In the first Grand Tour sprint of his career, Casper van Uden capped off an excellent Picnic-PostNL leadout to win stage 4 of the Giro d'Italia ahead of riders that had been bigger favorites before the stage.
Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) took runner-up honors on the Giro's first day of racing in Italy, with Maikel Zijlaard (Tudor) in third. Overnight leader Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) was fourth and maintained his grip on the maglia rosa.
Crucially, Van Uden's win secured Picnic a bevy of UCI points as the team tries to stave off relegation. What's more, the XDS-Astana squad that is hoping to leapfrog Picnic in the rankings saw Max Kanter relegated in the sprint. When all was said and done, Picnic had earned some much-needed breathing room in the relegation battle after weeks of watching XDS-Astana draw closer and closer in the team standings.
[race_result id=13 stage_id=86443 count=10 gc=0 year=2025]
[race_result id=13 stage_id=86443 count=10 gc=10 year=2025]
How it happened
- There was never much doubt that the flat 189 km trek from Alberobello to Lecce was going to be a day for the sprinters. The main breakaway of the day consisted of all of one rider, Francisco Muñoz (Polti-VisitMalta), who would spend well over 100 km alone out front, with Visma doing much of the pace-setting in the bunch.
- Pedersen and his Lidl-Trek teammate Giulio Ciccone were among those brought down in an early crash with about 130 km still to go. Both remounted quickly, but Nickolas Zukowsky (Q36.5) abandoned after the pileup.
- The two sprint points offered the most intriguing moments before the finale. Muňoz took maximum bonus seconds at the Red Bull KM, and then Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) nabbed four seconds ahead of Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who took two. In the run-up to the intermediate sprint with 54 km to go, the peloton upped the pace and caught Muñoz, and then Kooij bested Pedersen for maximum points as both riders showed their intent in the points classification (currently led by Pedersen).
- The peloton's arrival onto the finishing circuit – they would do two laps of 12 km – heralded an increase in tension. Pedersen was caught behind a crash with just over 20 km to go and forced to make up ground even as other teams were upping the pace in the battle for position. With 3 km to go, Alpecin-Deceuninck and a few other distinct sprint trains were visible near the front, but that order descended into chaos on the winding run-in to the finish. Just before the flamme rouge, a big split opened near the head of the bunch as it rounded a corner, leaving leadout men and sprinters playing catch up.
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