The heavy triptych of the first days was a bit on the stomach, but luckily the 4th stage worked as a digestive to digest a bit better.
The course was not too complex either: 4 riders (Smit, Ezquerra, Maté and Tanfield) served as bait for the peloton for a whole day, where only a short fan section caused a stir.
The inevitable happened 15 kilometers from the finish and the entire peloton was able to start the bunch sprint. A duel between Bennett and Ackermann was expected, but Jasper Philipsen did not just accept that hegemony.
Philipsen came to the forefront with his UAE team just at the right time. He took advantage of the right turn in the last 300 meters to shoot himself like a cannonball in the downhill lane to the finish. For a moment it seemed that a first Belgian victory in this Vuelta had been won, but in the last meters it went a little better uphill and Philipsen came to a halt. Bennett didn’t do that: got it, he thought, and the stage victory didn’t go to Belgium but to Ireland.
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