Cannondale-Garmin's Tom-Jelte Slagter won his second consecutive stage Saturday at the Tour of Alberta, emerging from a barrage of attacks up the final climb to Marmot Basin to take the stage 4 victory. Overall leader Bauke Mollema (Trek Factory Racing) finished second to preserve his race lead by six seconds over Adam Yates (Orica-GeenEdge), who finished third.
"For me it was a nice race because I had won already yesterday and that took the pressure off of me," Slagter said in the post-race press conference. "We were very relaxed as a team for this stage with Ryder [Hesjedal], [Davide] Formolo and Nate Brown - a very good team for today. We were confident that we could do a good result.
“For me, personally, I just had to wait and wait, and hang on for as long as possible and try to do my sprint like I did yesterday in the end. I’m glad I won.”
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Mollema finished, again, in second place after bringing back a one-kilometre-to-go attack from rival Yates on the climb. As a result he maintained his lead in the overall classification by six seconds over Yates and 22 seconds over Slagter.
"He [Yates] made a really good attack," Mollema said. "I was on his wheel and he went on the right side, so I got boxed in a little bit. He took two or three seconds, and to close a gap like that is not easy. It was one of the hardest kilometres of my life. He was only six seconds behind me in the GC. I was close to breaking… but in the end I managed to close the gap.
“I saw that Tom-Jelte was on my wheel and he is very fast on the sprint. I couldn’t go any faster. I’m happy with second place and to defend the jersey after all the work my teammates did today.”
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