BORA-hansgrohe had an excellent day at the Santos Tour Down Under today as Peter Sagan won the fourth stage and moves into the GC lead and Jay McCarthy climbs to third overall.

It was an altogether more hilly affair on today’s stage. After the previous three stages had given the advantage to the sprinters, today’s route was one that the fast men would struggle with, featuring an undulating profile and the climb of the day taking place shortly before the end of the 128.2km stage.

Like yesterday, the race organisers had concerns about the impact of the heat on riders, and brought the start of the race forward by an hour on what would be the most challenging day of the Tour Down Under so far with changes at the top of the leaderboard expected.

The start of the day saw two riders go off from the drop of the flag UniSA-Australia’s Zak Dempster and team-mate Alex Porter, making the most of the cooler weather at the earlier start to pull together a huge advantage.

Putting more than nine minutes between themselves and the peloton, the escapees were looking confident, compelling the bunch to work harder to reduce the gap. As expected though, the terrain and heat were a massive drain on the escape, and one of the two dropped off just as BORA-hansgrohe took control at the front of the peloton.

With 17km to go, at the foot of the day’s categorised climb, it was all back together just as things became really heated. Stringing out the peloton, the 5% climb would have felt many times more difficult in the oppressive forty-five degree heat.

World Champion, Peter Sagan put pressure on the bunch, making the most of the downhill run to the finish with a reduced bunch fought it out, but there was never any doubt who was going to take the win with the rainbow stripes of Peter Sagan in the mix, the Slovak rider taking both his and BORA-hansgrohe’s first UCI WorldTour win of 2018.

Sagan beat Daryl Impey (Mitchelton-Scott) into second with Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana Pro Team) in third. Sagan now leads overall by 2″ from Impey with McCarthy a further 7″ down.

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