Yara Kastelijn solos to stunning stage 4 victory at the Tour de France Femmes announcing herself as Maillot Jaune contender

Fenix-Deceuninck's Yara Kastelijn has soloed to a stunning victory from the breakaway on stage 4 of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, narrowly missing out on claiming the Maillot Jaune.

Stage 4 into Rodez will see a familiar finale, an explosive one after a hilly stage. The final kilometres will see three small climbs but ones that feature gradients hard enough to explode the race. The hilltop finish will see 570 meters at 10%.

A massive group rode clear in the breakaway, 14 riders in total. With the peloton playing games in the chase, the time gap quickly grew to over ten minutes giving Audrey Cordon-Ragot the virtual lead of the race.

With 35km to go and the gap down to just over five and a half minutes, the Maillot Jaune of Lotte Kopecky tried to attack from the peloton, Katarzyna Niewiadoma following her although both were quickly pulled back in.

Perhaps hearing of the upping in the pace behind, attacks then began to come from the breakaway. The best of these came from Yara Kastelijn, the most realistic threat to overall GC riders.

Kopecky though, wasn't going to just give away the Maillot Jaune, attacking again from the peloton and this time getting a gap.

With 10km to go, Kastelijn has 1:10 on her nearest chasers with Kopecky 2:46 down and the main peloton at 3:01.

Once Kopecky was caught by the group of GC riders, her teammate Demi Vollering launched an almost instant counterattack, with Annemiek van Vleuten battling hard to follow.

With Vollering and van Vleuten not really keen to work together however, they were soon caught back up by a small group containing Kopecky and Niewiadoma.

Starting the day 2:41 down in the GC, Kastelijn's hopes of claiming the Maillot Jaune seemed to be fading due to the pace behind. Nevertheless, a stage win would surely sweeten the blow.

And a stage win she would get, crossing the line solo with her arms aloft and a beaming smile.

Behind, Vollering was able to come through, take second and the bonus seconds with it.

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