Daniel Moreno made the most of a rare chance to lead the Katusha team in a major bike race when he came very fast from behind at the end of the final climb in yesterday's queen stage of Tirreno-Adriatico to finish 3rd behind Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana. In fact, the Spaniard felt so good that he is convinced that he could have won the stage and is now looking forward to today's stage whose 30% climb suits him down to the ground.

The final climb up the Selvarotonda provided all the action in Saturday’s stage 4 of Tirreno – Adriatico.  Situated with 14km to go after 230 km of racing in the pedals, the pitch of the climb really bites and proved to be a worthy battleground for the stage win.

Dani Moreno placed third on the stage behind winner Alberto Contador.

“In general I am happy to have achieved my best result of the season, but when I saw how close I came, in the end I am a little bit disappointed," he said. "I could have won this stage if I had raced with a bit more confidence in myself. I was in doubt because when I saw Kwiatkowski suffering with 1km to go, I wanted to take advantage of the situation, but then I had a bad moment myself. Right then a strong Contador and Quintana went away.

"Then in the last 200 meters I felt so much better and ended up passing some 8 other riders. I just missed two of them to win. Tomorrow I will try again as there is another uphill finish."

With a dramatic acceleration Tinkoff-Saxo’s Alberto Contador easily rode away from Nairo Quintana (Movistar) to take the uphill win by one-second. Moreno was third at five seconds off the winning time of 6:39’56”.

Despite being isolated and somewhat out of his element in going head-to-head with pure climbers, Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) arrived in the first group to keep his race lead by 16-seconds to Contador.

Katusha riders were active throughout the day. Rounding out the top ten was team rider Giampolo Caruso and earlier in the day Maxim Belkov initiated a break with five other riders. The group held a seven minute gap prior to the start of the climbs when their effort eventually fell apart and the climbers took over on the steep final part of the course.

In the general classification Daniel Moreno moved to 12th place, 1 minute and 9 seconds behind the current leader Michal Kwiatkowski.

The 2014 Tirreno-Adriatico is wide open with three stages still to race. Sunday brings a road stage with an uphill finish, starting in Amatrice and ending in Guardiagrele at 192 km.

You can read our preview of stage 5 here.