Stage 4, Tuesday 25: 🇦🇩Andorra la Vieja–Andorra la Vieja🇦🇩

105 km, D+ 3000m

Visma was very willing to go on a breakaway. But perhaps halfway into the real Envalira Pass, Decathlon took command of the peloton and brought the gap down. They kept pushing in the descent to the Pas de la Case, after after the tunnel, they had caught everyone.

They kept on pulling until the Beixalis Pass started and when they had only one teammate left in front of F. Gall🇦🇹, the Austrian attacked. Hum, no, that's not what happened. The Slovenian attacked. Gall🇦🇹 tried to follow him for a few hundred yards, and then came back into next group.

So, basically what we've already seen again and again, and was expected after we saw Decathlon starting pulling.

After that (there were 50 km to go), I didn't watch much. The gap grew and grew and grew, although the guys behind Pogatchar🇸🇮 weren't dawdling around, because they were split in 2 little groups of about 3 to 6 guys each.

Gall🇦🇹 then tried to get rid of other guys, but couldn't.

The gap, which had grown over 3 minutes, was reduced by 30 seconds in the last 10 km.

A few things to note:

• J. Widar (🇧🇪 Lotto-I.) was often disappointing in the past, but that really wasn't the case today; it seems that he finally 'grew up' to adult strength;
• it is not going to be as easy as everyone (including myself and himself) thought, for Gall🇦🇹 to finish second of this Tour; he isn't superior to several other climbers, and those may be superior to him on other terrains, and a few of them are ahead of him because he didn't do very well on the first 2 stages; will Decathlon repeat today's tactics? no matter what the result over Gall🇦🇹's true contenders would be, that would grant Pogatchar🇬🇧 several extra stage victories;
• among those, they are two (old) surprises: Roglitch (🇸🇮 Bora) and again Mas (🇪🇸 Movistar) who truly seems to have found his younger legs this year;
• not a comeback, but Onley (🇬🇧 Ineos) was looking very good too, a bit better and certainly fresher, even; let's wait for his 3 punctures in the same stage 😄;
• Carapaz (🇪🇨 EF) tried hard, but he often missed a little bit, and was relegated to second group, coming back, dropped a bit again... I don't know what he is going to do in the rest of the race, he certainly hasn't lost time enough to get a free pass for breakaways;
• Skjelmose (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) blew up in the end, but again, he is less than 45 seconds behind all the other guys.
• Cian U*.* (🇧🇪 Movistar) was in trouble again in the first slope of the day; he is injured, he finished in time today, but I doubt he will start tomorrow (?)

Allowed delays were conveniently changed from the 16% that was written in the regulations document, to 20%... 🙄 (equivalent to 'upgrading' the stage from difficulty category 4 to difficulty category 5).