Feb 11th, 10. Over 130kms of the 146km Stage 4 of the Tour of Qatar, Kiwi Jesse Sergent (Trek Livestrong) made sure everyone knew his name as he rode strongly in a breakaway trio. 

Just 1km into today's stage, Sergent, Sep Vanmarcke (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator) and Martin Kohler (BMC) attacked off the front of the peloton.

Unlike most attack-from-the-gun moves, BMC say this was a textbook implementation of their plan to make the leader's team work hard.

"Our plan was to keep the Vacansoleil guys (the race leader's team) working and with me being only 3m44s off the lead it was good one," Kohler said.

For 130km the trio worked hard together, with Sergent earning a 2nd and 3rd placing in the day's two intermediate sprints.  They worked up a maximum time gap of three and a half minutes and with 25kms to go they still had a margin of 1m40s.

The sprinter's team then turned up the pace and Sergent and his companions were caught 15kms before the finish line in the town of Al Khor.

"Today was tough, we went away at kilometre one and reeled in with 15km to go. The gap didn't get any bigger than 3mins 20sec so it meant we were riding solid all day and the last 40km was headwind which was rough," Sergent told RoadCycling.co.nz.

"It was full gas towards the end then 15.5km to go we shook hands and called it a day."

The pace stayed high which meant it was a reduced bunch of 50 who challenged for the sprint where Francesco Chicchi (Liquigas) claimed his first victory in Qatar ahead of beat Heinrich Haussler (Cervelo TestTeam) and Juan José Haedo (Saxo Bank).

Sergent's teammate Taylor Phinney is also doing well in this top placed field. For the second day in a row he's placed in the Top 10 in the bunch sprint.

Again there wasn't too much wind today which is very unusual for Qatar.  This has kept the race together and kept golden jersey on the shoulders of Wouter Mol (Vacansoliel) with Geert Steurs (Topsport Vlaanderen) +9s.  Defending champion Tom Boonen (Quick Step) remains +1m55s back.

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• Tour of Qatar results

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