David vs. Goliath. In the first three days of the Tour of California, Goliath had his day. On stage 4, the most unlikely 'David' in the race stole not only the stage win but second place.
Rally Cycling shouldn't have been in the race under WorldTour rules, but were given special dispensation to compete after an agreement with the UCI, and thanks to a tailwind, some complacency on the part of the peloton, and solid teamwork, Evan Huffman took out the stage win from the breakaway while teammate Rob Britton bested Sunweb's neo-pro Lennard Hofstede for second. It wasn't Huffman's first win against WorldTour teams - he took out a stage of the Tour of Alberta last year and ended the race third overall.
But it was his first official WorldTour victory, something he was unable to achieve in his two years with Astana. It wasn’t even his first real chance for a victory in the Tour of California - his last attempt came in the same finish in last year’s stage 2 to Santa Clarita, where his breakaway with Ben King stuck, but he couldn’t match the Cannondale man.
I can't believe that we did it," Huffman said. "It's surreal, amazing. I was thinking about last year's stage during the last 10km, and how much it would suck to not win again. I gave it everything I had in the last 100 metres.
The peloton, meanwhile, finished an unlucky 13 seconds later, with Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) leading the way in to add to his lead in the points classification, while teammate Rafal Majka came through with all of his rivals to keep the race lead heading into the Mount Baldy stage.
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