Volta a Catalunya: Michael Matthews secures first win for BikeExchange on stage 1

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Michael Matthews (BikeExchange-Jayco) claimed victory on the opening stage of the Volta a Catalunya, beating Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Victorious) in an uphill sprint in Sant Feliu de Guixols.

Shortly after crossing the line, Colbrelli collapsed and required urgent medical attention. He was transported by ambulance to hospital roughly 45 minutes after the finish, with his team later stating he is in stable condition and undergoing further tests.

Matthews and Colbrelli went head-to-head on opposite sides of the road, with Matthews showing superior staying power as the pair sprinted from 200 metres out.

Quentin Pacher (Groupama-FDJ) took the final spot on the podium after threatening to catch the slowing Colbrelli, but there was a small gap back to the rest of the bunch.

Matthews takes the first leader’s jersey of the race on a day when the pre-race favourites finished safely despite pitfalls that included crosswinds and rain.

Matthews cut an emotional figure in Sant Feliu de Guixols after taking the first victory of his second stint at BikeExchange-Jayco and his first win since August 2020. He used his experience, having won on this very finish at the 2019 edition of the Volta, to launch a perfectly calculated sprint.

“It’s been a long time without a victory for me now, so to come back to a finish I knew well and win again, it means so much,” Matthews said.

His BikeExchange-Jayco team had helped split the race in the crosswinds with 100km to go, with overall leader Simon Yates getting into a front echelon, but the race came back together and came down to a reduced bunch kick up the steep final kilometre.

After QuickStep-AlphaVinyl dominated the run-in, Sylvain Moniquet (Arkea-Samsic) was the first rider to attack on the final slope but was soon caught as Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) - who’d had to chase after a crash on an early descent - took it up with a sustained acceleration. Colbrelli and Matthews were both poised near the front and it was the Italian who launched the sprint with 200 metres still to go. As he moved out to the left, Matthews found open road on the right and the pair sprinted a road’s width apart.

Colbrelli began to slow in the final 100 metres and it was Matthews who came through to raise his arms for the first time in 19 months.

How it unfolded

The 171.2km opening stage started in Sant Feliu de Guixols and finished there, too, after a trio of category-3 climbs. The first of them came after just 20km, but the road actually started climbing from kilometre-zero, ensuring a fast and frantic start to the race.

No attacks went on the opening uncategorised climb and only Alexander Molenaar succeeded in breaking free on the Cat-3 Alt de Santa, although only to claim the mountains classification points at the top. As the descent began, he was caught and chaos ensued in the peloton.

The roads were wet and the bunch split in two, only reforming in the valley. By that point, a group had torn off the front to form what would be the day’s breakaway, although that too would be relatively short-lived. Jetse Bol (Burgos-BH), Marco Brenner (Team DSM), Jhonatan Caicedo (EF Education-EasyPost), Raul Garcia (Kern Pharma), and the Euskaltel-Euskadi) duo of Antonio Soto and Carlos Canal.

The escape group built a lead of four minutes on the flatter terrain but then the road turned into crosswinds and the pace went through the roof. The peloton soon split under a charge from BikeExchange, who put six riders, including Matthews and Yates, into a front echelon of 20.

They soon swept up most of the breakaway as they hit the second of the day’s climb with just over 60km to go, but Caicdeo stayed clear. Rohan Dennis (Jumbo-Visma) led the first main group over the top of the Cat-3 Alt de la Ganga but the rest of the bunch wasn’t far behind, and there was a regrouping on the descent, which was made treacherous by heavy rain.

That was the moment for some risk-takers to form a new breakaway, with Molenaar, Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ), Pieter Sorry (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl), Jonas Hvideberg (DSM), and Theo Delacroix (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert) going on the attack.

They built a lead of 35 seconds as they reached Sant Feliu de Guixols and passed through the finish line for the first time with 40km to go, where Hvideberg took the intermediate sprint. The final climb of the Alt de Romanya began with 30km to go but the situation remained stable, even if Molenaar was dropped from the break.

On the descent, however, the wet weather saw a number of crashes, with Carapaz among those to hit the deck. The Ecuadorian had to enlist help from teammates Luke Plapp and Jonathan Castroviejo before rejoining the bunch on the flat.

From there, the breakaway were always in sight on the rolling run-in and Serry, Brenner, and Armirail were the last men standing but were swept up with 8km to go. Jumbo-Visma raised the pace through Steven Kruijswijk before Fausto Masnada pulled through the final kilometres for QuickStep.

The Italian led onto the final-kilometre ramp to the line, where upon Moniquet attacked and Carapaz stretched it out, giving way to a battle between Matthews and Colbrelli. The former raised his hands to celebrate a relief-filled victory while the cycling world waits and hopes for good news regarding Colbrelli’s condition.