The hardest climb at the Volta a Catalunya has been cut due to weather conditions
Cycling
The Volta a Catalunya 2025 reaches its decisive moment this Saturday. It will do so with the queen stage of the race, where Juan Ayuso and Primoz Roglic, separated by only one second, will fight for the lead of the general classification. However, the main climb of the day has been cut from the stage.
This has been reported by the Volta a Catalunya itself through an official statement, which reveals that the decision has been taken by the warning of danger from strong winds.
"Following the recommendations of the Servei Català de Trànsit and the relevant authorities, the Volta a Catalunya has been forced to cut its sixth stage scheduled for tomorrow between Berga and Queralt in response to the activation due to wind risk in Catalunya of the special emergency plan VENTCAT, which has entered the Alert phase," reads the communiqué.
Originally, the queen stage was to be 160 kilometers long, with the brutal special category climb to the Coll del Pradell in the middle of the day. But the biggest danger for the riders would be on this climb, which has been eliminated from the route.
Therefore, the queen stage of the Volta a Catalunya will be decided in a 118.6km day without the Coll dell Pradell, and the Coll de Batallola (3rd Category), the Collada de San Isidro (1st Category) and the final climb to Queralt (1st Category) will be maintained.
The departure time of the stage will be at 13:55h, 1 hour and 20 minutes later than originally scheduled (12:35h). The arrival, depending on the speed at which it is ridden, will also be around 17:00h in the afternoon.
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- 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
- It’s quite a limited sport when it comes to stories, they have to try to make news.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- But you yourself are agreeing the crashing affected his psyche, or is that just me getting the wrong impression?Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Gee, they cant keep their mouths shut for 15 days! Talk after Roubaix if the man didnt deliver, not now.Caralladas31-03-2025