Sensational Wout van Aert!
June 12 th 2019 - 16:48
Former cyclo-cross world champion Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) created a huge surprise in beating the time trial specialists to claim his first victory of the 2019 season with stage 4 of the 71st Critérium du Dauphiné. Tejay van Garderen (EF Education First) and Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) rounded the podium and Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) moved into the yellow-blue jersey with a small advantage of four seconds over Dylan Teuns (Bahrain-Merida) but the sad news of the day was the serious crash of Chris Froome at training. The four-time winner of the Tour de France will miss the race this July.
Alex Dowsett set the time to beat
142 riders took part in the 26.1km long individual time trial around Roanne. Chris Froome was a non-starter after he crashed during the recon 10.5km before the finish. Blown away by a gust of wind, he hit a wall and will miss the Tour de France due to serious injuries. Jaco Venter (Dimension Data), Julius van den Berg (EF Education First), James Whelan (EF Education First), Martijn Tusveld (Sunweb) successively scored a best time at the finish before Alex Dowsett (Katusha-Alpecin) set a time of reference at the average speed of 44.4km/h.
Wout van Aert dethrones Tom Dumoulin
Rémi Cavagna (Deceuninck-Quick Stop) was first to complete the course over 45km/h but his joy of holding the best performance was short lived as his team-mate Julian Alaphilippe rode 11 seconds faster than him despite announcing in the morning that he wouldn’t give it all. However, it was before Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) was on the road. The Dutchman tied up with the current world’s number in the first part of the race but rode one second per kilometre faster than him to score a new best time at the finish: 34’25’’ at 45.5km/h. It didn’t stay as the best because Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) rode sensationally. The young Belgian had 18’’ of an advantage over the former world champion for ITT at the intermediate time check at the top of the hill. He increased his it on the rolling section to beat Dumoulin by 47 seconds and win the second time trial of his pro career after the 6-km prologue of the 2016 Tour of Belgium in which he bettered Tony Martin by two seconds. His average speed around Roanne was 46.560km/h.
Adam Yates in the yellow-blue jersey
In the fight for the yellow-blue jersey, Dylan Teuns (Bahrain-Merida) defended himself greatly but missed out by only four seconds. Second of the Dauphiné overall last year, Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), 6th of the time trial, became the new race leader with an advantage of 4’’ over the Belgian, 6’’ over Tejay van Garderen (EF Education First) and 7’’ over Jakub Fulgsang (Astana). Among the favourites, Romain Bardet (AG2R-La Mondiale), now 14th at 1’27’’, and Michael Woods (EF Education First), 16th at 1’43’’, are the biggest losers of the day while Guillaume Martin (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) dropped down from second to 18th on GC.