Simon sprints to stage 5 win in Catalunya

Julien Simon of Saur-Sojasun gave his team a WorldTour win, taking the mass sprint in the fifth stage of the Volta a Catalunya. He outpaced the previous day's winner Rigoberto Uran (Sky), with Liquigas-Cannondale's Sylvester Szmyd taking third.

Michael Albasini of GreenEdge easily defended his leader's jersey, finishing in the leading group. Steve Morabito of BMC was not in that group, however, and fell off the podium, so Lotto-Belisol's Jurgen Van Den Broeck moved up to second overall, with Daniel Martin of Garmin-Barracuda third.

Sunshine and spring weather

There were only 129 riders at the start in Asco, under unaccustomed sunshine and surprisingly warm temperatures of 18 degrees Celsius on this longest stage of this year's race.

The peloton took the first climb, the Alt de la Granadella (category 2) at 26.2km together. It took 90 kilometers for the first successful group to form and get away. Mathias Frank (BMC Racing Team), Kristof Vandewalle (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), Chris Anker Sorensen (Saxo Bank), Tomasz Marczynski (Vacansoleil), Marcos García (Caja Rural) and Nicolas Edet (Cofidis) eventually built up a lead of up to 7:30. Javier Ramirez of Andalucia gave chase but was eventually caught again by the field.

Various teams combined to bring the gap down, and it was only 2:10 as the leaders started up the day's final climb, the category 1 Alt de de Montserrat. That was also the cue for Frank to attack out of the lead group. He was unable to get away.

By the time the leaders hit the top, they had a gap of only 23 seconds. Behind them, race leader Michael Albasini (GreenEdge) suffered as Levi Leipheimer (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) attacked, as did Damiano Cunego (Lampre), amongst others. Both Cunego and Dan Martin (Garmin-Barracuda) were able to catch the lead group.

More and more riders came up, and eventually a large group formed on the descent with all the favourites. Leipheimer was the first to attack out of the group, but it was Euskaltel's Samuel Sanchez who was successful, getting away with 12km to go and building up a small gap as he flew down the mountain. It wasn't enough, though, and he was caught again about 4km later.

Leipheimer led the group, putting up a blistering pace along with two teammates, but he was unable to dump race leader Albasini. The American led the way under the the one kilometer marker, but had no chance against the sprinters.

His teammate Dario Cataldo opened the slightly uphill sprint, but it was Simon who prevailed ahead of Uran and Szmyd.

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