Enric Mas sits third in the best young rider classification following the race’s queen stage.
Top 10 overall at the season’s first World Tour race, the Tour Down Under, Dries Devenyns made the Volta a Catalunya breakaway on Wednesday’s 179km together with ten other riders, with whom he built a maximum lead of six minutes on the slopes of the minor-ranked Alt de la Ganga, the day’s first classified climb.
Making his first presence in six years at the century-old race, Dries brought his fair share of pace-setting in the lead group, taking some solid pulls as the escapees continued to push on until midway up Vallter 2000, a 12.1km-long climb averaging 7.1% which was returning at the Volta a Catalunya after five years. In 2014, the gaps weren’t that significant, but this time around things were completely different, due to a brisk pace set in the peloton on the stiff gradients in the headwind, which resulted in the breakaway being easily clawed back and the field getting severely fragmented.
Five men ended up fighting for the win atop Vallter 2000, where Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) outsprinted his companions. Dropped with around six kilometers to go, Enric Mas showed true character and kept fighting on the hard gradients of Wednesday’s first-category climb, finishing one minute down, surging to 13th in the general standings and on the podium of the best young rider classification. Best placed Spaniard, Mas will have another chance of breaking the top 10 on Thursday, when the race finishes atop La Molina.
Photo credit: ©David Ramos/ Getty Images
