For a long time, the race organisers avoided the Montserrat climb in the province of Barcelona. The last time the mountain was part of the Tour of Catalonia programme was in 1995. Back then, Laurent Jalabert took victory on the mountain finish. 20 years later, Primoz Roglic (Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe) returned to this climb on stage 4. Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates - XRG) was narrowly beaten in the sprint this time - unlike the day before.

>>3rd stage Tour of Catalonia: Ayuso beats Roglic on the first mountain finish in a photo finish

Roglic takes the overall lead with victory

With the stage win and thanks to a time bonus of three seconds on the road, Roglic also took the overall lead. He is tied with Ayuso at the top of the classification. Third place on the stage went to Enric Mas (Movistar Team), who led a group of Lenny Martinez (Bahrain - Victorious), Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step), Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) and Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto) to the finish three seconds behind. Emanuel Buchmann (Cofidis) finished in 22nd place at 47 seconds.

The final was characterised above all by Georg Steinhauser (EF Education - EasyPost), who was the last rider in a twelve-man lead group to be caught 2.4 kilometres from the finish. The day's breakaway also included Lennard Kämna (Lidl - Trek), who is making his debut for his new racing team in Catalonia and at the same time his comeback race after an injury break of almost a year.

Meanwhile, some riders did not tackle the 4th stage or got off their bikes on the way, including sprinter Kaden Groves (Alpecin - Deceuninck).

Tour of Catalonia 2025 - Results of the 4th stage

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This is how the 4th stage of the Tour of Catalonia 2025 went

It took a few kilometres for the leading group to find each other. This led to an early exchange of blows between the classification riders at the intermediate sprint after 11.3 kilometres in Manresa: Primoz Roglic secured victory and a three-second time bonus, with Axel Laurance (Ineos Grenadiers) and Juan Ayuso following in the other places.

Shortly afterwards, a twelve-man leading group was formed, which was quite prominent. In addition to Jesus Herrada (Cofidis), Johannes Staune-Mittet, Geoffrey Bouchard (both Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team), Koen Bouwman (Jayco - AlUla) and Frank van den Broek (Picnic - PostNL), Steinhauser and Kämna were also part of the breakaway. However, the group did not get a big lead, with a maximum gap to the peloton of 3:30 minutes.

Georg Steinhauser attacks from the leading group

Although there were only two mountain classifications, the section with many undulations included almost 3100 metres of climbing. On the first categorised climb of the day after 125 kilometres up to Turó del Puig (2nd category), Steinhauser and Staune-Mittet broke away from the leading group. Steinhauser then also secured the five mountain points.

In the peloton, UAE Team Emirates - XRG dictated the pace around race leader Ayuso and kept the breakaway at a distance of around two minutes with 30 kilometres to go. At the start of the 8.8 kilometre long final climb, the gap was only 1:10 minutes. The remaining breakaway riders around Kämna were caught shortly before the climb and soon afterwards.

At the top, Steinhauser pulled away from his companion Staune-Mittet at the start of the climb. The Allgäuer then defied the pace of UAE Team Emirates - XRG in the chasing group for a long time and was only caught 2.4 kilometres before the finish. At the same point, Ayuso attacked, broke away from the group of favourites and shortly afterwards found company with Roglic. Both riders decided the day's victory between them at an altitude of 700 metres.