{"id":59486,"date":"2025-08-11T15:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T15:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/59486\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T15:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T15:45:07","slug":"fire-leads-to-neutralisation-and-deviation-for-part-of-stage-4-of-volta-a-portugal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/59486\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire leads to neutralisation and deviation for part of stage 4 of Volta a Portugal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fire trucks that the day before been spraying water to keep the riders cool at Volta a Portugal were occupied with more pressing matters on the 185.2 km stage 4, with a fire on the route leading to the neutralisation of a section and deviation around an ascent.<\/p>\n

The stage between Bragan\u00e7a and Mondim de Basto, which finished on a category 1 mountain pass, was neutralised at 51km to go, pausing at the Vila Real intermediate sprint point and skipping the Serra do Alv\u00e3o climb to avoid the fire. Blazes had been burning in the area for some days, with the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority also extending its alert status across mainland Portugal to August 13 “in view of the weather forecasts for the coming days, which point to a significant increase in the risk of rural fires”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When the race was neutralised there was a breakaway of four out front but, after the race was restarted around 20km down the road, it was reeled back in through the final kilometers of the day of racing.<\/p>\n

Once the catch occured, South Africa’s Bryan Munton (Feirense-Beeceler) went on the attack to cross the line solo ahead of David Pe\u00f1a <\/a>(AP Hotels & Resorts\u2013Tavira\u2013SC Farense) and Artem Nych (Anicolor-Tien21 Cycling), who with the podium spot moved into the overall race lead.<\/p>\n

This was a “tough stage that had a setback\u2014the neutralisation of the race due to the fires\u2014which made it even harder, because we had to stop and start again,” said defending champion Nych. “I’m very happy to wear the yellow jersey, but 8 seconds is not much of a difference.”<\/p>\n

Last year Nych moved into yellow on the final day in the individual time trial. Stage 4 winner Munton is the one that is currently in second spot overall at eight seconds back and then it is Pe\u00f1a at 12 seconds.<\/p>\n

“The tough stages will begin after the rest day, when we will already be more tired, so we have to stay focused and alert. But we’ll see, I hope everything goes well,” said Nych.<\/p>\n

The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

The 10 stage 2.1 ranked race is scheduled to continue on Monday with a 155km stage from Lamego \u2013 which is situated around 30km from Vila Real, which is where the fire neutralisation occurred. After stage 5 the peloton gets a rest day before heading further south to \u00c1gueda for stage 6 on Wednesday and the challenging Torre summit finish on stage 7, then there is a smaller climb toward the finish on stage 8 potentially enough to disrupt the chance of a bunch finish but the sprinters should have their day on stage 9 while the an individual time trial will be the final test for the GC riders on stage 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fire trucks that the day before been spraying water to keep the riders cool at Volta a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-59486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}