João Almeida beats Jonas Vingegaard to win hailstorm-hit day at Paris-Nice

Paris-Nice was hit by a hailstorm today on stage 4, a brutal day in terms of weather conditions but also terrain. It was the first day for the climbers to show their worth and the race's headliner Jonas Vingegaard attacked the race to try and take over the lead. But João Almeida did the famous 'Almeidada' to bring the Dane back in the final sprint and take a stupendous victory.

'The Race to the Sun' has earned it's nickname fully today as the riders faced the worst possible weather mid-week. The day's breakaway consisted of eight riders, a quality group: Sylvain Moniquet, Vincenzo Albanese, Andreas Leknessund, Edward Planckaert, Thomas Gachinard, Thibault Guernalec, Ben Swift and Dion Smith.

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The group held on tight to the race lead whilst in the peloton Santiago Buitrago would suffer a puncture and right afterwards a crash that led him to abandon the race. With 52 kilometers to go INEOS went on the attack with Tobias Foss following an in-form Joshua Tarling, with Ben Swift in the race lead to bridge across to. But they wouldn't make it so quickly.

The race was neutralized due to a hailstorm with 45 kilometers to go and a crazy situation developed. Most riders go onto team cars, and a few minutes later were given an order to get back to the road. For a period of 17 kilometers the race remained neutralized but all riders were split into dozens of groups, and a few riders pushed the pace - mostly a group of Movistar riders. The INEOS duo also got together with the breakaway group. But the race was stopped a second time and race organizers organized the groups properly back up to restart the race.

The weather wasn't good by any chance but the race continued after a major risk. Andreas Leknessund attacked off the front in the breakaway, and later up the survivors linked up with the INEOS duo which then connected the groups back together. They led out Tobias Foss into the final 7-kilometer long climb to Le Loge des Gardes whilst Lidl-Trek's Mads Pedersen paced the first kilometers of the climb.

The big guns began to battle between each other with just a bit more then 4 kilometers to go with Florian Lipowitz testing the waters. Lenny Martínez tried afterwards with power, followed by Jonas Vingegaard, and with 2.5 to go the same situation repeated itself. But when the Dane attacked the Frenchman was straight on his wheel, but after the second attack this was not the case - with Foss getting caught in the process.

The victory seemed certain but João Almeida led the chasing group and then in fantastic fashion, dropped the rest of the group in the final meters and rode past Vingegaard already inside the final 100 meters to take the victory ahead of the Dane - who is the new race leader. Mattias Skjelmose finished third with Jorgenson losing only a few seconds, but enough to drop the yellow jersey.

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