He took advantage of the slipstream of Slovenian and main rival Matej Mohorič of Bahrain Victorious to sprint past him in a close finish at the Bukovina Resort in Poland, in a time of 3 hours 51min 32sec.

Italian Andrea Vendrame of AG2R Citroën finished third, with Poland's Michał Kwiatkowski of Ineos Grenadiers and New Zealand's Dion Smith of Team BikeExchange finishing fourth and fifth in the sprint.

Almeida's victory puts him eight seconds in front of Mohorič in the general classification and Italian Diego Ulissi of UAE Team Emirates is a further six seconds behind in third.

Kwiatkowski is in fourth overall, 21 seconds adrift, and Australian Jai Hindley of Team DSM is in fifth, 32 seconds off the leader.

French rider Rémi Cavagna of Deceuninck-QuickStep made a breakaway on the final climb with team mate Mikkel Honoré of Denmark.

The Frenchman was the first to falter and Honoré held a lead until the final 500 metres, before Almeida and the front runners flew past in the sprint.

Chochołów is set to host the start of the fifth stage tomorrow - covering a 172.9-kilometre route to Bielsko-Biała.