After Tuesday’s summit finish, another challenging day in the saddle awaited the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya peloton, with three big climbs on the menu. Team dsm-firmenich PostNL set out with the goal of trying to get in the break and were active in early moves, but the peloton seemed intent on keeping things close. Eventually a ten rider move went clear, while all of the team were in the peloton, which only ever trailed the leaders by around two minutes; making for a really hard day in the saddle. Coming into the finale it was clear that it would be the GC riders battling for the stage, so the team tried to save as much energy as possible on the challenging stage, with the aim of looking for opportunities to go on the attack in the coming days.
Combaud expressed: “It was a pretty hard day on the bike but Martjin helped us a lot along the stage because he knew the route perfectly. Afterwards, it was the legs that did the talking and the GC guys went for the win, but we are very motivated for tomorrow’s stage and we will do our best to take our chances.”