Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) sealed victory in the fourth and penultimate stage of the Tour of Romandie as overnight leader Primoz Roglic (LottoNl-Jumbo) reinforced his grip on the yellow jersey.
Fuglsang broke clear of a five-man leading group on the descent of the fifth and final climb of the day to solo to victory with a 48sec lead on his four chasers.
Roglic, looking to claim his first overall win in the race, did well to pip Egan Bernal (Team Sky) at the line to finish second and claim more bonus points than the young Colombian.
A former ski jumper who won a junior world title in the sport in 2007, Roglic leads now Bernal by 8s and Richie Porte by 35 ahead of the final stage around Geneva on Sunday.
“It’s nice to win alone and win like this after going away,” Fuglsang said. “It was about tactics. Maybe I wasn’t the strongest in the group, but I could profit from the tactics that the other guys were riding to because they were looking at GC. That was my advantage today.
“I knew it was possible, but I didn’t know that the downhill was so easy for the rest of the way. Basically, it was difficult for the others to make a difference in that part, but the flat section in end had a quite strong headwind. When I hit that section with five kilometers to go and heard that I had 35-40 seconds, I thought, ‘OK, if I do a good pace and keep the power on then the win was possible’.
Tour de Romandie 2018 – stage 4 results (Sion – Sion):
| 1 | Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) | 4:18:48 |
| 2 | Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +48” |
| 3 | Egan Bernal (Team Sky) | ,, |
| 4 | Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) | ,, |
| 5 | Richie Porte (BMC) | ,, |
| 6 | Rohan Dennis (BMC) | +02’09” |
| 7 | Pierre Latour (AG2R La Mondiale) | ,, |
| 8 | Jaime Roson (Spa) Movistar | ,, |
| 9 | Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe) | ,, |
| 10 | Merhawi Kudus (Dimension Data) | ,, |
General classification after stage 4:
| 1 | Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo) | 12:59:09 |
| 2 | Egan Bernal (Team Sky) | +08” |
| 3 | Richie Porte (BMC) | +35” |
| 4 | Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) | +01’16” |
| 5 | Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) | +01’23” |
| 6 | Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +01’32” |
| 7 | Rohan Dennis (BMC) | +02’32” |
| 8 | Pierre Latour (AG2R La Mondiale) | +02’49” |
| 9 | Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe) | +03’09” |
| 10 | Daniel Martin (UAE Team Emirates) | +03’12” |
