The new man in the Maglia Azzurra is Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe), who sprinted to second place behind van der Poel and overtook Issac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates - XRG) thanks to the bonus seconds. The two are now separated by two seconds. Third is Pellizzari's team-mate Primz Roglic, who overtook Magnus Sheffield (INEOS Grenadiers) and Alan Hatherly (Team Jayco AlUla), neither of whom were in the leading group. He is 21 seconds behind.

"It was a pretty tough day with a strong breakaway group. The pace was very high throughout the day," said van der Poel after his race. "In the end, Visma did a really good job. I was able to take a bit of a risk because I had already won my stage. I just waited for the sprint and I think I did everything perfectly in the last kilometre."

However, the upcoming task is likely to be too big for van der Poel. Although stage 5 is still not the first mountain finish of the tour, there is not much missing. After the last climb, there are only two kilometres of descent left. So it's going to be relevant to the classics again. And the new leader is particularly looking forward to that. "I want to enjoy this jersey and I am sure that I will do so tomorrow for the first time in this position in my home region," says Pellizzari. "It will be emotional and fantastic. The race was very fast on the last climb, I felt good, wanted to attack and thought Del Toro would try first. He did and I followed him. What I've improved the most recently is my positioning, thanks to my team-mates, and that was the key to winning the leader's jersey today."

>> Tirreno-Adriatico 2026: Route and stages in detail

Tirreno-Adriatico 2026 - Results of the 4th stage

How the 4th stage of Tirreno-Adriatico 2026 went

In today's decent cycling weather, there were several attacks right at the start, from which a leading group of eleven eventually emerged. And it was quite a prominent group. Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Timo Kielich (Team Visma | Lease a Bike), Tibor del Grosso (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Laurenz Rex (Soudal Quick-Step) were the most prominent names. This group was able to build up a maximum lead of three and a half minutes.

The group worked well together over the two long mountains. However, when it came to the smaller but steep waves in the last 50 kilometres, it was all over for the group. On the second-to-last climb, it was Jakub Otruba (Caja Rural - Seguros RGA) who tried to go solo. And the chasers only looked at each other at first, so the peloton also closed the gap to one minute and raised their hopes for the stage win again.

Runaways are caught on the last climb

With 20 kilometres to go, Otruba had a half-minute lead over the chasers and the peloton had reduced its gap to 50 seconds. With 14 kilometres to go, however, it was over for everyone. Visma rode into the final climb, which followed shortly afterwards, with real speed. It was Matteo Jorgenson who broke into the group, but rode at a pace that Wout van Aert was also able to keep up with. Shortly before the crest, Del Toro accelerated again, but was unable to reduce the group, which had shrunk to twelve riders.

Instead, individual riders rolled up from behind, but it was mainly the classification riders who stayed there. So they rode 14 kilometres together into the final kilometre. There, Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates - XRG) opened the absolute finale. But they reacted quickly and closed the gap. And then van der Poel set off in a sprint. 300 metres from the front - no problem for the cross world champion, who had already won stage 2.