Critérium du Dauphiné stage 4: live – crunch time trial for GC contenders

Rémi Cavagna, currently with the best time for the stage 4 TT, during today’s race

Only 33 riders – less than a quarter of the 140-strong field – are left to start now.

And here’s some footage of Cavagna bringing it home…

Enric Mas (Movistar) rolls out of the start. His goal today will be to limit the gaps on the other GC contenders, prior to making his mark in the mountains.

Rémi Cavagna  (Soudal-QuickStep) clocks the new best time: 37:55, 38 seconds than Castroviejo

Confirmation of just how fast that early descent is…

Cavagna is smashing this. He’s put 26 seconds into Castroviejo at the first checkpoint and 35 at the second.  Barring last-minute derailment the ‘TGV of Clermont-Ferrand’ will steaming into the hot seat soon.

Talking of good time triallists…

Remco Evenepoel logs 231km training ride with 4,335m of climbing ahead of Tour de Suisse

Durbridge during his near-miss TT ride

Luke ‘Turbo Durbo’ Durbridge (Jayco-AIUIa) comes home with an excellent time of 38:36, just too slow to beat the Basque’s time. His one WorldTour win to date, incidentally, was when the former U-23 World TT Champ. took the Dauphiné prologue back in 2012, held in a park in Grenoble, and when he finished one second faster than a certain Bradley Wiggins.

Castroviejo ousts Mullen from the top spot with a time of 38:33, a whopping 50 seconds faster than the Irishman.

One top stage favourite, Rémi Cavagna (Soual-QuickStep), has just started the race.

Ryan Mullen (Bora-Hansgrohe), five times Irish National TT champion, currently has the provisional best time at the finish: 39:23.

Ben Turner (Ineos Grenadiers) is reported to have crashed out of the course.

And here is Castroviejo in action today

Jonathan Castroviejo (Ineos Grenadiers) a renowned time triallist in his day, although his last TT win (and indeed win of any kind) dates from the Spanish Nationals in 2019, has just clocked the fastest intermediate time at checkpoint 1 (km 10.7): 12:17, four seconds faster than Pierre Latour (TotalEnergies). 

For the second day in a row, the weather is forecast to stay dry and mostly sunny for the afternoon, with temperatures of around 26 degrees. A slight breeze, but nothing major. 2023 Giro d’Italia, eat your heart out.

Stage 4 of the 2023 Critérium du Dauphiné

Start: Km 0 (Cours)

Checkpoint 1: Km 10.7 (Mars)

Checkpoint 2: Km 19.7  (Saint-Denis-de-Cabanne)

Finish: Km 31.1 (Belmont-de-la-Loire)

A shot of early starter Dylan van Baarle (Jumbo-Visma) out on the stage 4 TT course

The view from the starting ramp from a few minutes ago

For a full list of start times, look no further than here:

2023 Critérium du Dauphiné stage 4 start times

12 riders of the 140 are now out on the course. With minute intervals between them all the way through to race leader Laporte at 1600, the results will be coming through thick and fast. 

However, the GC contenders will definitely want a shot at glory today and defending Tour de France champion, Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) is arguably the standout favourite. On a course like this that suits him down to the ground, the Dane will be looking to make his mark prior to the mountains.  He’ll also likely use teammate Dylan van Baarle, another great time triallist (and former Dutch national champion back in 2018) who’s just begun his TT, as a reference point. Vingegaard’s start time: 1545.

Other top time trial specialist include former Hour Record holder Victor Campenaerts (Lotto-Dstny), multiple U-23 World Champion Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates), reigning US National TT Champ Lawson Craddock (Jayco-AIUIa)…it’s a long list.

At the other end of the spectrum, today’s stage offers both a chance for the specialist time triallists and the GC contenders to shine. Of the former, Rémi Cavagna (Soudal-QuickStep), aka ‘the TGV of Clermont Ferrand’ one of the top favourites – and if he wins, being French, that’d send the cycling statisticians scurrying to the history books to find out when the Dauphiné last had four French winners of the first four stages. (Clue: a heck of a long time ago).

Stage 4 is now underway, as Donovan Gondin (Arkéa-Samsic) starts. As King of the Mountains on a day when there are no KoM points on offer, for him today will likely be all about getting from A to B upright and crash/incident-free.

Yesterday’s race was marked by the post-stage relegation of sprinters Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-AIUIa), second and third across the line but subsequently demoted to 33rd and 34th. Find out why here:

Groenewegen, Bennett declassified for deviating in Critérium du Dauphiné sprint

Following the abandon of Andrey Zeits (Astana Qazaqstan) in the first, and biggest of a welter of late crashes on Tuesday, 140 riders are due to start today, although there’s still time for teams to announce a late DNS.

Here’s a breakdown of what the riders have to tackle today:

Stage 4 of the 2023 Criterium du Dauphiné is an individual 31.1 kilometre time trial from Cours to Belmont-de-la-Loire, and it’s a crunch test you can split into four sections. It starts off straightaway with a short, not too hard, 2.2 kilometre ascent, then there’s a long gentle drop, next a 10 kilometre chunk of rolling terrain, and finally it climbs very slowly but steadily for 12 kilometres to the finish. Calculating your effort on such a mixture of gradients will not be simple, and whoever comes out on top of the results sheet at the end of the day will likely be the first clear GC contender.

Following that trip down cycling’s memory lane, five minutes left to go before racing gets underway.

Tuesday’s stage 3 was marked by France claiming their third straight win in the Dauphine in as many days. Stage 1 winner Christophe Laporte (Jumbo-Visma) took his second victory of the 2023 race, 24 hours after a triumph for compatriot Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep). Discounting prologues, this is the first time the host nation has claimed a hat-trick of opening Dauphiné stages since (wait for it) 1958, when Francis Pipelin, Camille Le Menn et Jean Lerda claimed stages 1, 2 and 3. The home run of success was only broken on stage 4 from Gap to Uriage, when Pierre Polo of Italy finished first. That was Polo’s second Dauphine stage win, by the way, after one in 1956 and one of just three in his career. He finished fourth in that year’s race, though, won by Louis Rostollan of France. 

And here’s a quick look at the GC as things stand: expect changes by the end of the day…

Before we get into the day’s racing, which starts at 1341 local time when mountains classification leader Donovan Grondin (Arkea-Samsic) rolls down the start ramp, here’s a quick look back at what happened yesterday:

Critérium du Dauphiné: Christophe Laporte wins stage 3 as Bennett, Groenewegen relegated

It’s the first key GC day of the 2023 Critérium du Dauphiné, a mid-length, mid-week time trial before the key mountain stages on Saturday and Sunday.

Hello and welcome to Cycllingnews’ live coverage of stage 4 of the 2023 Critérium du Dauphiné