Omega Pharma - Quick-Step Cycling Team rider Michal Kwiatkowski keeps the Maglia Azzurra by 4", after finishing with a very elite group in the crucial 4th stage of Tirreno-Adriatico on Saturday.
Chris Froome (Team Sky ProCycling) won the stage solo, attacking in the final kilometer and a half as he, and Chris Horner (Radioshack-Leopard) caught attackers Alberto Contador (Team SaxoBank), Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Mauro Santambrogio (Vini Fantini-Selle Italia) up the road on Prati Di Tivo. Santambrogio was 2nd, and Nibali finished 3rd. Kwiatkowski was 4th, 13" back from Froome. His terrific effort kept the blue jersey with OPQS, as Mark Cavendish wore the jersey up to this important stage. Kwatkowski is ahead of Froome and Contador, two of the top GC riders in the WorldTour peloton.
HC climb Prati Di Tivo — 14.6km, and a 7.1% average gradient with a max ramp of 12% — is often where the GC is sorted out at Tirreno-Adriatico. Therefore, unsurprisingly, all the top GC contenders attacked, splintering the peloton and dwindling the elite group down to a few riders. Team Sky led the elite group with several teammates. Even as Contador, Nibali, Froome, and others were testing the group in the final kilometers, Kwiatkowski stayed with the group, visible with his White jersey for Best Young Rider.
Kwiatkowski and OPQS look next to another crucial mountain stage, 224km Stage 5, on Sunday. OPQS currently holds 3 of the 4 race jerseys: White and Blue are with Kwiatkowski, and Cavendish wears the Red.
"Tirreno-Adriatico was one of my main goals for the beginning of the season, but I couldn't have expected before that I could take the leader's jersey today," Kwiatkowski said. "There are a lot of big champions here like Contador, Froome, and Nibali. I didn't believe that I could maybe stay with them before today. But my team did such a great job from the first stages into today, so that I could believe in myself and do my best on the final climb to keep the leader's jersey in our team."
"We have a really hard stage tomorrow and until now everything went good," Kwiatkowski continued. "I don't know what I can expect from the others, but I will do my best to try and keep the jersey. I think I can get a lot of help from my teammates and I will focus on not losing too much time tomorrow, or the day after. My goal here is to go for the White Jersey for best young rider. My speciality is with the time trial. I will try to gain some seconds in the final stage. There are a lot of strong riders, but we will all do our best as we have until now to achieve our goals."