The heating moments of the 4th stage of the Vuelta a Espana were in the very final kilometers. The course profile had no climbs until 4 km to go point where there was a hill that was too hard for the sprinters.

Just after the start, Kristijan Durasek allowed Lampre-Merida to be in the main breakaway of the stage for the third day in a row: the Croatian rider escaped from the peloton with 5 riders (Irizar, Delage, Lindeman, Engoulvent and Maes) and at the 30th km mark, the attackers had an advantage of 13’30” over the chasers.

After a long battle, the bunch closed the gap with 11 km to go.

Lampre-Merida’s riders approached the final climb in the front positions of the peloton and Nelson Oliveira was in the front of the small group from which the pure sprinters were dropped.

The Portuguese rider lost some meters in the final sprint which was won by Valverde, crossing the finish line in 29th position at 11″. Chaves is still the leader of the overall classification, the best Lampre-Merida rider is Cattaneo, 46th at 4’56”.

“It’s good to see that each day one of our riders succeed in joining the main breakaway of the stage,” sports director Orlando Maini said. “Today it was Durasek’s turn: he had already demonstrated during the season his skills in winning thanks to a breakaway, namely in the Tour de Suisse, but the course towards Vejer de la Frontera was too flat to hold off the chase of the bunch, even if they had been great in obtaining a quite good advantage.

“On the final hill, we were competitive thanks to Oliveira and we had good feedbacks also from Cattaneo and Plaza”.