Overall race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) has hammered home his authority in the 2026 Volta a Catalunya, soaring away to the Santuari de Queralt finish to claim his second summit finish victory in as many days.
Isolated from his teammates in a select group of five after an arduous day of climbing in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Vingegaard decided the best form of defence was an attack, launching away with 2.5 kilometres to go.
Article continues belowHow it unfolded
While Michel Hessman (Movistar) was unlucky enough to crash in the neutralised section and was rushed away in an ambulance, numerous breakaway attempts on the long, very irregular slopes of the Cat.3 Col de la Battallola that followed culminated in a 15-group eventually extracting itself from the peloton.
None of the riders in the move were immediate threats to the overall lead of Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), although the presence of Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), the best-placed rider 3:55 back on GC, doubtless did not go unnoticed by the Danish leader's squad. Other top names on Visma's radar would have included former Volta winner Nairo Quintana (Movistar), longstanding stage 5 breakaway racer Guilio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) and local star Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).
Soler was one of the strongest riders, too, on the upper slopes of the hardest ascent of the day - and arguably the entire race - the 14.6km Coll dell Pradell mid-way through the stage. Only one rider was strong enough to withstand Soler's move - Byron Munton (Modern Adventure), also from the break. That said, with a narrow advantage of just two minutes and change on a main peloton led by the indefatigable Visma-Lease a Bike on the 14 and 15% slopes of the Pradell's toughest segment, the day's win still looked likely to come from the bunch, not any of the early attackers.
Four kilometres from the top, as the bunch shrank to just 20 racers on the painfully narrow and steep ascent, Soler finally shed Munton. Plodding tirelessly away with his trademark heavy-laden style, Catalan allrounder then was joined by Ciccone, Carapaz and Ineos Grenadiers' Embret Svestad-Bårdseng from the break, with the Italian outpowering Soler at the snow-lined summit of the pass.
Three-quarters of an hour further on and approaching the summit of the next climb, the Cat. 1 Collada de Sant Isidre, however, of those four, only Ciccone and Carapaz remained narrowly ahead as Red Bull, working for Lipowitz, upped the pace considerably in a 30-strong peloton.
Ciccone finally shed the Ecuadorian to move even further up the mountains classification, just as the GC battle was heating up behind. As a result, Vingegaard lost all his teammates on the climb, while Red Bull were stripped down to just Remco Evenepoel - now clearly sacrificing his own chances for his German teammate - and Lipowitz himself.
Evenepoel pushed hard on the very dangerous, twisting descent, too, keeping sole leader Ciccone at a bare 40 seconds on a leader's group that had now crumbled to just seven riders. Lots of top names, including Oscar Onley (Ineos Grenadiers), had lost contact by this point, but Vingegaard was still very much on the right side of the splits and, if isolated, never subject to actual attack.
At 17 kilometres from the finish, stage leader Ciccone sat up to try and bring Lidl-Trek Mattias Skjelmose back into contention with the Evenepoel and Lipowitze-led group. Also riding alongside the Belgian and German, and hunting for the win on the final ascent up to Queralt sanctuary were a very select group comprising Vingegaard, Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-QuickStep), Carapaz and Bahrain Victorious duo Lenny Martinez and Afonso Eulálio. With a minute in hand on their closest pursuers as the seven blasted through the start town of Berga, it was clear one of them would be the stage winner.
Carapaz, though, sat up almost immediately when Evenepoel continued to drive more intently on the tougher sections, and Eulálio was quick to follow suit. The status quo of the remaining five then continued in a tense battle on the easier upper slopes. Given Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), previously second on GC, was now a long way behind on the stage, nobody in the tiny lead group, almost all of them overall favourites, seemed willing to risk their all but automatic rise in at least one position thanks to Gall's absence. And as they all knew only too well from Vingegaard's blistering climbing performance the day before, trying to go for the GC lead itself was, in any case, a hopeless task.
Finally, with 2.4 kilometres to go, Vingegaard opted to accelerate, the sign for Evenepoel to swing off, and only Lipowitz and Lenny Martinez were initially able to follow. A few hundred metres later, though, Vingegaard was on his own, for the second day running. He did not overly push himself in the closing, easier metres of the climb - getting a big enough gap had already been carved out the day before. But it was equally certain that nobody would reach him, and his second stage win seemed all but a formality.
It will not have been lost on Vingegaard that the previous rider to raise his arms in victory in the shadow of the Queralt Sanctuary in the Volta was one Tadej Pogačar, two years ago, en route to a crashing overall triumph in the Volta - and then in the Giro d'Italia in May.
It is now all but a foregone conclusion that Vingegaard will follow in the Slovenian's wheel tracks all the way to victory in his first-ever Volta in Barcelona on Sunday. But perhaps even more importantly, at the same time, Vingegaard's status as overwhelming favourite for the Giro is now also all but in the bag, too.
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