27-rider breakaway succeeds at Volta a Portugal with Tomas Contte winning uphill sprint finish

On another day of the 85th edition of the Volta a Portugal, the peloton rode around the Minho region in what was the longest stage of the entire race at 182km. The 108 cyclists still in the race will start and finish the day in two locations that are already well known to those who follow our race frequently. Viana do Castelo was the city that hosted the grand finale of the 2023 Volta a Portugal, which crowned Colin Stussi as the winner of the yellow jersey in the final time trial up Santa Luzia. Today, the city hosts the start and the cyclists head to Fafe, where there are usually prologues or true classic stages with a passage over the well-known Salto da Pedra Sentada climb, which may sound familiar to lovers of the Rally of Portugal.

Today there was no prologue or ascent to the Pedra Sentada jump. Instead, the approach to Fafe was made via a 4th category climb in Golães, which didn't present any major difficulties and, anticipating this, the peloton ended up riding at a more relaxed pace throughout the day, certainly already thinking about saving energy for tomorrow's mythical climb up Senhora da Graça and also Sunday's final time trial in Viseu.

The day saw a very large breakaway, with around 27 cyclists and all the teams represented except ABTF - Betão Feirense, with the yellow jersey, Afonso Eulálio. Among the most represented in the breakaway were Project Echelons Racing, which had already won at the finish in Bragança three days ago and Tavfer-Ovos Matinados-Mortágua. Several teams had more than one rider at the front of the race, but the highlight of the day was Gonçalo Leaça of the Credibom / LA Alumíninos / Marcos Car team, who was the best placed of the escapees in 27th place, exactly 13 minutes behind race leader Afonso Eulálio. Under normal conditions, this would be a race scenario of little concern, but given that we had practically 25% of the peloton in the breakaway, this gave Gonçalo Leaça a serious chance of starting to threaten the top places in the general classification.

Around 60 kilometers from the finish line, the gap stood at an incredible 12 minutes, which put Gonçalo Leaça inside the top five and forced the ABTF - Betão Feirense team to go into service at the risk of losing the race lead. Regardless of all this, one thing was already clear today: the stage win would go to the breakaway. But for whom?

Looking at the breakaway, we saw several teams with sprinters, including João Matias (also supported by Cesar Martingil, himself also a candidate for victory); Luis Mendonça who was looking to give Sabgal - Anicolor Cycling Team its third stage win in the race; Tomas Contte who is a teammate of the Orange Jersey (points leader), German Tivani; they were joined on the list of favorites by the Portuguese Luis Gomes and Francisco Campos and the trio of Spaniards Andoni Lopez, Raúl Rota and Oscar Pelegrí. 

On the last climb of the day, the aforementioned João Matias and Diogo Narciso were the first to open hostilities and managed to gain an advantage of around 20 seconds over the escape group, but the lack of collaboration between the two proved to be a problem, with Narciso protesting to Matias and Samuel Boardman managing to bridge the gap with 6km to go. At the top of the climb to Golães, the chasing group gave everything to catch up with the front trio and succeeded.

At the end, on a slight climb and on the characteristic cobbles of the last 350 meters, it was Tomas Contte who came out on top at the finish line. The 26-year-old Argentinian rider from the Aviludo - Louletano - Loulé Concelho team had already finished second at the finish in Marvila, Lisbon, on a day when he was beaten by his teammate and compatriot German Tivani, who admitted that Contte was the man the team had programmed to win the sprint, but that the circumstances of the race ended up determining something different. Well, the second time was the charm, and this time the Argentinian comfortably beat Andoni Lopez and a surprising Rafael Reis, who benefited from the high pace imposed on the front group that exhausted the energy of many of the sprinters.

The breakaway arrived with an advantage of around 11 minutes over the peloton, but did they think the race was over? There were also attacks from within the peloton on the climb up to Golães, with Colin Stussi trying to surprise Afonso Eulálio, but the yellow jersey was able to respond. The peloton arrived at the finish line 10:25 off the front group and it was Colin Stussi who sprinted hard and caused cuts within the peloton with Afonso Eulálio marking his main rival hard. Small gaps opened up in the peloton, but not enough for the organization to allocate time differences in the general classification.

Although without any significant differences, the peloton has given us a preview of what awaits us tomorrow when they face the very tough stage that will have the finish line at the mythical Senhora da Graça and which could be absolutely decisive in the accounts of the general classification. Colin Stussi has already shown that he won't let Afonso Eulálio sleep easy and at the very least these initiatives will have a psychological impact. A great spectacle awaits tomorrow.