Giovanni Visconti (Neri Sottoli-Selle Italia-KTM) took the victory of the fourth stage of the Tour of Slovenia, beating overall leader Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) in a four-up sprint.
“I was waiting for the sprint finish, our sports director is always saying that you either win or lose the race in the sprint,” Visconti said. “Today it worked out for me.”
Ulissi keeps the leader’s green jersey and has an advantage of 22 seconds over Visconti into Sunday’s final stage. Aleksandr Vlasov (Gazprom–Rusvelo) is third overall at 25 seconds.
“The stage was hard, with rain in the beginning and hard climb on the end. Vlasov launched a strong attack, but Pogačar had him covered,” Ulissi said.
“I want to thank him for his help on my way to defend the green jersey. This was a climb for the pure climbers, and I’m not that. Tadej did excellent job in the beginning of the climb when he covered the attack, I had some problems at that point and only caught up with them later.”
Tour of Slovenia 2019 – stage 4 results (Nova Gorica › Ajdovščina):
| 1 | Giovanni Visconti (Neri Sottoli–Selle Italia–KTM) | 4:00:53 |
| 2 | Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) | ,, |
| 3 | Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) | ,, |
| 4 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Gazprom–Rusvelo) | ,, |
| 5 | Andrea Vendrame (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec) | +32” |
| 6 | Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton-Scott) | ,, |
| 7 | Fausto Masnada (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec) | ,, |
| 8 | Ben Hermans (Israel Cycling Academy) | +01’38” |
| 9 | Cameron Meyer (Mitchelton-Scott) | +02’22” |
| 10 | Lorenzo Rota (Bardiani-CSF) | ,, |
Tour of Slovenia 2019 – general classification after stage 4:
| 1 | Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) | 15:39:28 |
| 2 | Giovanni Visconti (Neri Sottoli–Selle Italia–KTM) | +22” |
| 3 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Gazprom–Rusvelo) | +25” |
| 4 | Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) | +30” |
| 5 | Andrea Vendrame (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec) | +01’04” |
| 6 | Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton-Scott) | +01’08” |
| 7 | Fausto Masnada (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec) | +01’14” |
| 8 | Ben Hermans (Israel Cycling Academy) | +02’14” |
| 9 | Jan Polanc (UAE Team Emirates) | +02’58” |
| 10 | Radoslav Rogina (Adria Mobil) | +04’49” |
