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Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) crushed his competition under the pouring rain on the mountaintop finish at Vallter 2000 winning stage 2 and taking the overall lead at the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya.
Pogacar attacked with 6.5km to go on the final ascent, initially opening a gap of 15 seconds and then pushing his lead out to 1:22 as he crossed the line with the victory ahead of runner-up Mikel Landa (Soudal-QuickStep) and third-placed Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe).
Pogačar now leads the overall classification by 1:35 over Landa and an additional three seconds over Vlasov, heading into the third stage at the Volta a Catalunya, a 176.7km race from Sant Joan de les Abadesses to Port Ainé on Wednesday.
“We started with nice weather, like summer, and then we saw these clouds, and we were thinking that maybe we could survive until the final climb without rain, but unfortunately, it started to rain on the second-to-last climb. The conditions were tough; it was a hard climb, and you could feel the altitude, but I’m happy to win,” Pogačar said.
How it unfolded
The second stage of the Volta a Catalunya took the peloton on 186.5km from Mataró to the summit of Vallter 2000.
The peloton was routed through flat valley roads with two intermediate sprints before reaching the category 1 ascent Coll de Coubet, which is 9.6km and has an average gradient of 5.4%, a prelude to the finale…
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