Baloise Belgium Tour: Mathieu van der Poel solos to stage 4 victory

Mathieu van der Poel (Alepcin-Deceuninck) soloed to the stage 4 victory at the Baloise Belgium Tour. The Dutchman made a late-race attack and held onto a 16-second lead to cross the finish line alone in Durbuy and extend his lead in the overall classification. 

Thibau Nys (Trek-Segafredo) jumped ahead of the chasing group to finish second on the day, while Casper Pedersen (Soudal-QuickStep) was third.

Van der Poel moved into the overall race lead after finishing fourth in the stage 3 time trial and now extended his lead to 40 seconds ahead of Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X) and 53 seconds ahead of Pedersen.

Asked how his performance relates to his preparations for the upcoming Tour de France, Van der Poel said, "I think I have really good shape after the altitude camp I did with the team. Only the National Championships is on my schedule so far, so it will be only one race left, after tomorrow, before I go to the Tour."

Van der Poel will wear the purple leader's jersey into the final day of racing for stage 5's 194km race in Brussels.

How it unfolded

The fourth stage of the Baloise Belgium Tour offered the field 172km in Durbuy. The peloton raced on long circuits that included three climbs; Côte de Hermanne, Côte Grand Houmart and Mur de Durbuy.

The race opened with a series of attacks until an early breakaway formed 20km into the stage that included Asbjørn Hellemose (Trek-Segafredo), Aaron Van Poucke (Flanders-Baloise), Ceriel Desal (Bingoal WB), Logan Currie (Bolton Equities Black Spoke) and Andreas Goeman (Tarteletto-Isorex).

The five riders built a lead out to just over two minutes, but that advantage was slashed to just 10 seconds as the race hit the 100km to-go mark. 

All back together with two circuits left, two more riders escaped with Aime De Gendt (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) and Florian Vermeersch (Lotto-Dstny). The small gap was closed down immediately shut down by Alpecin-Deceuninck.

As splits in the peloton formed, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) sensed an opportunity to attack and jumped ahead of the field with 36km to go. 

Soudal-QuickStep quickly lodged a chase, but it was too late, and Van der Poel, wearing the overall leader's jersey, pushed his gap out to 30 seconds.

His lead grew, even as an unorganised chase group formed behind, which included Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X), Casper Pedersen (Soudal-QuickStep), Tibau Nys (Trek-Segafredo) at 40 seconds back. 

That group was followed by Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Ben Hermans (Israel-Premier Tech) at 50 seconds, and then the main field.

On the uphill finish, Van der Poel finished along, holding on to 16 seconds ahead of runner-up Nys and then Pedersen in Durbuy.

Results

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