A heartbreak for Thibaut Pinot. The only escapee for about ten kilometers, the Groupama-FDJ rider was caught and then dropped off 900m from the line by Miguel Angel Lopez on the fourth stage of the Tour of the Alps, between Villabassa, in Italy, and Kals am Grosslockner, in Austria, Thursday. Overall, Romain Bardet (DSM) grabbed valuable bonuses on the line and came back to within two seconds of the leader Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious). Pinot was part of a breakaway of around fifteen riders, with Nicolas Prodhomme (AG2R Citroën), who started more than 70 kilometers from the finish, the only one at the top this week, and had carried his solo attack to around ten kilometers from the goal. Omer Goldstein (Israel-Premier Tech), a time inserted into an attack of four runners 14 km from the finish, tried to follow the Frenchman, in vain. He will finally have missed a few hundred meters to Pinot, weaned from victory since the Tour de France 2019 (July 20 at the top of the Tourmalet), who suffered the blow on arrival. “It would have done me good to win today (Thursday) and turn this shitty page” “It sucks, in the last kilometers, I thought about what I had been through in recent years, said he dropped, in tears, at the microphone of the L’Equipe channel … It’s another missed opportunity, we know that among the pros there are not many of them. We’ll see tomorrow and next week (Tour de Romandie), but it would have been good to win today (Thursday) and turn this shitty page. The first two in the general classification, Bilbao and Bardet, were victims of a group fall after the passage of Kartitscher Sattel, 96 kilometers from the finish, which forced Clément Berthet (AG2R Citroën, 27th before this stage) , to give up. Also note the retirement of Lilian Calmejane, just before Lienz, which will be the scene of the fifth and final stage, this Friday. Bilbao and Bardet finally managed to neutralize each other, finishing 3rd and 4th in the stage with the peloton, 15 seconds behind Lopez. In the general classification, Bardet is only 2 seconds behind Bilbao, ahead of the Hungarian Attila Valter, teammate of Thibaut Pinot, at 12 seconds. The Frenchman from DSM will have 114 km to bring down his rival on Friday.