Alex Aranburu won the fourth stage of the Tour of Belgium while Mathias Vacek did not take advantage of his very good performance to steal the leader’s jersey from Søren Wærenskjold.
After a time trial and two stages which ended in a sprint, the Tour de Belgique peloton had a much more difficult program this Saturday with 177 kilometers around Durbuy and a large number of hills during the queen stage.
Leader of the general classification, Søren Wærenskjold believed more than ever in a final victory while no Norwegian rider had ever achieved it on the Tour of Belgium. However, absolutely nothing was done while Mathias Vacek was only eleven seconds behind in the general classification and that the gaps with many riders were very small.
This Saturday, a group of twelve riders first managed to create a first gap. The Belgians Quinten Hermans, Jago Willems, Lindsay DeVylder And Tristan Scherpenbergh were part of it, as were Rémi Cavagna, fifteenth overall, just 36 seconds behind. Nearly 80 kilometers from the finish, the last two Belgians mentioned and two other riders gave up while the gap with the peloton fell to less than a minute and a half under the leadership of Wærenskjold’s Uno-X team.
Around twenty kilometers later, while the peloton was getting dangerously close, Willems tried his luck alone while Kamiel Bonneu had gone against and managed to join the other riders present at the front. Everyone was finally caught 37 kilometers from the finish.
On the penultimate ascent of the Mur de Durbuy, the Lidl-Trek team tried to let go of Wærenskjold but the Norwegian managed to hold on, not without difficulty. Everything changed a few kilometers later when Vacek tried his luck alone, then pursued by a trio of riders while the Uno-X team did the work behind to not let him fly away too much.
15 kilometers from the finish, Vacek saw the trio behind him come back on him just before the climb on which the golden kilometer was scheduled. Behind, the peloton was 25 seconds behind. Taking advantage of the fact that his breakaway companions were not interested in the general classification, Vacek took the lead in three bonus sprints, thus returning to two seconds in the general classification. At the foot of the last climb, the leading quartet still had a handful of seconds ahead.
Everyone was then picked up and everything was decided in a sprint. In this little game, Alex Aranburu was the fastest while Wærenskjold and Vacek finished wheel to wheel. Wærenskjold retains his leadership tunic for two short seconds while Aranburu comes back to six. Everything remains open before the last stage on Sunday with a golden kilometer which will distribute nine seconds.
