Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard accelerated clear with about 6km left and steadily increased his lead all the way to the finish
La Molina (Spain) (AFP) - Jonas Vingegaard powered to a solo victory on stage five of the Tour of Catalonia on Friday to move into the overall lead.
The two-time Tour de France winner and race favourite attacked and quickly dropped double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel before catching the break and charging into the lead on the final climb in the Pyrenees mountains.
Austrian Felix Gall came in second, 51 seconds behind the Dane, with France’s Lenny Martinez pipping German Florian Lipowitz to complete the podium 10 seconds later.
Visma-Lease a Bike rider Vingegaard leads overall by 57 seconds from Gall and is 1min 09sec ahead of third-place Martinez.
Having already won the prestigious Paris-Nice stage race earlier this month – claiming two stages along the way – Vingegaard is well-placed to continue his successful start to the season as he builds up to a tilt at the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double.
“Actually it was quite a hard stage… I didn’t feel the very, very best in the beginning,” said Vingegaard, who praised his teammates including Sepp Kuss for helping with his triumph.
“It was good teamwork today,” he continued. “I felt really strong on the last climb and in the end I’m really happy with the gap I made today.”
Riders were set to travel 155 kilometres from La Seu d’Urgell to La Molina, facing five categorised climbs in the race’s Queen Stage.
However, the route was shortened again because of high winds, as it was on Thursday, albeit less dramatically, with the tough final climb of Coll de Pal clipped by 2.2 kilometres.
Several riders fell in a crash on the descent of Collada Sobirana with 25 kilometres to go, including Joao Almeida and Tom Pidcock, although they were able to continue.
Giulio Ciccone went solo at the front with around 17 kilometres remaining, leaving the other breakaway riders Marc Soler and Davide Piganzoli behind to be swallowed up by the peloton.
Ciccone was just over a minute ahead with 10 kilometres to go, followed by a small chase group.
Favourite Vingegaard attacked with around 7km to go to try and bridge the gap to the chasers, along with Evenepoel, but the Dane was able to drop the Belgian.
Vingegaard’s group caught Ciccone and the favourite took control, accelerating again with about 6km left.
This time, nobody was able to follow and he steadily increased his lead all the way to the finish.
Evenepoel, who crashed in stage three, finished over a minute-and-a-half behind Vingegaard and now trails the Dane by one minute 38 secs overall.
Briton Pidcock, who started the day second overall, could not recover after his crash and lost more than 29 minutes, while overnight leader Dorian Godon, a sprinter, finished just 30 sec ahead of the Brit.