Primoz Roglic Stamps authority on La Vuelta with Stage 4 Win!
Primoz Roglic is back to his best form, he put on a very strong performance, to take the sprint win on the uphill slopes to Laguardia to become the new race leader
A six man breakaway went up the road early on including; Joan Bou (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Jarrad Drizners (Lotto Soudal), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan Team), Alessandro De Marchi (Israel - Premier Tech), Ander Okamika (Burgos-BH) and James Shaw (EF Education-EasyPost).
With Lutsenko threatening the GC and the red jersey the group was not given much freedom, with Jumbo-Visma, Trek-Segafredo and BORA-hansgrohe controlling the race.
The heat, rolling terrain and wind played into what was a very tough day. The breakaway was caught early on, before the start of the penultimate climb, with a peloton that was split up due to the high pace. When the pace was not high, it allowed several sprinters to get back in contact with the peloton.
Quick-Step tried to split the peloton on the penultimate descent which failed.
The favourites went into the final climb together with some moves early on, but the pace was easy until the final few hundred meters, with Trek leading out the sprint.
Pedersen was launched perfectly into a sprint, but he could not sustain the same power as Primoz Roglic, who came round himon the steeper final gradient.
Primoz Roglic sprinted with 100m to go on the final climb, with Pedersen grabbing another second place and Enric Mas in third place.
VIDEO: 2022 La Vuelta Stage 4 Highlights
2022 La Vuelta Stage 4 Top 10
1 SLO Primoz Roglic Jumbo-Visma 03:31:05
2 DEN Mads Pedersen Trek-Segafredo + 00
3 ESP Enric Mas Movistar Team + 00
4 FRA Quentin Pacher Groupama-FDJ + 00
5 FRA Pavel Sivakov INEOS Grenadiers + 00
6 AUS Ben O'Connor AG2R Citroën Team + 00
7 GBR Ethan Hayter INEOS Grenadiers + 00
8 BEL Remco Evenepoel Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team + 00
9 NED Wilco Kelderman BORA-hansgrohe + 00
10 AUS Jai Hindley BORA-hansgrohe + 00
2022 La Vuelta GC after Stage 4
01 SLO Primoz Roglic Jumbo-Visma 11:50:59
02 USA Sepp Kuss Jumbo-Visma + 13
03 GBR Ethan Hayter INEOS Grenadiers + 26
04 FRA Pavel Sivakov INEOS Grenadiers + 26
05 GBR Tao Geoghegan Hart INEOS Grenadiers + 26
06 BEL Remco Evenepoel Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team + 27
07 ECU Richard Carapaz INEOS Grenadiers + 33
08 ESP Carlos Rodriguez INEOS Grenadiers + 33
09 DEN Mads Pedersen Trek-Segafredo + 34
10 GBR Simon Yates Team BikeExchange-Jayco + 51