Soudal Quick-Step with Mikel Landa tried to challenge the unstoppable Tadej Pogačar on Port Ainé in Volta a Catalunya Stage 3 but the Slovenian repeated yesterday, dropping everyone early and soloing to another WorldTour victory.
After a massive performance yesterday on Vallter 2000, it was another chance for Tadej Pogačar to break a climbing record in Catalunya. With two bigger climbs before Port Ainé (18.4 km, 6.7%) it would be closer to a medium difficulty grand tour mountain stage.
Visma – Lease a Bike were working on earlier climbs, trying to make the race hard, which seemed to help as their GC leaders Sepp Kuss and Cian Uijtdebroeks performed better than on Stage 2. Despite their efforts, Uno-X climber Johannes Kulset only burned 2,773 kilojoules for 3:45 h – the intensity was not high being around 12 kj/kg/h.
Despite bringing a strong climbing squad to Catalunya UAE Team Emirates were not able to hold a high pace on the final climb with Marc Soler dropping very early. Soudal-Quick Step were confident in Mikel Landa as they set a high pace in the middle of the climb with William Lecerf and Jan Hirt. But that would not help against Pogačar, who counter-attacked Landa with 7 km to go, with the Spaniard trying to no avail to hold the Slovenian’s wheel.
Pogačar destroyed the Port Ainé record, previously owned by Esteban Chaves, who finished 19th today, losing more than 2 minutes to the winner. Pogačar climbed Port Ainé in 46:10 min, doing 6.02 ᵉW/Kg. Chaves in 2021 to win the stage against INEOS Grenadiers did it in 47:35 min. 12 riders in the 2024 edition were faster than the old record time. Pogačar’s performance was similar to his win in the 2021 Tour on Col de Portet where he did 6:01 ᵉW/Kg for 49:02 min, out-sprinting Carapaz and Vingegaard in the final metres.
In the general classification nothing much changed outside of Joao Almeida dropping from 4th to 10th place and Sepp Kuss gaining a couple of positions to be in 7th place. The American could have been a few positions higher if he did not crack when he was in the group with Landa and Harper or if he stayed in the chase group a bit longer when Pogačar first attacked. Harper is now the second Australian on Jayco to be performing at his highest level in European stage races in a matter of weeks, after Luke Plapp surprised in Paris-Nice. Both riders have previously shown good GC results in the UAE Tour but in Catalunya Harper is now performing at a very good level.
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