Floyd Landis still in overall lead in Tour de Georgia

Floyd Landis maintained his overall lead in the Tour de Georgia on Friday, finishing 12th in the fourth stage won by fellow American Fred Rodriguez.

Rodriguez sprinted past Italy's Matteo Tosatto and Yaroslav Popovych of the Ukraine to win the 191.4km leg that began in Dalton and ended in Dahlonega. Everyone in the top 53 was credited with a finish of 4 hours, 49 minutes, 29 seconds.

"Our team was strong, and we just used a couple of guys to control the time until the breakaway," Landis said. "Eventually we caught them, and had some fresh guys left for the climb."

Friday's results kept Landis, a Californian who leads the Phonak Hearing Systems team, four seconds atop the overall standings, just ahead of fellow American Tom Danielson. David Zabriskie of Team CSC was third overall and 24 seconds behind the leader.

Saturday's 152.1km fifth stage, which contains two category one climbs including the final ascent to the finish 1,460m atop Brasstown Bald Mountain, is the most difficult in the six-leg event.

Landis led last year's race by one minute before the ride up Brasstown Bald. During the stage, Danielson overtook Landis and won the race the next day.

"He's much stronger than last year, and we have a much better team than last year," Phonak team manager Rene Savary said of Landis. "We think we can keep the jersey until the end."

On Friday, with Rodriguez preparing to make his move to the front, the peloton caught Jason McCartney, Danielson's Discovery Channel teammate, on the final descent.

"The plan was to try to make Phonak work as hard as possible," McCartney said. "We had one guy in the break, but Zabriskie was there ... so that wasn't really good for us. I bridged across, but that didn't help because we were basically giving Zabriskie a free ride. Then I went by myself, and two other guys came.''

McCartney considers the Tour de Georgia, which Lance Armstrong won in 2004, to be one of the world's hardest courses.

"Last year was my first year in Europe, and the first thing I noticed was that everyone could climb, even the sprinters," McCartney said.