Another crosswind sprint finish, another Alexander Kristoff victory. The law of the strongest prevails once again at the Tour of Qatar, though this time the Norwegian’s prodigious force was amplified by the collective might of his Katusha team.
Kristoff had no fewer than four of his red guard for company in the selection in the frantic closing kilometres of stage 4, whereas Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) had none, and therein, perhaps, lay a sizeable part of the difference.
Sven Erik Bystrom, Michael Mørkøv, Viacheslav Kuznetsov and finally Jacopo Guarnieri all took turns on the front after Katusha picked up the reins with a little under three kilometres remaining, eventually stretching the front group past breaking point and delivering Kristoff to his second stage victory of the week.
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“It was not so much wind but it was enough to make this race nervous and in the end it split it up,” Kristoff said. “It was Lotto-Jumbo who put the pressure on, the whole team attacked with one lap to go, and it broke the pack apart. We stayed a little easy on the back until the last kilometres to make a perfect lead-out. We went really hard in the lead-out and it all exploded at the end, so it’s a great team victory for us.”
Katusha’s task was aided in no small part by LottoNL-Jumbo and BMC’s willingness to ride on the front on the final lap of the finishing circuit, and their intensity didn’t drop a beat when race leader Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) punctured with 8 kilometres remaining.
All of Dimension Data’s riders bar Cavendish sat up and waited for Boasson Hagen, and as a result the Manxman was left isolated for the finishing sprint, admitting afterwards that competing for the stage win in such circumstances was a tall order, and he eventually placed fifth in the sprint. Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) ultimately proved Kristoff’s closest rival in an atypical sprint, but he had nonetheless identified Cavendish as the danger man on the run-in.
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