Paris-Nice 2024 Stage 4

March 6, 2024 Stage 4 offered another chance for the GC riders to make their mark. A finish atop Mont Brouilly and six climbs before that should be enough to create gaps at the top of the GC. A break did establish, consisting of Jasper de Buyst of Lotto-Dstny, Stefan Bissegger of Ef-Education EasyPost, Christian Scaroni of Astana, and Mountains leader Mathieu Burgaudeau of Total-Energies. The peloton were closing in on the break with 55KM to go and Scaroni leapt clear of the others to go solo. Scaroni survived over the top of the first passage of Mont Brouilly but the peloton caught him at the end of the decent. Bora-Hansgrohe lead that effort and split the peloton leaving Decathlon-AG2R to chase from behind. The groups did join back together in time for the last two climbs of the day. Louis Vervaeke of Soudal Quickstep and Luke Plapp of Jayco-Alula got a gap on the bunch on with a few KM to go to the top but Vervaeke dropped shortly after leaving just Plapp out front. 800M from the top of the Col du Fût d'Avenas, David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ lost control of his bike as he tried to take his jacket off. He came down and slowed a few others up just as Bora-Hansgrohe were lifting the pace to crest the climb first. Gaudu never made it back to the main group. Santiago Buitrago of Bahrain-Victorious bridged to Plapp and they rode together very well. The peloton behind could not decide who should chase and at the bottom of the climb with 3.5KM to go, the duo had over forty seconds. Plapp could not hang on the the Colombian's wheel and was dropped at 1300M remaining. Buitrago was able to cross the line first and Plapp held on for second. In the bunch, Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep attacked and got a small gap on most of his rivals but Mattias Skjelmose came around Evenepoel in the last 50M to snatch the remaining bonus seconds. Luke Plapp maintained enough of his advantage to take the GC lead with Buitrago moving all the way up to second place.