13/05/2023

Yannis Voisard counters attacks off the favourites to take a stunning stage win at the Tour de Hongrie as Hirschi maintains overall lead

Yannis Voisard rode to a brilliant stage win on the 4th stage of the Tour de Hongrie as Marc Hirschi defended well to maintain his overall lead.

Stage 4. Ultimately the queen stage of the Tour de Hongrie. It featured three categorized ascents before the final of the day, with a steep initial hilltop that has 2 kilometres at 8.7% finishing with 9 kilometres to go. A short descent follows and then the main part of the climb to Dobogókõ is 8 kilometres long at 4.8%.

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Hoping the breakaway would be allowed to escape was a six-rider group containing Dries De Bondt, Yves Lampaert, Sebastian Schönberger, David Martin, Matyáš Kopecký and Jasper De Buyst.

The presence of Schonberger in the break with him being just 1:20 down in the GC was a cause for concern for De Bondt and he made it well known. After multiple conversations Schonberger and the Human Powered Health team car, the Austrian eventually dropped back into the peloton.

Following the dropping back of Schonberger the time gap did begin to grow out over three minutes as the peloton finally allowed the breakaway off the leash.

After Martin was dropped from the break on a climb the leading group was suddenly down to four riders with just over 30km to go.

Kopecky was the next to struggle at the front leaving only the Belgian trio at the front of the race, still over three minutes ahead of the peloton with 20km left.

With Team DSM on the front of the peloton, Max Poole and Oscar Onley sitting third and fourth on GC at the start of the stage were looking to put the pressure on overall leader Marc Hirschi.

As the riders began the final ascent to the line, Lampaert, De Bondt and De Buyst remained 2:40 ahead of the peloton.

The GC attacks began with around 10km to go as Jhonatan Narváez made multiple attacks off the front. Although he was repeatedly brought back, the INEOS Grenadiers were hoping to weaken the legs of Hirschi.

Due to the upping of the pace behind, the time gap was dropping considerably to the leaders who were now a duo after Dries De Bondt was dropped.

With Finn Fisher-Black playing the role of super-domestique, the repeated attacks of Narvaez finally began taking their tole on the UAE Team Emirates man.

Fisher-Black and Narvaez both were then dropped leaving the Team DSM duo to try and double team Hirschi with attack and counter-attack.

A powerful move by Egan Bernal carried the group of overall favourites into contact with the stage leaders and with just under 2km to go Lampaert and De Buyst were caught and passed by Yannis Voisard.

The Tudor Pro Cycling Team rider rode clear to a brilliant victory and then the clock started ticking to see if could take the race's overall lead. Sadly for him, that wasn't the case but the stage win was a brilliant consolation.