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Itzulia

Roglič Answers The Queen Stage: Slovenian Solos To Itzulia Stage 4 Victory In Galdakao But Seixas Holds The Yellow Jersey By 1'53"

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 9 APRIL 2026

The most anticipated stage of the 2026 Itzulia Basque Country has ended exactly the way a race this asymmetric should end: with the strongest man on the day winning the stage, and the strongest man on the race keeping the jersey. Primož Roglič attacked from a reduced yellow-jersey group on the penultimate climb, dropped his last two companions on the false flat out of Lemoa, and soloed the final 18 kilometres into Galdakao in the watery six o'clock light to win stage 4 of the Itzulia Basque Country by 6 seconds from a furious five-man chase. Inside that chase was the yellow jersey of Paul Seixas, the 19-year-old Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale prodigy who had to ride the last three kilometres on his own limit to keep the overall win of the 2026 Itzulia within sight.

It was Roglič's fourth career Itzulia queen stage win, his first WorldTour victory of the season, and — the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe staff were careful to frame it this way in the bus afterwards — the exact performance the team came to the Basque Country to produce. "He said all week the Itzulia is an Ardennes bridge," sports director Patxi Vila told reporters outside the team bus a few minutes after the finish. "Tonight the bridge has its first pillar." Roglič himself, slumped against the rear wheel of the team car with his racing cap pulled down over his eyes, took a full twenty seconds to answer the first question. "I don't think I could have done that two weeks ago," he finally said, and then shook his head as if to dismiss the thought, and added nothing else.

The stage began with the usual Itzulia queen-stage early breakaway — 14 riders off the front on the first categorised climb, with Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale controlling the gap in the bunch with an iron discipline that reached its daily peak on exactly the terrain Stéphane Goubert had asked it to. The break was allowed 4 minutes 40 seconds on the approach to the fourth climb of the day, the third-category Alto de Vivero, and then was systematically reeled in by Felix Gall and Ben O'Connor, the two Decathlon veterans the team has spent all week asking to ride flat-out for a 19-year-old yellow jersey ten years their junior. By the base of the Elorritxueta — the 6.4km, 8.2% first-category ascent that always decides this stage — the GC group was 31 riders, every threat in it, nobody ahead but two breakaway stragglers.

Roglič chose his moment perfectly. With 2.6 kilometres of the Elorritxueta still to climb, the Slovenian stood out of the saddle and produced the first real acceleration of his week — not a jump, but a sustained ramp of power that only Juan Ayuso, Florian Lipowitz, Felix Gall, and Seixas could follow. Ayuso made the selection; Mattias Skjelmose and Carlos Rodríguez lost touch within 400 metres. A second attack from Roglič, 900 metres from the summit, narrowed the group again — this time Ayuso and Lipowitz together with Seixas on Roglič's wheel, Gall dropped and a handful of seconds adrift, the race now firmly a four-man negotiation for stage victory and yellow jersey.

What followed on the 18-kilometre descent and false-flat run-in to Galdakao was the most forensic tactical sequence of the Itzulia so far. Over the top of Elorritxueta, Roglič took a line through the first hairpin that Ayuso could not match, gaining four seconds in one corner. Seixas, riding with the composure of a rider twice his age, did not follow directly — instead, he stayed on Lipowitz's wheel, let the Red Bull gap open to seven seconds, and waited for Ayuso to do the chasing. Ayuso did, but only because he had to: third overall, 2'47" down on GC, a stage win was the only realistic result left for him at the Itzulia and he chased Roglič with the fury of a rider trying to salvage a week.

He could not close it. Roglič descended the technical middle section of the run-in to Lemoa at an average of 72 kph, bridged to the last two remnants of the morning breakaway — Pavel Bittner and a visibly suffering Rein Taaramäe — dropped them both inside a kilometre, and from that moment never looked back. At the 5-kilometre-to-go banner the gap to the Ayuso-Lipowitz-Seixas trio was 24 seconds. At 3 kilometres it was 18 and holding. In the last 800 metres, as Roglič punched the air in disbelief at a winning margin that was smaller than anyone in the Red Bull team car had expected, Seixas accelerated clear of Lipowitz on the slight uphill drag into the line and took second on the stage by a bike length. Ayuso was third at the same time.

The GC implications are the story Seixas will care about. The 6-second winning margin, combined with Roglič's 10-second time bonus for the stage win and Seixas's own 6-second bonus for second, leaves the French teenager's yellow jersey lead at 1 minute 53 seconds over the Slovenian — a reduction of only 6 seconds from the margin at the start of the day. Ayuso is now fourth overall at 2 minutes 54 seconds, moved down one place by Lipowitz's fourth-on-the-stage ride, which lifts the 24-year-old German into podium position for the first time in his WorldTour career. Cian Uijtdebroeks loses two places but remains inside the top twelve at 4 minutes 23 seconds, and Carlos Rodríguez of Ineos Grenadiers drops to thirteenth after the Elorritxueta selection spat him out.

Thursday's stage was the last real chance to flip the 2026 Itzulia on its head and — just about — nothing flipped. Two stages remain: a flatter day to Eibar on Friday that is likely to finish in a reduced sprint, and the traditional closing mountain time trial to Bergara on Saturday. Roglič will need to take 1 minute 54 seconds out of a rider who has already beaten him over 18.1 kilometres against the clock on the opening day of this Itzulia, over a course profile that is almost identical to Saturday's. It is not impossible. But the 19-year-old has left the Basque Country with exactly one bad day remaining in his week, and if it does not arrive, the youngest Itzulia winner of the professional era will be sleeping in yellow on Friday and standing on the top step of the podium on Saturday evening in Bergara.

For Seixas, asked in the flash interview zone what he had thought about in the last kilometre, the answer was as composed as every other answer he has given this week: "I thought about Friday. Then I thought about Saturday. Then I thought about staying on Lipowitz's wheel." For Roglič, asked whether the stage changed anything for him at the Ardennes, the answer was shorter and drier still: "Amstel is in ten days. Ask me then."

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