Vuelta a Espana champion Simon Yates has claimed his first victory of the 2019 season on the queen stage of Ruta del Sol, after a powerful attack on the the final first category climb.
The Brit fought solo from 26km to go and successfully held off six-chasers to take the stage victory.
Sergio Higuita (Fundación Euskadi) led home the sprint for second, and Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma) took third, denying Mitchelton-Scott two spots on the podium.
Overnight leader Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal) couldn’t hold the pace on a day for the climbers, allowing Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) to move into the overall lead.
“I had better legs than the first few days, today I was feeling really good so of course I am really happy to win” said Yates. “We wanted to make it a really hard race, Astana did most of the job on the first climb then the race kind of evolved from there over the next climbs.
“I’m not high up on GC so I thought I’d have a bit more freedom and we wanted to put pressure on Astana and the other teams. We didn’t really want to ride behind so I went early and the selection was made and then the rest of the racing it sorted itself out.
Vuelta a Andalucia 2019 – stage 4 results (Armilla – Granada):
| 1 | Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) | 3:01:25 |
| 2 | Sergio Higuita (Fundación Euskadi) | +26” |
| 3 | Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma) | ,, |
| 4 | Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) | ,, |
| 5 | Ion Izagirre (Astana) | ,, |
| 6 | Pello Bilbao (Astana) | ,, |
| 7 | Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) | ,, |
| 8 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Gazprom–Rusvelo) | +01’20” |
| 9 | Jack Haig (Mitchelton-Scott) | ,, |
| 10 | Hector Carretero (Movistar) | +02’51” |
Vuelta a Andalucia 2019 – general classification after stage 4:
| 1 | Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) | 13:43:41 |
| 2 | Ion Izagirre (Astana) | +07” |
| 3 | Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma) | +11” |
| 4 | Pello Bilbao (Astana) | +21” |
| 5 | Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) | +57” |
| 6 | Jack Haig (Mitchelton-Scott) | +01’08” |
| 7 | Sergio Higuita (Fundación Euskadi) | +01’12” |
| 8 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Gazprom–Rusvelo) | +01’43” |
| 9 | Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal) | +02’53” |
| 10 | Dylan Teuns (Bahrain-Merida) | +03’41” |
