Volta a Catalunya: Kaden Groves takes his first win of the season on stage 4 bunch sprint

Alpecin-Deceuninck had a tough start to the season, but they are now on full speed. Kaden Groves was the fastest and won the bunch sprint on stage 4 of the Volta a Catalunya.

It was a tough day in the Catalan race, with an uphill start into La Molina once again. Many riders attacked in the ascent but couldn't break away from the peloton. The escapee group settled in the following descent. Nans Peters (AG2R Citröen Team), Chris Juul-Jensen (Team Jayco AlUla), David de la Cruz (Astana Qazaqstan Team), Roger Adrià (Equipo Kern Pharma) and Torstein Traeen (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team).

The gap never grew too much as the peloton was aware of the downhill and hilly trend to the day. Cofidis and INEOS Grenadiers have controlled the pace in the peloton with the gap reaching just over 3 minutes at it's best. It slowly started coming down. It was around 1:20 minutes at the final hilltop, with the final kilometers then very fast all the way into the finish in Sabadell.

The gap was holding up, but the peloton had the speed to catch up with the group. It was reeled in with just 4 kilometers to go. From there on the sprint began to be set up, with quite a lot of confusion and few leadouts present.

Israel - Premier Tech managed to insert a couple of riders in front in the final meters, leading out Corbin Strong. The Kiwi matched Bryan Coquard who launched his sprint first, but over on the wheel of Coquard was Kaden Groves who put his nose in the wind on the final meters and took it on the day. Coquard and Strong completed the podium with the overall classification remaining the same.