Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) stormed to his third career Giro d'Italia stage win on Tuesday, four stages into his first race back after he suffered multiple fractures in a crash at the Tour Down Under in January.
The 29-year-old Ecuadorian won an uphill sprint in Cosenza just ahead of Orluis Aular, whose Movistar team had worked hard all day to drop the purer sprinters out of contention.
Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) finished third on stage 4, securing the bonus seconds necessary on the day to propel him to a four-second GC advantage and the pink jersey.
[race_result id=13 stage_id=89967 count=5 gc=0 year=2026]
[race_result id=13 stage_id=89967 count=5 gc=5 year=2026]
How it happened
- The 138 km sage from Catanzaro saw a six-rider break get clear almost immediately, but the escapees were not given much breathing room as the gap stabilized at around two minutes. It held there for the first hour and a half of racing as the race pushed through a headwind for a while.
- As the riders neared the day's lone categorized climb, the Cat. 2 Cozzo Tunno, the pace in the peloton increased, which quickly spelled the end for the break. Movistar hit the front and began hammering on the lower slopes of the climb, closing down the move out front and also shelling one sprinter after another out the back, hoping to thin things out for the versatile Aular.
- Among those dropped out of bunch were Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and then Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarché). The former and then the latter ultimately dropped out of the race as well after both experiencing some rough days at this Giro.
- Movistar's pace at the front even proved too high for former Giro winner Egan Bernal (Netcompany-Ineos), who went into chase mode with teammate Ben Turner dropping back to help.
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