Place Name: Albert Place
Address: 757 Albert Place, Victor Harbor South Australia 5211, Australia
Details: January 24, 2025
The longest day of racing in this year's edition at 158KM takes the riders South out of Glenelg, through Aldinga Beach to Victor Harbor. A small loop out of Victor Harbor forces the riders to take on Nettle Hill which comes 21KM from the finish which could disrupt the sprinters.
Taco van der Hoorn of Intermarché-Wanty and Ide Schelling of XDS-Astana attacked from the flag with Giosuè Epis of Arkéa-B&B Hotels bridging across shortly after. Other riders looked like they wanted to get involved but a crash slowed the bunch down. Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla and William Junior Lecerf of Soudal Quickstep decided to go and made contact to make five riders in the break with 144KM to go. The gap fluctuated between 1 and 2 minutes all afternoon and soon after the second Intermediate Sprint with 78KM to go, Lecerf called it a day and drifted back to the peloton. With 60KM to go, the break accelerated and extended their gap to 2 minutes 35 seconds.
The 15KM preceding the start of Nettle Hill were fast as teams were fighting for their spot in the bunch. It cut the gap from over 2 minutes with 50KM to go to just 1 minute with 25KM to race. Epis was dropped from the break about 1KM from the top, leaving three. Schmid went solo but his lead was down to 35 seconds as UAE-XRG, Ineos, and Jayco AlUla were forcing the pace on the lower slopes. Schmid went over the top, 20 seconds ahead of a reduced bunch of around 60 riders.
Schmid was reeled in with 13KM to go as attacks were flying from numerous teams over the rolling roads. Teams with sprinters like Israel-Premier Tech and Groupama-FDJ got organized and led the run into Victor Harbor for a sprint. Ineos was well organized with five riders on the front through 1KM to go. Lidl-Trek made a run at 400M but the first to jump was Bryan Coquard of Cofidis from behind the Ineos train. It was a long sprint but he held the barriers and forced others to go around. Lidl-Trek faded but Phil Bauhaus of Bahrain-Victorious followed Coquard and came around. The pair threw their bikes toward the line. Coquard got it by half a wheel, setting Cofidis off to a good start in an important season. Bauhaus grabbed second place with Jhonatan Narváez of UAE-XRG picking up four bonus seconds in the GC with a third place finish. Narváez now sits just four seconds behind Javier Romo of Movistar with two stages remaining.
Tags: Tour Down Under, 2025, January, Stage 4, Tour Down Under 2025, Glenelg, Victor Harbor, Taco van der Hoorn, Ide Schelling, Giosuè Epis, Mauro Schmid, William Junior Lecerf, Bryan Coquard, Phil Bauhaus, Jhonatan Narváez