The day began at Khalifa Stadium under sunny skies and pleasant temperatures.

Attacks started with the drop of the starter’s flag. These put pressure on Boonen as he had an early puncture.

The first riders to build a healthy lead were Christophe Laurent and Martijn Maaskant of Slipstream Chipotle-H3O at the 15 kilometer mark. They both had a go at it, but were soon brought back into the pack.

At 19 kilometers, four others – Rubens Bertogliati (Saunier Duval-Scott), Alexandre Gottfried (Tinkoff Credit Systems), Niki Terpstra (Milram) and Roy Curvers (Skil Shimano) - had more luck, surging and building a decent lead.

Magnus Backstedt (Slipstream Chipotle-H3O) made an attempt to go off but folks weren’t letting someone of his stature go so easily. Four others set off in pursuit of the leaders, namely Nico Eeckhout (Topsport Vlaanderen), Omar Hasanin (Doha Team), Hossein Jahanbanian (Iran Cycling Federation) and Angus Morton (Drapac Porsche). After 32 kilometres of racing, the four chasers were 1′20″ back and the main bunch was 1′35″ down.

Around the 1 hour mark, the leaders and the first chase group merged and raced for the first intermediate sprint. Omar Hasanin was the first to the line, edging out Curvers and Terpstra.

Just a while later, at the 60 km mark, the Slipstream and Quick Step teams decided to pick up the pace, splitting the peloton into 3 groups. Tom Boonen and Greg Van Avermaet (Silence Lotto) were in the first group with about 45 of their friends. This group was moving very quickly and caught the 8 leaders at the 75 kilometer mark while holding an 18 second lead over the next group.

Things only got faster from there. The lead increased to 35 seconds after the feedzone at 80km, and got as large as a minute and 40 seconds with 20 km to go.

Van Avermaet took the second intermediate sprint at the 122 km mark. That put him 20 seconds behind Boonen in the overall race.

At the finish line, Alberto Loddo (Tinkoff Credit Systems) positioned himself to stay out of the wind and managed to sweep by Boonen at the last moment.

Results:

1 Alberto Loddo (Ita) Tinkoff Credit Systems                           2.44.33
2 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step
3 Sebastian Siedler (Ger) Skil-Shimano

General classification after stage 4

1 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step                                          8.48.57
2 Steven De Jongh (Ned) Quick Step                                        0.18
3 Greg Van Avermaet (Bel) Silence - Lotto                                 0.26
4 Christopher Sutton (Aus) Slipstream p/b Chipotle                        0.32
5 Jurgen Roelandts (Bel) Silence - Lotto                                  0.36

Americans Antonio Cruz, Taylor Tolleson and Jackson Stewart, all of the BMC Racing Team are in 32nd, 97th and 117th place, respectively.