Jonathan Milan takes bunch sprint win ahead of Merlier & Philipsen on chaotic day of echelons at the 2025 UAE Tour - Tadej Pogacar retains overall race lead

Jonathan Milan has sprinted to victory on stage 4 of the 2025 UAE Tour ahead of rivals Tim Merlier and Jasper Philipsen, following a frantic day that saw echelons cause chaos in the peloton. Notably, Tadej Pogacar retains the overall race lead.

With a relatively pan-flat final 100km to the stage, there was little realistic opportunity for the breakaway to deny the teams of the sprinters. As such, only two riders attacked early to go up the road, those being INEOS Grenadiers' Michael Leonard and Đorđe Đurić of Team Solution Tech - Vini Fantini. At around 55km, the break's hopes were further cast into doubt as the peloton exploded into echelons. Among the riders who missed the split at the front of the peloton were Joshua Tarling (2nd on GC), and Dylan Groenewegen among others.

Despite the momentary heightening of the drama, things did eventually all come back together shortly after. Moments later, the attacks started off the front again ahead of the final intermediate sprint as three Team Solution Tech - Vini Fantini attacked clear, including Duric again and the intermediate sprint classification leader, Carlos Samudio. After a frantic fight before the final sprint between Vini Fantini and Bardiani riders, it was eventually Duric that took the maximum points before easing up and being caught with around 30km to go.

As the wind started to get stronger again, Team Jayco AlUla came to the front hard at around 18km to go, immediately starting to split things up behind once again. Typically, Tadej Pogacar was alert once again, locked to the front few places of the bunch as the riders hit 70kph on the flat.

Some of the riders to miss out on the front group this time included notable names such as Lennert van Eetvelt, Pello Bilbao, Carlos Rodriguez, Finn Fisher-Black and Fabio Jakobsen. At 8km to go, the gap between groups had grown to 25 seconds. As the race took a sharp change of direction though, the wind's angle changed, benefitting the chasers. As such, with just over 3km to go, the split was recovered.

From there, it was all about the bunch sprint. In an incredibly fast finish, Jonathan Milan was the man to open things up early and despite Tim Merlier and Jasper Philipsen coming up quickly from behind, the Italian just held on for the win.