The 99th edition of the World Tour race concludes tomorrow in Barcelona.
Five escapees went on the attack on the first uphill section of Volta a Catalunya stage 6, putting two minutes between them and a bunch keen on not repeating Friday’s mistakes, when they miscalculated their steps and ended up missing out on a chance to fight for victory for just a handful of seconds.
The field let the breakaway have their time in the sun on both classified climbs of the day – Coll d’Abarca and Coll d’Alforja – before intensifying the pace and erasing the deficit to the leaders, who got pegged back inside the closing ten kilometers, in the outskirts of Vila-seca.
A strange finale unfolded with five kilometers to go, when after a brief acceleration of Movistar, whose purpose was to split the peloton on the seafront, two riders attacked, one of them being the leader of general classification. Deceuninck – Quick-Step immediately reacted and put a man on the front, shutting down that move just as the bunch came out of a roundabout with less than two kilometers to go.
Under the red kite, Enric Mas was up there ahead of the sprinters and kicked out with around 300 meters left, ending up in tenth behind winner Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) and gaining a place in the overall standings, where he is now 15th with one stage to go.
Photo credit: ©David Ramos/ Getty Images
