Italian Domenico Pozzovivo won the third stage of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya on Wednesday as France’s Pierre Rolland took the overall lead.
AG2R-La Mondiale’s Pozzovivo made a solo dart for home from a seven-man breakaway group about 2km from the finish and held off his charging companions to win by 3 seconds.
Colombia’s Rigoberto Uran took second, with Dan Martin of Ireland in third after a 156.6km stage around Girona, Spain.
Photo: EPA
Pre-race favorite Alberto Contador finished fourth, but fellow former Tour de France winner Chris Froome gave up 22 seconds on the winner after failing to follow the initial break.
Contador, who is attempting a Giro d’Italia and Tour de France double this year, said he was coming into shape in time for May’s Giro.
“I’m happy, I feel quite good. It’s the last race before the Giro and it’s good that my legs are responding. Now I need to recover and tomorrow will be another day,” the 32-year-old six-time Grand Tour winner said.
Photo: EPA
A split in the peloton resulted in a frantic finish to the stage as Tuesday’s second stage winner and one of the overall favorites Alejandro Valverde had been caught behind in the second group that lost 30 seconds.
As Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo team and the Astana teammates of Fabio Aru, who finished fifth, pushed the pace up front, the lead group started to splinter on the ascent of the Alt dels Angels about 15km from home.
Contador attacked, taking Australian Richie Porte, Pozzovivo, Uran and Aru with him.
Porte’s Sky teammate Froome failed to react and was stuck in a chasing group, from which both Martin and his Cannondale teammate Andrew Talansky managed to bridge the gap to the leaders.
As the seven-man group took turns on the front to try to distance the chasers, Pozzovivo pounced on a brief lull to take off on his own and he had the legs to hold off the chasers right to the finish.
The Italian, who was fifth at last year’s Giro and sixth at the Vuelta a Espana the year before, was fourth overall, 2 minutes, 14 seconds behind Rolland, who came home in the same group as Froome, as did Valverde, who managed to catch the second group on the descent to the finish to limit his losses.
Overnight leader Maciej Paterski of Poland, the winner of the opening stage, lost 1:34 on the winner and was second overall, 1:08 down.
Belgium’s Bart de Clercq was third at 1:16, while Contador was up to seventh, 2:27 down.
Valverde was 11th at 2:36 with Froome 28th overall at 2:46, but both were likely to move up in yesterday’s fourth stage.
It was due to be a first truly mountainous stage, leaving from Tona and arriving at the ski resort of La Molina 188.4km down the road.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier