World Champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) outduelled Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) to win stage 3 of the Volta a Catalunya at the summit finish of La Molina.
In a GC battle that could not be more finely balanced, Roglič remained the overall leader but tied on time with Evenepoel.
Stage 2 winner Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) was both third on the stage, 13 seconds back, and remained in third overall. But after two mountaintop finishes and with a third, potentially-decisive ascent to come on Friday on the other side of Catalunya, the GC battle already looks to have boiled down to a two-way affair between the riders ahead of him.
Second on stage 1 and third on stage 2, Evenepoel started his quest for victory when he attacked from a 40-strong peloton at 4.5 kilometres to go with a blisteringly-long acceleration.
Roglič easily reached him, then shadowed the Belgian all the way to the finish. But when Evenepoel accelerated away again near the line on a final left-hand bend, Roglič was simply unable to respond. Evenepoel let out a long shout as he crossed the line ahead showing how badly he’d wanted the win.
“I felt better and I had a lot of confidence in my team that they could do the job they did,” Evenepoel said afterwards.
“The climb before La Molina was a long one and a tough one, and we wanted to make it as hard as possible from that climb on, and it paid off.”
Referring to the fact Catalunya's stage 3 is his first win on the road in the rainbow jersey, Evenepoel said, “It’s a pity I’m in the best young rider’s jersey because I would like to have had a picture in my rainbow jersey. Maybe in the next race.
“I showed already in the first days I’m quite fast, on the first day [when Roglič won] I made a mistake because I was too far back when I started the sprint. But now we seen today that I’m fast here, as well.”
How it unfolded
After Tuesday’s first incursion into the mountains, the Volta’s only full day in the Pyrenees this year got off to a fast start and with an impressive-looking break going clear. Headlined by racers of the calibre of Olympic champion and 2019 Giro d’Italia winner Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) and French GC hopeful Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), the break of the day also included Italy’s Simone Petilli (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) for a second day running, Italian National Champion Filippo Zana (Jayco AIUIa), Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny), Niklas Eg (Uno-X Pro Cycling) and Ecuador’s Jefferson Cepeda (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA).
Martin was the best placed of the riders overall, at just 2:51 back on Roglič. But the presence of Carapaz, responsible for upending the overall of the Volta last year in an impressive two-up breakaway with Sergio Higuita (Bora-Hansgrohe), was arguably the most worrying factor for the GC riders.
After an uneventful ride up the first of three major ascents, the Coubet, Petilli repeated his stage 2 breakaway strategy of claiming maximum points of the day for the mountains classification. Then it was straight on towards the biggest climb, the 18-kilometre hors categorie Coll de la Creueta.
The seven riders ahead began the ascent with an advantage of just under five minutes, but their fate was all but sealed when Evenepoel put all six of his teammates on the front of the pack, headed by fellow-Belgian Pieter Serry. Even so, while Cepeda quickly dropped back from the break on the Creuta, followed by Petilli and Eg, the four remaining riders - Carapaz, Zana, Van Gils, and Martin - proved a much tougher nut for the peloton to crack.
Soudal-QuickStep’s drive to isolate Roglič as much as possible on the Creueta proved partially successful, leaving the Slovenian with just Sepp Kuss and an uncomfortable-looking Steven Kruijswijk in support with eight kilometres to go to its summit.
The bunch itself was reduced to just 40 riders half-way on the ascent, sweeping up Cepeda and with former Tour de France winners Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) just two of several top names that lost contact.
Martin led the break through the few remaining winter snow drifts on the highest slopes of the climb and over the summit. Even by the foot of the final ascent, not even the team cars overtook them, as the gap dropped to under a minute seemed to discourage the three riders ahead.
The steepest, lower slopes of Molina saw Ilan Van Wilder stretch out the bunch a little further for his team leader Evenepoel. Carapaz tested his luck at 10 kilometres to go, only Van Gils was able to follow the Olympic champion’s slight but notable increase in speed. Evenepoel, jersey wide open, looked more than focussed as he rode behind the three teammates left with him, but Roglič’s easy shadowing of the Belgian made it hard to read what would happen.
Carapaz finally threw in the towel, and not even a desperate last lunge far ahead by Van Gils could stop the Belgian from being swallowed up by the peloton eight kilometres from the line.
Then it was up to Van Wilder to string things out one more time in the pack prior to Evenepoel taking off, and Roglič following him almost as quickly.
A brief truce behind saw the duo gain more than a 15-second advantage. Despite one ferocious counter attack by UAE's local rider Mark Soler, the two were still comfortably clear as they powered down a long mid-climb section of descent and into the final corner for their last duel and victory for Evenepoel.
“Today those two guys were on another level,” João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) said with characteristic clarity at the finish. “The rest of us were all fighting for third.”
The ding-dong battle between Roglič and Evenepoel looks set to ease a little on Thursday’s transition stage from Llivia to Sabadell, taking the riders south to the outskirts of the Catalan capital of Barcelona, but Friday’s ascent of Lo Port will likely prove to be another story.
“I expect a nice battle,” Evenepoel said afterwards. “We’ll try to save our energy tomorrow and hope that it’ll come down to a sprint, and then we’ll give our maximum. But today we showed we’re a really strong team and we’ll really take responsibility and try and win another stage again.”
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