Tour of Denmark: Colin Joyce wins stage 4 from the breakaway

Colin Joyce (Rally Cycling) won stage 4 of the PostNord Danmark Rundt, beating his breakaway rivals in Kalundborg after they managed to hold off the hesitant peloton and impose their collective strength and bravery. 

Joyce gave Rally Cycling their third win of the week after Kyle Murphy and Ben King won stages at the Volta a Portugal. 

The 27-year-old American had tried several attacks in the final kilometres but when the six-rider break came back together, he proved to be by far the fastest in the sprint to the line, beating Sebastian Nielsen (Restaurant Suri-Carl Ras) and Martin Salmon (Team DSM). 

Giacomo Nizzolo (Qhubeka NextHash) won the bunch sprint ahead of Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) and Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-QuickStep) after a late chase from the Jumbo-Visma team but the peloton left it too late and finished six seconds down on a jubilant Joyce. 

Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) finished safely in the peloton to maintain his 1:33 lead on fellow Belgian Tosh van der Sande (Lotto Soudal). 

The prodigious Belgian is now the absolute favourite to win the PostNord Danmark Rundt when it ends with a 10.8km time trial around the Frederiksberg suburb of the Danish capital Copenhagen on Saturday.

The 188.4km stage was expected to finish in a sprint but the peloton was always going to have to work for their opportunity and whoever went in the break knew they had a sniff of victory on the narrow roads across the Zealand island and then the testing roads and short hills of the 19.5km finishing circuit.

Joyce, his teammate Nickolas Zukowsky, Nielsen, Salmon and Aaron Van Poucke (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Mads Østergaard Kristensen (ColoQuick), Emil Toudal (BHS-PL Beton Bornholm) and Anders Foldager (Denmark) formed the early break and pushed their lead out to 3:00 after a fast 70km of racing. 

The peloton upped the pace as the six laps of the 19.5km circuit began but the short climbs forced the sprinters’ teams to ease ands control their pace to ensure their protected rider stayed in the wheels.

That gave the attackers their chance and they worked together and then carefully chased each other down on the final lap, holding on to fight for the stage win.   

Deceuninck-QuickStep rode diligently to protect Evenepoel’s lead but also tried to set-up Cavendish for the sprint but were offered little support by other teams.

Iljo Keisse, then Shane Archbold and Jannik Steimle rode on the front but other teams hesitated, perhaps playing bluff, perhaps concerned about their sprinters surviving, as cross winds added another factor to the racing.  

Evenepoel and Cavendish joined an attack by Pedersen with six kilometres to go as the peloton fell apart. Jumbo-Visma finally took over with five kilometres to go, however it was too little, too late, giving Joyce his deserved win.