Richard Carapaz narrowly wins in the queen stage of the Tour de Romandie, Juan Ayuso has a breakdown and loses the leader’s jersey to Carlos Rodriguez

Richard Carapaz (EF Education – EasyPost) has won the fourth stage in the Tour de Romandie. In the queen stage with an uphill finish, the Ecuadorian took off alone with 2 kilometers to go and narrowly held on. Carlos Rodriguez is the new leader.

The queen stage with an uphill finish took the peloton over two first category climbs, one second and two third. The final climb to Leysin was 13.8 kilometers long and on average 6 percent steep.

Clément Berthet was the last survivor of an early flight of six. The 26-year-old Frenchman, who has never won a professional victory, started the last obstacle of the day with a lead of more than a minute over a thinned peloton, where INEOS Grenadiers led the forcing.

A tired Berthet was captured 5.5 km from the finish. An elite group remained from which Ilan Van Wilder, second in the standings, quickly had to let go, just like leader Ayuso. Richard Carapaz had meanwhile accelerated decisively. The Tokyo Olympic road champion and 2019 Giro laureate held his ground and rode solo to victory.

The German Florian Lipowitz tried to overtake Carapaz with a late lunge in the last hundreds of meters, but ultimately ended up in his wheel. Carlos Rodriguez finished third at 10 seconds and rode Ayuso out of the yellow. He finished eleventh at 44 seconds. Ilan Van Wilder finished seventh and first Belgian at 31 seconds.

In the new classification, 23-year-old Rodriguez leads with a seven-second lead over Russian Aleksandr Vlasov. Lipowitz is third at 9 seconds, Van Wilder fourth at 21 seconds. Ayuso drops to five and is 27 seconds behind.

The Tour de Romandie ends on Sunday with a stage over 150.8 km in Vernier (Geneva), where a bunch sprint is expected. Afterwards, Carlos Rodriguez was crowned without accident as the successor to the British Adam Yates, last year’s overall winner in Switzerland.