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
Cycling
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.
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- Whatever happens tomorrow... it'll be a hell of a raceslappers6605-04-2025
- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025