Giro d’Italia 2025 LIVE: Stage 4 updates, race standings and results today

The sprinters open up a huge gap as they power away to the line, and it’s a shootout between the fully pink Mads Pedersen and Visma-Lease a Bike’s Olav Kooij. Pedersen has plenty of speed, coming off Kooij’s wheel, but the Dutch youngster has the power to maintain it over the line.

A test run for this afternoon’s proper sprint?

Kaden Groves crosses third.

A valiant effort by Francisco Munoz but after nearly 140km out on his own, he’s caught by the bunch.

The day’s final intermediate sprint is in 2km, at San Pancrazio Salentino, and the peloton are now jostling for position to get their sprinters ready for maximum points.

We’ve still got a little under an hour of racing and it’s already nervy.

Some idiot has let off a load of flares as the riders pass through a town, which fortunately looks to drift over the top of the peloton.

A visibly tired Munoz knows the game is up. His advantage is down to 35 seconds and there’s still 60km left to race. Bahrain, Groupama-FDJ, Lidl-Trek and Visma-Lease a Bike have all massed at the front to protect their big names.

It’s been a long day in the saddle for Munoz, who has now been out front on his own for 120km, but his advantage is slowly ebbing away now. It’s down to 1:49 with a little under 70km to ride.

On TNT Sports, Mads Pedersen – who I did predict to win today – has played down his chances, with it being a completely flat sprint rather than a tough uphill day.

All that attacking from the GC men, and a brief punt by Bahrain Victorious that went nowhere, saw Munoz’s gap cut to 2:20. It’s stabilised around that point now.

Lidl-Trek have told TNT Sports that it was a dropped bottle that caused the earlier crash – Zukowsky must be bitterly disappointed, but often those innocuous crashes can have the biggest impact.

Mads Pedersen, who is wearing an eye-watering amount of pink today, tells reporters he’s wearing a time trial suit because the road suit wasn’t ready yet. Will it give him the aero advantage in the sprint? We’ll find out.

Antonio Tiberi fancies some seconds too and shoots off the front as the road tilts uphill. Munoz took the maximum six bonus seconds but there are still four and two available at the line.

Roglic nabs two but Isaac del Toro rides interference to take four and prevent the Slovenian gaining too much more on his team leader Juan Ayuso.

So Roglic now moves to seven seconds down on Pedersen overall, from nine at the start of the day.

Into the Red Bull sprint at Ostuni, where more points and seconds are available. Munoz, predictably, wins the Red Bull kilometre, and still has a 3:30 gap over the bunch.

But behind them the GC men are getting ready to scrap for bonuses! Primoz Roglic, second overall, heads to the front, and Juan Ayuso is primed and ready too.

Tom Pidcock, Luke Plapp and Italian sprinter Matteo Moschetti were all involved in that crash too, but all look okay.

Lidl-Trek sports director Kim Andersen has just pointed out Moschetti as a major contender for today’s sprint, chatting to TNT Sports, so he might be relieved to see the home favourite expending some energy to chase back onto the bunch after needing a bike change.

Bad news for Nickolas Zukowsky, who abandons the race after that crash. That looked like a right collarbone injury to the Canadian; easily done, putting your hands down to brace for impact. Such a shame.

There’s a crash in the peloton that takes down a large number of riders, toppling into one another in a domino effect, including several of the pink jersey Mads Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek team and Romain Bardet, the French veteran.

Pedersen himself doesn’t go down, just braking quickly to avoid it, and most of the fallers are quickly back up and on the move.

That looked to be a simple slip in concentration in the bunch, a touch of wheels at low speed, resulting in a house of cards toppling over.

Nickolas Zukowsky, Tom Pidcock’s Q36.5 teammate, is sat on the pavement clutching his collarbone and that really doesn’t look good. Everyone else seems okay.