Two Soudal riders in the top ten on the exciting stage four.<\/p>\n
Pula, home to one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres built more than 2000 years ago, welcomed the CRO Race peloton for the first time since 2015, and the stunning ancient arena served as background for the start of the fourth stage.<\/p>\n
A 160km course awaited the riders, including the demanding climb up U\u010dka, the toughest ascent of the week and the place where everybody knew the race was going to explode.<\/p>\n
That steep climb didn\u2019t disappoint, only a handful of riders making it into a strong but select chasing group that set out in pursuit of the race\u2019s lone leader. Vervaeke, who was active in the first part of the stage trying to go in the breakaway, was one of the four men there and helped the quartet extend their gap on the chasers while at the same time catching and passing Lennard Kamna (Lidl-Trek).<\/p>\n
The new leaders could feel the peloton breathing down their neck but they continued to work well together, and kept an advantage of 20-odd seconds on the chasers. Inside the final kilometer, that gap was cut to 10 seconds, but the attackers survived and got to fight for the win.<\/p>\n
Vervaeke produced a strong sprint despite facing cramps in the finale and crossed the line as runner-up, behind Daniel Martinez (Bora-hansgrohe), which netted him his second podium \u00a0of the season, after the one he took on the penultimate stage of the Giro di Sardegna.<\/p>\n
I felt good today, had a plan and followed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the selection was made and we found ourselves in the lead, we were all commited to pulling hard and doing our best to hold off the chasers. Going into the sprint I had confidence in myself, but Martinez was faster. It\u2019s a pity I had those cramps, it\u2019s just for the third time in my career that this happened to me, but it is as it is. At the end of the day it was a good stage for us with two guys in the top ten and Steff who remained ninth overall\u201d, Louis said after his brave ride and podium finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Soudal riders in the top ten on the exciting stage four. Pula, home to one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-909209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}