Sanchez sneaks away to stage 6 win

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Olympic champion Samuel Sanchez took a canny victory in the Volta a Catalunya, timing his last kilometer attack perfectly to foil the efforts of the sprinters and gain two seconds on the overall classification as a result.

The Euskaltel-Euskadi rider is now second overall behind Michael Albasini (GreenEdge). Thanks to his advantage on the line, he moved ahead of Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto Belisol), pushing Garmin-Barracuda's Dan Martin out of a podium position.

It looked as if the bunch sprint would be the order of the day, but the run-in to the finish in Badalona had just enough of an incline to provide a launchpad for Sanchez to make his move, and then enough of a decline toward the finish to give him the speed to hold off the lead-out trains.

"I won perhaps the most difficult day, because it was presumed it would be a sprint finish, but we were surprised by that hill with two kilometers to go," Sanchez said, adding that he was going so fast on the descent that he nearly crashed, but in the end he "put together one exciting victory".

Allan Davis (GreenEdge) won the bunch sprint from behind over stage 5 winner Julien Simon (Saur-Sojasun).

It was an important victory for the Euskaltel-Euskadi team, which narrowly made the WorldTour selections this season, and which may be seeking new sponsorship for the next years.

"If we finish this way it is a double mission accomplished, winning a stage and getting onto the podium, which for us is a more than positive," he said.

"The UCI World Tour calendar is very crowded and the points are commodity as precious as gold," he stated.

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