ITALy, May 9, 2018 - Belgium's Tim Wellens timed his attack to perfection to win a lumpy Stage 4 of the Giro d'Italia in the Sicilian hilltop town of Caltagirone ahead of Canada's Michael Woods and the Italian Enrico Battaglin. Britain's Chris Froome was caught out in a late split and conceded 21 seconds to his rivals. A pulsating finale to the 202-kilometre stage from Catania saw Wellens (Lotto-Fix All) secure his fifth win of the season by dominating the 18 percent ramp to the finish as Australian Rohan Dennis (BMC) retained the pink jersey after the first of three demanding days in Sicily. Dennis preserved his slender one-second lead over Dutch defending champion Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) as Wellens moved up to fourth place in the general classification, 19 seconds off the summit and two-seconds behind Britain's Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott). The impressive Yates took fourth place in the stage ahead of Italy's Davide Formolo (Bora-Hansgrohe) before Yates's Czech team-mate Roman Kreuziger led a chasing group over the line four seconds down on the leaders. This select chasing group included the likes of Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida), Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton-Scott) and Dumoulin – but not the four-time Tour de France champion Froome. A crash with 7km remaining had split the pack on the approach to Caltagirone and numerous riders struggled to fight back on as the peloton strung out on a series of twists, turns and fast, technical downhills ahead of the decisive ramped final kilometre. Badly positioned going into the final kilometre, Froome, along with Colombia's Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana), was distanced and lost 21 seconds. Froome now trails Dumoulin by 54 seconds on GC. After three days in Israel and the long journey back to Europe on Monday, the 101st edition of La Corsa Rosa resumed with an Ardennes-style slugfest through the hills of Sicily – as achingly beautiful as the roads were relentlessly unforgiving. Five riders – Quentin Jauregui (Ag2R-La Mondiale), Marco Frapporti (Androni-Sidermec), Enrico Barbin (Bardiani-CSF), Maxim Belkov (Katusha-Alpecin) and Jacopo Mosca (Wilier-Triestina) – broke clear shortly after the start in Catania to build up a maximum lead of just under four minutes under the hot Sicilian sun.
