Volta a Catalunya: Porte secures overall success

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Richie Porte’s magnificent spring showed no sign of finishing on Sunday as the recent Paris-Nice winner and Team Sky rider added a second WorldTour stage race victory to his 2015 palmares at the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya.

The Volta’s final 126.6-kilometre stage, featuring eight ascents through Montjuic Park on a 6.4-lap circuit, ended with a third win in the week-long event for Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) at the head of a front group of around 40 riders.

The Spanish veteran completed the overall podium in second place, four seconds behind Porte, with Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R La Mondiale) in third. Valverde’s final win and total of 12 seconds time bonus - he had also grabbed time with a runner’s up spot in the first intermediate sprint - moved him into second place overall.

The Spanish veteran was clearly delighted with his bunch sprint win, giving his teammate Jose Joaquin Rojas an on-the-bike hug as he freewheeled after the line, grinning from ear to ear. But with the time differences so minimal, Valverde will be left asking himself what would have been possible had he not been delayed by a crash on the Al des Angels climb on stage 3.

Coincidentally, Porte’s four-second advantage is the same time gap as between 2014 winner Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) and runner-up Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) in last year’s Volta. But despite the lack of terrain where riders could really open up the throttle - due to the Volta’s somewhat disappointing lack of a time trial or tougher mountaintop finishes, for example, the Catalan stage race has nonetheless been much harder fought this March.

All respect to Maciej Paterski (CCC) - the stage 1 winner and two-day leader - Bart de Clercq (Lotto Soudal) and Pierre Rolland (Europcar), but their three-man breakaway that unexpectedly gained an advantage of nearly three minutes on stage 1 threatened to kill off all interest in the overall before the race had really begun. Instead, seeing how the top contenders managed to bounce back from such a blow to their hopes has proved a major interest point in this year’s race.

Consistent racing by Porte, a second place behind Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) at La Molina, and finally a working alliance between Sky and other teams to blow the race apart on stage 5 ousted De Clercq, the most tenacious of the stage 1 trio in the mountains, from the leader’s position. As a result, Porte was en route to simultaneously claiming his second major stage race of 2015 and reinforcing his position as top ranked-rider in the WorldTour. He increasingly looks like a top favourite for the Giro d’Italia, too.

“I didn’t expect to win after the catastrophe of the first stage,” Porte, the first Australian ever to win Catalunya, told Spanish tv, “and it’s a dream result to get this. I’m really looking forward, too, to the Giro now.”

Having taken the lead on stage 5, Porte added that he had been “very motivated, prepared to fight to defend it, but with [Alejandro] Valverde, you never know what can happen. He’s such a fighter.

“All credit to the team, we had the numbers there in the final and that’s what saved the race for me.”

One of the few - but important - downsides for Team Sky at Catalunya was Chris Froome’s below-expectations ride, losing 27 minutes on the main mountain stage.

But as Porte said, Sky were present on the front in significant numbers during the final stage, clamping down on two attacks by Daniel Martin (Cannondale-Garmin) and another by Valverde himself. The rest of the favourites failed to make any challenges. Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) was able to stay with the main group despite his heavy crash on Saturday, but the Spaniard ended his last pre-Giro race still pushed down to fourth overall by Valverde.

Arguably the strongest rider of the Volta this eyar, Valverde was delighted with his third stage win, taken in a frantic rush for the line at the Montjuic park where - for once - it did not rain on the final stage.

“It’s been a very tough Volta, but with three stages and the second place overall, I can’t ask for much more,” Valverde said. “I wanted to go for the overall and tried it with that attack, but saw it was impossible and had to settle for going for it in the sprint.”

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