The Frenchman made a significant jump in the general classification with two days to go.
Valentin Paret-Peintre produced an impressive ride on the queen stage of the race to take fifth place atop Coll de Pall. Soudal Quick-Step’s climber, who is racing Catalunya for the third year in a row, notched up his third top ten result at World Tour level this season and put himself in contention for a strong GC this week.
Before things turned serious in the final 40 kilometers, Soudal Quick-Step was prominent in the day’s breakaway with Junior Lecerf, the young Belgian who stayed in the leading group for more than 70 kilometers. After the was caught, the peloton began intensifying the pace, and on the final descent several riders crashed – an incident which split the bunch. A frantic chase ensued, as those caught behind pushed hard to rejoin the main group ahead of the final climb.
Coll de Pal was the big difficulty of this fifth stage, and even though it had to be shortened by 2.2 kilometers due to the strong winds at the summit, it still was a stern test for the general classification riders. Averaging 7.2% over 16 kilometers and featuring lung-busting double-digit gradients, this long first-category ascent separated the pre-race contenders and widened the gaps between them, which were small before the start.
Mikel Landa was the first big name to make a move there, putting in an acceleration that ended up reducing the peloton. Other riders followed suit, and what was a large peloton quickly turned into an elite six-man group; Paret-Peintre was there and showed the good legs that carried him to a podium finish in Paris-Nice just two weeks ago. This time, the 25-year-old concluded outside the podium, but his strong effort was enough to move him up to fifth place on the overall ranking of the race ahead of Saturday’s summit finish to Queralt.
Today was a hard day and in the final six kilometers I was on the limit.
“Luckily, there was some headwind in the last part of the stage and that saved me a bit. I got the best possible result considering everything and I am content with moving up in the general classification. Let’s see now what we can do on the next stage”, Valentin said at the finish on Coll de Pal.
Photo credit: ©Szymon Gruchalski / Getty Images
