Filipe Cardoso won the fourth stage of the Tour of Portugal, covering a distance of 159 kilometers between Alvarenga and the finish line at the Serra de Graça. The Portuguese rider came first at the finish line ahead of his teammate, also Portuguese, Joni Brandao, and Gustavo César Veloso (W52-Quinta da Lixa). With a third-place finish in today's stage, the Galician rider solidifies his lead in the Portuguese race.
The stage started with a breakaway of 8 riders: Filipe Cardoso and Óscar Brea (Efapel), Bruno Silva (LA-Aluminios), Jim Van der Berg (Parhotel Valkenberg), Johannes Weber (Stuttgart), Sten Van Gucht and Joeri Calleuw (Verandas Willems), and Timur Maleev (ISD). Jetse Bol (Join's-De Rijke) tried to catch up with them but failed and was caught by the peloton.
The escapees rode with a lead of more than 6 minutes ahead of the peloton in the early parts of the stage. Bruno Silva was the first to pass in the climbs of Bigorne and Alto da Cumieira, both of category 3, to earn points in the mountain classification.
In the climb to Barragem do Alvao, a category 1 climb, the breakaway split, and only Cardoso and Silva remained at the front, while Marcos García and Hélder Parra increased the pace in the main group with their attacks, although the peloton managed to neutralize them.
In the final climb to Serra de Graça, Cardoso dropped Silva and went solo for the stage win. The W52-Quinta da Lixa team pushed hard in the final climb, and in the last kilometers of the ascent, they reduced the main group to around 10 riders. Despite constant accelerations, they couldn't catch Cardoso, who crossed the finish line first with a lot of effort to take the stage win.
With the results of today's stage, Gustavo César Veloso solidifies his lead in the race, with 17 seconds' advantage over his teammate, also Spanish, Delio Fernández, and 35 seconds over Portuguese rider Joni Brandao.