rural) and Luis Fernandez (W52) led the peloton over.

On the descent Cardoso attacked Silva and the mountins leader eventually dropped back to Van Gucht with 33km to go. The rest of the break were back in the peloton at this point.

At the final intermediate sprint, Cardoso came in first and 3 seconds later, Van Gucht dropped Silva, who was 2:28 off the front of the race and the peloton were 4:12 behind.

Heading onto the final climb, Cardoso still had 1:06 on Van Gucht, with the bunch a further 2 minutes back. W52 were now heading the race for race leader Gustavo Veloso. They were 2:32 behind and van Gucht was just 30 seconds ahead of them with 5km to go.

4km from the line Van Gucht was hauled back and the gap to Cardoso was now rapidly closing. His teammate Joni Brandao attacked inside the flamme rouge and bridged to his teammate and race leader Veloso followed. Brandao set the pace but amazingly, when it came to the sprint, Cardoso was the fastest, with Brandao making it a great 1-2 for Efapel with Veloso coming in on the same time as them. They put 4 seconds into their chasers. Veloso now leads the race by 17 seconds to teammate Delio Fernandez and 35 to Brandao.

Tomorrow’s stage is another hard one, with an early 4th cat climb and a third cat climb before the race finishes up the third cat Santa Luzia climb.