The 4th stage of the Tour de France 2012 took place on July 4th, 2012. It was 214.5 km long and led from Abbeville to Rouen . 195 of 198 drivers started.
The route ran through the Somme and Seine-Maritime departments . From Abbeville it first led to the coast of the English Channel and followed this in a westerly direction. In this section there were three mountain ratings in the fourth category. In Fécamp , where the intermediate sprint was, the route turned to the southeast. After another mountain classification in the fourth category, the stage destination in Rouen was reached on largely flat terrain.
Race course
The Japanese Yukiya Arashiro ran away on the first few meters of the stage, shortly afterwards he was joined by the two Frenchmen David Moncoutié and Anthony Delaplace . The trio quickly moved away from the field and after 16 kilometers already had a lead of 8:40 minutes. Only then did the field start to narrow the gap a little. However, all drivers drove at a rather slow pace over the entire stage and in the end were considerably behind the marching table.
Moncoutié and Delaplace each won two mountain classifications, while Arashiro won the intermediate sprint in Fécamp; The fastest in the field at this point was Briton Mark Cavendish . About 40 kilometers from the finish, Arashiro tried to shake off his companion, but he did not succeed: Meanwhile, the field was able to continuously reduce the gap, with Radioshack-Nissan and FDJ doing the leading work. The outliers were caught around seven kilometers from the finish.
Sylvain Chavanel , Samuel Dumoulin and Wout Poels started another serious attempt to break away, but it was unsuccessful. A mass crash occurred 2.5 kilometers from the finish, in which more than a dozen riders were involved, including Mark Cavendish. The field was divided into several groups. In the sprint of the first group, André Greipel was able to prevail just ahead of Alessandro Petacchi . Since the mass fall occurred less than three kilometers from the finish line, according to the regulations, there were no effects on the time intervals in the daily and overall classification.
Scoring
Intermediate sprint in Fécamp after 140 km at 19 m
