Juan Ayuso grabs the leader's jersey ahead of the queen stage of Volta a Catalunya: "We will fight for every second"
CyclingSaturday, 29 March 2025 at 02:00
The Volta a Catalunya 2025 reaches its queen stage on Saturday with maximum equality between Juan Ayuso and Primoz Roglic. The Spaniard will defend the overall leader's jersey, but only by one second!
The young UAE Team Emirates - XRG star managed to take one bonification second at one of the intermediate sprints during stage 5 of the race. This allowed him to overtake Roglic again, with both entering the first group at the finish after echelons split up the peloton.
Before the start of the Volta it was expected that the overall standings would be decided by a small margin. But this tie between Juan Ayuso and Primoz Roglic is making things the more exciting. In fact, the Spaniard, in his statements after stage 5, warns that in the queen stage everything can be decided by details.
"We have seen that in this Volta a Catalunya every second is being sought for. This second can be decisive. Until today we were tied on time, and tomorrow it will be similar. Every bonus sprint and the bonus at the finish line can decide the overall. Every second we can win, all the better," said Juan Ayuso.
General classification of Volta a Catalunya before stage 6:
| Position | Name | Team | Time |
| 1 | Ayuso Juan | UAE Team Emirates - XRG | 22:23:03 |
| 2 | Roglic Primoz | Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe | + 01 |
| 3 | Mas Enric | Movistar Team | + 21 |
| 4 | Landa Mikel | Soudal Quick-Step | + 22 |
| 5 | Martinez Lenny | Bahrain Victorious | + 28 |
| 6 | From Plus Laurens | INEOS Grenadiers | + 59 |
| 7 | Bernal Egan | INEOS Grenadiers | + 59 |
| 8 | Van Eetvelt Lennert | Lotto | + 01:10 |
| 9 | Yates Simon | Team Visma | Lease a Bike | + 01:14 |
| 10 | Carapaz Richard | EF Education-EasyPost | + 01:27 |
| 11 | Riccitello Matthew | Israel-Premier Tech | + 01:28 |
| 12 | Quintana Nairo | Movistar Team | + 01:29 |
| 13 | O'Connor Ben | Team Jayco-AlUla | + 01:33 |
| 14 | López Martin | XDS Astana Team | + 01:38 |
| 15 | Lecerf Junior | Soudal Quick-Step | + 01:41 |
| 16 | Lopez Juan Pedro | Lidl-Trek | + 01:43 |
| 17 | Pellizzari Giulio | Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe | + 01:48 |
| 18 | Diaz Jose Manuel | Burgos Burpellet BH | + 01:55 |
| 19 | Poels Wout | XDS Astana Team | + 01:56 |
| 20 | Soler Marc | UAE Team Emirates - XRG | + 01:56 |
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- i wouldn't count Pogi out. Low probability of a win, but not impossiblemobk01-04-2025
- Right now it doesn't seem that his legs are there or that his head is in the racevappaxbipmv01-04-2025
- would have been nice to hear exactly WHY he thinks pog has zero chance in some greater detail. i mean, tend to agree that his chances aren’t GREAT, but some explanation from the expert with an opinion would be nice. MINE is that, in spite of the recon he did where tadej concluded that the course “wasn’t that hard” i think that doing the full route at full gas is really going to beat up pogacar’s 145lb body, to a degree that he maybe isn’t expecting. but hey, we’ll see in a couple weeks. like everyone else, i do think it’s supercool that he’s going.OCexile01-04-2025
- Go back to that era and look at the lousy mechanicals he's had at Paris-Roubaix. Take those away, maybe he has another Monument, Van der Poel has one less, and suddenly all the rules change. Those mechanicals preceded his awful crashes - and you're right, that Tour was amazing. Ventoux, TT, and Champs-Elysees?! Something that Pogacar and Van der Poel can't do, just Wout. It still amazes me.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Oh, the impossibility of this kind of comparison. A pre-WW2 Binda had amazing statistics, and that was one era. During what I think of as the romantic era, Poulidor had an incredible run at the Tour without winning, and Bobet won some grand tours and some Monuments. In this modern era (for me: after Hinault), we've had multiple Monument winners win a grand tour (such as Valverde and Kelly, with Kelly the better rider in general), and then we've got someone like Roglic, the true GC rider. Sure there was a Monument that was kind of a fluke (both Pogacar and Hirschi might have won, and twitchy Alaphilippe deserved relegation), but what matters are the 5 grand tours and all these wins across the 1 week GC races except for the Tour de Suisse (you'd think he'd race it to get the set of them all). In this era, since 2000 or so, maybe he meets the description as best non-Tour winner. How many GC riders have these wins and not the Tour? To compare to other eras really is not possible. He's his own unique rider, and it's been amazing watching him for the past many years. That's about all we can say.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Ease up on a brother!bobo01-04-2025
- Primoz finds ways to win. Too bad he'll never take Tour de France.awp01-04-2025
- I don't think I would ever count Wout van Aert out of a race if his head is in it. He is a serious talent.awp01-04-2025
- He's a great rider for sure, not sure if he the best to never win the Tour though.awp01-04-2025
- Hard to imagine that his confidence - that imperious flow state that great athletes operate in - hasn't been affected. But that is a different dynamic than the one you described. He has not become hesitant because he is fixated on his rival. He has suffered multiple traumatic injuries, and I have no doubt he is still 1% off both mentally and physically as a result. Football (both kinds) and basketball players who blow out knees go through a predictable cycle in which they are reluctant to do max efforts even after their doctors have cleared them. I myself went though a small version of that after a back injury. It's just hard once you no longer know where the line is. We saw in his TT a couple weeks ago that he still has power, and for all the hand wringing he is still finishing in the top 10-20 of big races. But as we have seen with others, getting *all* the way back is not assured. I'm not ready to say he is done, but few riders who have been hurt as often and as badly as him remain at the top.MidnightRider01-04-2025