Lotto Belisol's Andrei Greipel rode himself into Santos Tour Down Under history when he won the fourth stage in Adelaide, Australia.
Geraint Thomas again was the man starting in the leaders ocre jersey after a fourth place in yesterday's third stage as the 126.5km (78 miles) stage headed out from Modbury destined for Tanunda.
One man missing from this flat run to Tanunda was Saxo Tinkoff's Tim Duggan, who spent most of last night in hospital following a crash which saw him with a broken leg.
Straight away, the attacks started and first to chance their arm was World Champion Philippe Gilbert and UniSA's and Australian U23 Champion Damien Howson.
With only seven kilometres gone, they had attained a lead of 2.10 and forty more seconds had been added by the time they reached the only Skoda King Of The Mountains climb at Humburg Scrub, which saw Howson take the points ahead of Gilbert and the Blanco duo of Jack Bobridge and Graeme Brown.
The four points gained by Bobridge was enough to give him the King Of The Mountains jersey.
On a slightly cooler day, Geraint Thomas, who was expecting a bunch sprint from this stage and Saturday's stage to be the key in determining the winner of this race, and the peloton let the lead of the two escapers go out to 3.05 which meant that Gilbert was now the virtual leader on the road.
There were two sprints today and the first came at Mount Pleasant after 80.6kms. Geraint Thomas was the leader in the Sprint competition for the Blue jersey but Gilbert took the first sprint seconds ahead of Howson and Graeme Brown, who beat Thomas into third.(picture)
Eight kilometres later, there was the second sprint at Springton and Gilbert again won, beating Howson and Brown again to the five points as the lead came down to a minute and twenty seconds.
The average speed of the peloton with fifteen kilometres to go was now 47.5kmh.as a lot of teams tried to get to the front due to the cross winds picking up.
The peloton with Radio Shack with Jens Voigt on the front had Gilbert and Howson, who had a forty second lead, in the their sites.
Blanco, were trying to get Thomas Slagter into the leaders jersey along with Lotto Belisol who were looking to get a record 13th win in the Tour Down Under for Andrei Greipel but there was a crash with 8.7kms to go and an Argos Shimano rider in Jonas Ahlstrand went down, after clipping a sign on the side of the road.
With 7.9kms, the day of Gilbert and Howson at the front was over and the teams started to get their riders up to the front.
British Champion Ian Stannard took over on the front as the road narrowed. Lotto then took over as we passed the three hour mark for the stage.
A left hand turn saw the 130 riders onto the final 2.5km straight and there was another crash with Garmin's Tyler Farrar down with two Euskatel riders.
Team Sky were on the front yet again as there was a massive pile up behind them involving two Orica Green Edge riders .
Greg Henderson led out out Andrei Greipel who took the victory in a time of 3.02.53 and won ahead of Lampre's Roberto Ferrari and Jonathan Cantwell. British rider Andy Fenn was fourth.
For Greipel, this was his 13th Tour Down Under victory beating Robbie McEwen's twelve.
Geraint Thomas keeps his leader's ocre jersey for another day after finishing in the pack and told Paul Sherwen: "It was pretty dodgy, there was plenty of cross winds and it was quite a stressful day. My team kept me out of trouble. We tried in the sprints but it did not quite work.".