Valverde wins stage 4 at Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana

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Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) took stage 4 of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, and a likely GC win for the Spaniard. The team's leader attacked inside the final few hundred metres and overhauled Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) to take his second stage win of the race.

Yates attacked several times on the final climb and looked to have the stage win under his control but he could not follow when Valverde bridged up to him inside the final 200m. Luis Leon Sanchez finished third on the stage after an aggressive ride from Astana in the closing half of the Queen stage of the race.

Valverde, coming back from a horrific injury sustained in last year’s Tour de France, rode impressively. He had his team control the first half of the stage but even when he was left isolated on the final climb he had enough to mark several attacks before unleashing his own assault on the steepest section section to the line.

With one stage remaining Valverde has extended his lead on GC. The veteran rider now has a 14-second advantage over Sanchez, with Jakob Fuglsang in third at 26 seconds. The Astana pair came into the stage as Valverde’s closest rivals and despite the team’s best efforts to isolate and then attack Valverde, they were unable to crack him.

The stage had been marked by a seven-man break with Team Sky instrumental. They sent Vasil Kiryenka up the road with Reto Hollestein (Team Katusha Alpecin), Cristian Rodríguez (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Egoitz Sáez (Team Euskadi), Preben Van Hecke (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Juan Camacho (Polartec-Kometa) and Ion Insausti (Team Euskadi).

After 110km of racing the leaders had a gap of three minutes with Van Hecke taking a number of KOM points. Michal Kwiatkowski’s acceleration from the bunch – and eventual link up with the leaders – caused an inevitable reaction and with 30km to go the lead group was reduced to Kiryienka (Team Sky), Hollenstein (Katusha-Alpecin), Kwiatkowski (Team Sky) and Cristian Rodriguez Martin (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) – their lead just over a minute.

Astana’s injection of pace on the rolling roads before the final climb, and subsequent easing of pace saw the lead group’s advantage drop even further but the stop-start nature allowed Giovanni Visconti and several others the chance to slip clear.

The Italian, however, was the strongest of the new attackers and on the false flat before the climb only Kwiatkowski could hold his wheel.

At the base of the climb, Visconti shed the Team Sky rider as the Valverde-group began to splinter. Despite being alone for the majority of the climb, Valverde used his experience when it mattered most, and watched as Astana chased down several moves. Yates made several bold accelerations, with the Mitchelton-Scott rider and Amaro Manuel Antunes (CCC Sprandi Polkowice) both impressing.

With just over two kilometres remaining, the lead group was down to five, Visconti caught and dropped, before Yates struck for home as the gradient rose one final time. It looked as though the British rider would take his first win of the season but Valverde, despite is years, can never be written off. He hunted Yates down in the closing few hundred metres as if he were prey, before swooping to his second stage win of the race.

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