(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) After two days of domination by Astana's Alexey Lutsenko, Bahrain-Merida's Sonny Colbrelli of Italy broke the streak by winning the mass sprint on the fourth stage of the 2019 Tour of Oman on Tuesday. Colbrello outpaced Greg van Avermaet (CCC Team) and Clement Venturini (AG2R La Mondiale) for his first win of the season and for Bahrain Merida.
Lutsenko finished within the field to easily retain his overall lead. Van Avermaet moved up a place to second at 14 seconds, while Jesus Herrada (Cofidis, Solutions Credits) dropped to third at 19 seconds.
The shortest stage at 131km, which had a slightly uphill finish, was marked by a long break with the last three riders caught in only the final kilometres.
The race got off to a tough start as teams fought to be in the day's breakaway, but after 16km Nathan van Hooydonck (CCC Team), Ian Boswell (Katusha-Alpecin) and Darwin Atapuma (Cofidis) finally got away.
They were then joined by Damian Gaudin (Direct Energie) and Jeremy Leveau (Delko Marseille Provence). Together they built up a gap of up to four minutes over the peloton.
Boswell was the man of the day in the break, wiping up all the mountain and sprint points along the way. The difficult course had four ranked climbs, including two times over the Al Jabal Street climb at just over midway.
Leveau struggled and lost contact the second time around, and he was not the only one in difficulties. A group including sprinters Andre Greipel (Arkea Samsic), Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) and Bryan Coquard (Vital Concept – B & B Hotels) were dropped and had to fight to get back into the field.
Gaudin was the next to lose contact with the lead group, on the ascent. With slightly more than 25 kilometres to the finish line, the reduced peloton turned up the pace and cut the gap even more. The three remaining in the break group didn't give up too easily, even holding on to a 28-second gap with five kilometres to go.
They were unable to hold on, though, and the peloton caught them in the closing kilometres. In the final metres, it was a two-man race between Colbrelli and van Avermaet on the slope to the line. Colbrelli held firm and took a victory over van Avermaet.
The race now moves onto the key climb of Jebel Akhdar on the 152km penultimate stage of the race.
Stage four standings [top five] : 1 Sonny Colbrelli (03hr:17m:09s), 2 Greg van Avermaet, 3 Clement Venturini, 4 Ryan Gibbons (Dimension Data), 5 Alexander Kristoff.
Overall standings: 1 Alexey Lutsenko (14h:54m:46)s, 2 Van Avermaet (14:55:00), 3 Herrada (14:55:04), 4 Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates, 14:55:10), 5 Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida, 14:55:13).
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