28th April – Stage 4: Plonéour-Lanvern – Landévant
The fourth day of racing at Tour de Bretagne saw the peloton take on a hilly day in the saddle from Plonéour-Lanvern to Landévant. Development Team Picnic PostNL set out with the goal of being active in the race, and they did just that to start off with Vincent Bodet making it into the break of the day. Working well together, Bodet’s break built up an advantage that maxed out at almost six minutes, however the peloton then soon upped the pace.
Things split up a lot on the road behind with Oliver Peace getting into a counter group that joined those out front; forming a group of roughly 25 riders. After that, the attacks continued and eventually a leading group of nine that included Peace, snapped the elastic. Having to push on the pedals until the final five kilometres to go, it was then clear they would fight it out for the win and things then became tactical in the front group. Peace rolled the dice a couple of times and tried to get clear but he was reeled in before a late attack would go on to take the win while Peace sprinted to eighth place; moving up to the same place overall.
Peace expressed: “It was the second day over 200 kilometres in a row today. Ryan and Vincent controlled the break formation really well with Vincent making it into the day’s break. With around 80 kilometres to go I made the front split over a climb. From there we caught the breakaway. As we reached the finishing circuit I attacked with three others and were joined shortly by another group. We worked pretty well but I just messed up the final few kilometres following the wrong guys. There’s a few more opportunities to move up in GC in the next few days though.”