Most of the work in yesterday's stage of the Tour of California was left to Omega Pharma-Quick Step and Giant-Shimano and those two teams failed to bring back the early escape. The Dutch team regretted the lack of cooperation between the sprint team that saw John Degenkolb miss out on an opportunity to sprint for the win.

The days’ breakaway of six riders managed to hold of a charging peloton on the fourth stage of the Amgen Tour of California with John Degenkolb sprinting to 11th place as the bunch came over the line.

The stage will go down as a missed opportunity for Degenkolb and the sprinters as the peloton miscalculated the chase and ran out of road in closing down the advantage, eventually coming in to sprint for seventh place.

Day four started with a real fight for the breakaway and the pace was high for a while with attacks coming and going to try and get in the move that stuck. Eventually it was six riders from the smaller American outfits who moved clear and they set about building their advantage.

Team Giant-Shimano were happy to sit back and let the other riders attack early on, with the day’s focus on the sprint finish rather and keeping Lawson Craddock out of trouble as he sits fourth overall on GC after yesterday’s strong climbing performance up Mount Diablo.

The break on paper was ideal – six riders, with no riders from sprinters teams represented to hamper the chase behind.

The parcours of the stage included a string of small hills to tackle but these proved no difficulty for the bunch, with the peloton intact over the final climb as they focused on the finish into Cambria. With 20km to go the gap was still at nearly three minutes and this started to ring alarm bells in the bunch, causing a rise in the pace behind but still several other teams did not commit to the pace making. Team Giant-Shimano helped keep the pace high but in the end it was not enough to bring the race back together.

“There was a lack of cooperation between the different sprinters teams in the bunch today and that eventually cost all of us the chance of a sprint finish,” confirmed Team Giant-Shimano coach, Aike Visbeek in California.

“The guys were feeling strong today and did what they had to do but towards the end the tailwind picked up and this made closing the gap much harder. Roy Curvers, our road captain here, did a good job organising the guys but in the end it didn’t work out for the sprint – but Lawson still sits in fourth overall. Tomorrow is another day and we will go away and evaluate what happened today before focusing on tomorrow.”

Chad Haga, recovering from some stomach issues yesterday, said after the finish: “I felt like my normal self again today and was able to do my job for the team.

“Tomorrow could be a pretty tough stage with the hard climb before the finish but I am looking forward to supporting John and Lawson again there.”

Today’s fifth stage from Pismo Beach to Santa Barbara takes in a difficult climb which crests with 30km left to race. From here it is a long downhill back to the flats after which the peloton will have just 13km to the finish line.