Remco Evenepoel's hopes of battling Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) in the Volta a Catalunya may have gone up in smoke after his bad crash on stage 3, but he found a new kingmaker's role for himself on the key mountain stage to Queralt.
Evenepoel made a massive effort on the final hour of racing to keep a select front group of seven, including Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Florian Lipowitz, ahead and away from the chasers.
Thanks to his hard work on the painfully steep ascent of the Cat.1 Collada de Sant Isidre, the second-to-last climb of the day, then on the ultra-technical drop towards Berga and all the way to the final ascent, Lipowitz had an armchair ride for much of the crunch of the day.
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Lipowitz has now moved up to third overall, as Evenepoel's hard work wasn't enough to threaten Vingegaard, but certainly helped push Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) out of the picture.
Overall, Evenepoel barely lost time, too, just 10 seconds to his teammate at the finish, showing that he was on a much better day than on stage 5 and also is in good shape for the Montjuic stage, too, where he narrowly claimed the victory in 2023 against overall winner Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
"Tomorrow's stage to Barcelona should suit me. The general classification is more or less settled, so I think there should be room to try something," Evenepoel told Sporza before explaining why he did not go for the stage - as Lipowitz later said he thought Remco could have done - on Saturday.
"That was a good thing for him, but also for myself. It was actually a bit of a spur-of-the-moment idea, because the plan was to launch some kind of attack on the penultimate climb [Sant Isidre]," Evenepoel added.
"Halfway up that climb, I felt that my legs weren't super after all. Good enough to ride hard, but I didn't want to take any risks either.
"After that fall [on stage 3] I did have a few difficult days," he told Sporza. "The impact was a bit greater than hoped."
His decision made, Evenepoel forged on, carving some perfect lines on the viciously complicated descent that thinned out the group, and then along the valley road to Berga and the finish.
"I knew it was a technical descent and that something could happen there," he said.
"In the valley, I was able to work with someone from Bahrain [Afonso Eulálio.]. On the final climb, I just rode at a hard pace. In the end, I only lost about ten seconds to Lipo' and [Lenny] Martinez (Bahrain Victorious)."
"With this tactic, I did a good job for Lipo', but also for myself, because I gained a lot of time on the guys behind me."
Evenepoel's option on overall victory is next to nothing now, even if he's moved up a spot to fifth overall, thanks to his ride to Queralt, but his mood was notably more upbeat after such a strong ride on the hardest climbing day of the race. And after Saturday's standout ride for his teammate, the Belgian champion may yet have a chance to celebrate something for himself on Sunday.
