Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) soloed to victory on stage 4 of Paris-Nice atop Mont Brouilly, while Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla) held on for second place to move into the yellow jersey as race leader.
The race’s trek through the Beaujolais was expected to provide a clear showdown between Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe). Instead, more shades of nuance were added to the overall picture of this race as Buitrago and Plapp stole a march on the favourites in the finale.
On a typically cold and damp Paris-Nice afternoon, Plapp sparked what proved to be the winning move when he pressed clear of the yellow jersey group on the penultimate climb of the Col du Fût d’Avenas, with Buitrago bridging across to him shortly before the summit with 22km still remaining.
The pair had just a dozen seconds or so in hand on the chasers at that point, but it would yawn out to 40 seconds ahead of the 3km haul to the finish up Mont Brouilly following something of an impasse in the yellow jersey group.
Evenepoel set his Soudal-QuickStep teammate Ilan Van Wilder to work midway up the climb and the Belgian champion later launched two rasping accelerations, but those efforts didn’t suffice to bring back the two leaders.
Buitrago danced clear of Plapp with 1.3km still to climb, but the Australian champion managed his resources smartly on the upper ramps of the climb, and he came home just 10 seconds down in second place.
Evenepoel kicked from distance, but he was pipped to the last of the bonus seconds by Matthias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), who took third at 37 seconds.
Behind, Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) and Roglič lost a couple of seconds to the Belgian in the closing metres, while overnight leader Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) had to settle for 10th at 46 seconds.
In the overall standings, Plapp holds a lead of 13 seconds over Buitrago, with McNulty third at 27 seconds, while Evenepoel moves up to fifth, 30 seconds off the yellow jersey.
“I didn’t really expect it today, but I came in with fantastic condition and when I saw Roglic put the pace down on the climb, I decided to try,” said Buitrago. “In the end you never how things will play out. I’m very happy with the victory today.”
Buitrago and Plapp have now placed themselves firmly among the contenders for final overall victory, not least because the forecast for snow at the weekend has cast some doubt on Saturday’s pivotal summit finish at Auron.
When Evenepoel picked…
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