A three rider breakaway made it all the way to the finish on the opening stage of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, eventually finishing with over two minutes advantage on the reduced chasing bunch that contained Warren Barguil as well as the other GC contenders.

Johannes Fröhlinger was a part of the day’s first real breakaway but the peloton wasn’t happy with the composition of this group and brought them back before three riders pulled clear and quickly started to build a large advantage. Their gap grew to over 11 minutes, and with 33km to go it was still at 9’30” as the teams in the bunch behind failed to collaborate well.

A fast chase finally came about over the day’s main climb which caused many riders to go out the back and into the grupetto, including Luka Mezgec, but upfront Barguil was still riding strong and showing signs that he had recovered well from his fall at Paris-Nice a week ago.

From the leading three it was Maciej Paterski (CCC Sprandi Polkowice) who proved strongest to take the stage and with it the first leader’s jersey of the race. Behind the leading trio, the front chase group came over the finish line 2’40” in arrears leaving the three with a healthy advantage in the coming days but with several tough tests ahead anything can still happen.

After the stage, team coach Addy Engels explained who the race panned out in more detail, “Johannes was in the day’s first breakaway and that was a good situation for us but Orica GreenEDGE rode to bring it back. After this three riders went clear and behind nobody wanted to chase. We decided before the stage that we would avoid chasing if possible as the profile seemed too much to set up a sprint and it proved that the pace over the climbs was too high for Luka as he dropped off the pace with Johannes and Tom [Stamsnijder].

“The chase behind started too late and so it was a fast pace on the climbs but Warren was looking good which was nice to see as we were unsure of his condition coming into this after his crash.”