The fourth stage promises to be a Swiss affair, but things turn out differently. Mathias Flückiger and Nicola Rohrbach suffer technical problems and are therefore not represented at the front. A tough race to catch up begins. Meanwhile, the Spanish-Portuguese Extremadura duo Romero/ Leao Pinto are back at the front. They win their third stage ahead of the Portuguese team of Tiago Oliveira and David Serralhiero (POR) and the Topeak Ergon riders Alban Lakata and Kristian Hynek.

The fighting spirit of Flückiger and Rohrbach was nevertheless rewarded. They were able to push on towards the end of the stage, almost catching the Germans Markus Kaufmann and Jochen Käss and finishing fifth. "The stage was great. This race actually offers us a great route every day. Unfortunately, we couldn't use it to our advantage because of our technical problems. Apart from the super-strong Iberians, we are otherwise on a par with the marathon specialists," says Flückiger. Matthias Stirnemann and Marc Stutzmann are tied for sixth place. One position behind them is the next Swiss rider, Urs Huber. The marathon specialist is getting better and better together with his team partner Karl Platt.

World Cup winner strikes back
In the women's race, the Slovenian Tanja Zakelj and her Spanish partner Claudia Galicia set the tone. They win by a good minute over the overall leaders Milena Landtwing and Esther Süss. The former was struggling with heavy legs on this day, but was still very happy, as she says: "Today's stage was awesome - at least as far as the trails were concerned. I had to suffer quite a bit, which meant that our race uphill was rather floppy, but downhill was great. Now we have to put all our energy into the next two days so that we can carry the "leader's bag" home."

The fifth stage from Córdoba to Córdoba covers 86 kilometers and almost 2,000 meters in altitude. The route resembles corrugated iron and should therefore be fast and no less tough.

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