"When I was younger I used to like racing in the rain. Now that I am older, not so much."

Those were the words of Astana's Michele Scarponi after stage four at the Tour de Romandie. Scarponi and the entire peloton raced all day in the rain, with the General Classification mostly unchanged behind stage winner Stefan Küng of Switzerland.

Lieuwe Westra escaped into the early breakaway and built an advantage of more than five minutes with four other riders, but cold rain and more than 1000m of climbing affected the Dutch rider severely, and he abandoned shortly after the feedzone.

Scarponi suffered in the rain, returning to the team car to change gloves and take hot tea for his teammates as they defended Vincenzo Nibali and Jakob Fuglsang in the main peloton. Nibali and Fuglsang remain around 30 seconds behind overall race leader Michael Albasini of Switzerland ahead of Saturday's mountaintop finish and an individual time trial in Lausanne on Sunday.