Dylan Groenewegen finished eighth in the bunch sprint of the fourth stage of the Volta ao Algarve. Team LottoNL-Jumbo’s lead-out ran smoothly, but Dennis van Winden and Groenewegen lost their positions with 800 metres to go. Marcel Kittel (Etixx-Quick Step) won.

The fourth stage of the Volta ao Algarve on Saturday finished with a bunch sprint and Team LottoNL-Jumbo approached it with hope. “We wanted to lead-out Dylan as well as possible to grab a good result,” sports director Merijn Zeeman said after the race. “That lead-out went great for a long time, but failed because of a detail. We wanted to take the head of the peloton with 1.3 kilometres to go and that succeeded. Because of that we were able to come through the final turn in front. It became nervous afterwards and Dennis and Dylan lost the wheels of Sep Vanmarcke and Tom Leezer in the chaos. That happened in a split second and we lost our position there.”

“Dennis had a little moment of doubt,” Groenewegen explained. “That’s why we lost our positions. Until that moment, it went well. We can learn from this. I try to coach my teammates in front of me as much as possible and that went quite well. It’s our gaol to trust each other completely and we did most of the time today. We have to get used to each other a little more and we need some time to realise that.”

Primoz Roglic and Robert Gesink didn’t need to lead-out on Saturday. “Primoz saved as much energy as possible today and he can go for it tomorrow another time,” Zeeman said. “We’re going to help him as much as possible. Robert lost some time today, but he did that on purpose to create some space to attack tomorrow.”