Volta a Catalunya: GC riders steal sprinter's day, Primoz Roglic outsprints Remco Evenepoel to stage 1 victory

The Volta a Catalunya is a race packed with mountain stages. However even the opening day which should be for the sprinters was battled among the GC riders, as Primoz Roglic outsprinted Remco Evenepoel for the win.

The Volta a Catalunya is a race that many times features hilly stages to open things up. Today was a good example, and several riders tried to take the very important opportunity. Alessandro De Marchi (Team Jayco AlUla), Oscar Onley (Team DSM), Rune Herregodts (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), Jetse Bol (Burgos-BH) and Pau Miquel (Equipo Kern Pharma) went up the road.

Euskaltel - Euskadi missed the breakaway and put on a lot of chase during the day, eventually attacking with two riders but failing to bridge across. Miquel cracked out front as towards the final categorized climb of the day the gap began to dwindle as Jumbo-Visma picked up the pace. Until then Cofidis had helped with the chase, but as the GC teams got involved in the climbs the peloton lost some organization.

The final technical kilometers were very technical and rolling and all teams looked to be near the front. The final three survivors off the front were eventually picked up by the peloton with 6 kilometers to go with a furious pace in the peloton. The tension was evident and with just under 6 kilometers to go a massive crash in a downhill area confirmed the fears of many.

Jumbo-Visma and Soudal - Quick-Step were the teams that were near the front the most towards the end, and for good reason. The Dutch team led the uphill sprint into Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Primoz Roglic opened a strong sprint which was quite tight towards the end, but he took an impressive win, with Remco Evenepoel banging the bars as he came in very close to the victory in the final meters. Ide Schelling sprinted to third on the day.

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