Alberto Contador of Tinkoff-Saxo won the 4th stage of Tirreno-Adriatico ahead of Nairo Quintana (Movistar) and Daniel Moreno (Katusha). Michal Kwiatkowski (OPQS) is still the leader of the GC with 16 seconds to Contador and 23 seconds to Quintana. Here are more reactions from the stage:

Stefano Pirazzi (33rd in the GC +03:33):

”On the morning team meeting we decided to anticipate the strongest climbers. So I attacked with 9km to go and then, after the communication from the car, I waited the arrival of Kreuziger and Intxausti. We set a really fast tempo, especially Kreuziger who was really strong. I tried to follow him until the end but I dropped with 4km to go. Anyway I quite happy, today was the first time of this year that I did this type of effort and my body responded well”.

Roberto Reverberi, Sport Director of Bardiani whose best rider is Stefano Pirazzi (33rd +03:33):

”Ride against the best world riders is not easy but Stefano today showed again his courage, attacking and trying to resist in front. We could be satisfied how it went because he fought as always with all his heart. On King of Mountain leadership side, today Canola has recovered despite the crash in the first km of the stage and for this reason we sent Fortin in the breakaway and he took off important points to the other riders”.

Enrico Poitschke, Sports Director of NetApp-Endura whose best rider is Bartosz Huzarski (27th +02:03):

“We rode for Tiago and Bartosz today. Unfortunately, Tiago was having some stomach issues, so we had to focus on Bartosz on the final stretch. David and Iker got him into a good position on the final climb. Our goal was for him to keep up with the favorites for as long as possible. Bartosz did a great job of implementing our plan. The others had a very difficult day today, but all of them crossed the finish line within the qualifying time,” Sport Director Enrico Poitschke said after the stage.”

“Because of the profile of the stage and the fact that there were gaps in the general classification today, a breakaway group has a chance of being successful tomorrow. We will thus try to be in the decisive group tomorrow,” Poitschke added.

Jens Zemke, Sports Director of MTN-Qhubeka whose best rider is Kristian Sbaragli (101st +24:36):

“We had 2 guys in a good 32 rider move that were chasing the 6 leaders but they were caught after a few kilometres, after that it was better to save our energy in the bunch,” said DS Jens Zemke.

Alexey Lutsenko (99th +23:08) who was a part of the Stage 4 breakaway:

“Mondory got away on a downhill and I thought better than to go – it was dangerous and there was a lot of sand on the road – he overcooked a turn and went down pretty hard and we never saw him again”

“230km in the breakaway is a long time, but I felt good on the climbs and on the flats – we probably needed more time and more riders to stay away to the finish – the peloton caught us with 10k to go on the final climb, which, now that I think about it, was really, really hard”