A hard-fought third stage of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya on Wednesday saw Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2r La Mondiale) seize his first victory in three years by a handful of seconds from a breakaway group of seven leading favourites, as the battle for the overall stays tantalizingly poised on a knife-edge.

Stage 1 breakaway and new race leader Pierre Rolland (Europcar) was amongst a large group of riders that managed to limit the gap on the leading seven after being either dropped or distanced in the last hour of the stage. The finale featured a final two climbs of Santa Pelleaia, a second category, and Alt des Angels, nominally a first category climb but in reality far easier, 13 kilometres from the finish in Girona.

Amongst those behind were names as important as stage 2 winner Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), held up by a crash some 35 kilometres from the line and Britain’s Chris Froome (Sky)  distanced on the Alt des Angels. The previous leader and stage 1 winner, Maciej Paterski (CCC Sprandi Polkowic) lost around 90 seconds and drops to second overall.

On a short, undulating stage through the hills around  the Catalan town of Girona - the European base for many non-Spanish riders in the peloton - a fast ascent of the Santa Pellaia with Tinkoff-Saxo at the head of affairs showed the Russian team’s leader Alberto Contador meant business. Caught behind when a crash split the pack, Valverde was the principal victim, although his disadvantage of just 20 seconds as the front group of some 25 riders roared over the summit of the climb was by no means decisive.

The winding fast descent and constant accelerations by Astana and Tinkoff-Saxo saw the gaps between three separate pelotons widen to around a minute. Then on the  densely wooded, smooth ascent of the Alt des Angels, the two teams’ insistently high pace left a steady swathe of riders dropping back from the front pack. Amongst them were Rolland and Chris Froome, although not Froome’s teammate and Paris-Nice winner Richie Porte, and the limited damage such a straightforward climb caused - “we were trying to get petrol out of ground where there wasn’t any oil” as Contador put it afterwards -  allowed the chasers to recover and recoup much of their losses quite quickly.

Ahead, meanwhile, determined early work by Tinkoff-Saxo on the Alt des Angels’ steady upward grind was continued by Astana and Etixx-QuickStep. That finally left the front group with a narrow gap on the chasers but down to just five riders: Contador, Porte, Fabio Aru (Astana), Pozzovivo and Rigoberto Urán (Etixx-QuickStep), all of whom, coincidentally or not, are targetting the Giro d’Italia.

Contador made two digs in the climb’s final four kilometres, the first powerful enough to ensure that the group initially stayed down to five riders, with Cannondale-Garmin chasers Dan Martin and Andrew Talansky unable to bridge across until shortly after the Angels summit when they brought the group’s total to seven.

The second provoked a brace of brief driving counter-moves from Porte and Aru, but with a long, winding but very fast descent still left to tackle and a chase group re-organising quickly behind, it was clear that solo or small moves would be going nowhere. Instead much arm-waving from Contador urging the group to collaborate seemingly had some effect, as Porte, Aru, Talansky and finally Urán on the flatter final kilometres kept the seven’s minimal advantage around the 30 second mark on their chasers.

A sudden, well-timed lunge by Pozzovivo in the streets of Girona briefly broke the cohesion just as a rumbustious Valverde and his Movistar teammates were eating fast into the breakaway lead. Pozzovivo stayed away to claim the win, high-fiving his soigneur in delight at  his own first victory, afte three years in the team, in AG2R La Mondiale colours.

Three seconds later Urán and Dan Martin spearheaded the rest of the break as they pounded across the line, the Colombian and Irishman picking up bonus seconds for second and third that could yet prove vital. The break’s gap, though, was only 19 seconds on the Valverde-Froome-Rolland group by this point.

The Volta now reaches its crucial mountain stage on Thursday, with a first category summit finish at La Molina preceded by the race’s only Hors Categorie climb, the 21 kilometre ascent of La Creuta. In theory Rolland is the man to beat given he has now taken the lead - as predicted after his spectacular stage 1 breakaway alongside Paterski and Bart de Clerc (Lotto-Soudal) - and has an advantage of 1:08 over nearest challenger Paterski. 

In a race won by just four seconds last year on identical terrain, that could be enough. But the French mountain specialist’s uneven performance on Wednesday’s fairly straightforward climbs make it much harder to forecast how the Europcar rider will fare in tougher terrain in the Pyrenees. 

Just to add to the unpredictability and likelihood of yet more attacks, in the Volta’s overall classification, 30 riders of the top 33 remain inside a narrow 31-second time band of each other, the best-placed Pozzovivo at 2:14 on Rolland. Last but not least, Alberto Contador, for one, will not have forgotten that Froome, for all he had a little difficulty on Wednesday, is more than capable of rebounding after a setback - as the Briton has already managed to do in devastating style, and to Contador’s cost, this year in February’s Vuelta a Andalusia.

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