With everything to go for in an effort to gain back minutes after Monday’s opening stage blew open the race with time gaps well over two minutes to the top three riders, the peloton raced hard throughout the day on stage 3 in the 95th Volta a Catalunya.

Team Katusha’s Alberto Losada kept himself in the heart of the action, sprinting from a chasing group to claim tenth place on the stage in Girona. Katusha teammates Giampaolo Caruso and Pavel Kochetkov also finished in this same group.

“It was a very hard day with the four climbs. From the very first one we all went very fast and were on the limit. The descent before the last climb was very fast and dangerous. It split the group in many parts. The many crashes also contributed to this. Then the group of favorites went away. In the end we did not lose too much time which is nice. I decided to stay with Dan Martin but the last few kilometers were too hard. For some days I have been struggling with stomach problems and I was empty but in these circumstances I can feel happy,” said Team Katusha rider Alberto Losada to the Katusha website.

The group of GC favorites animated the race on the final climb of Alt dels Angels with 15 km to go.  Alberto Contador and Richie Porte both mounted attacks in concerted efforts to gain back time. In the end it was a solo move by Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R) at 2 km to go that gave him the win ahead of Rigoberto Uran (Etixx – Quick Step) and Dan Martin of Cannondale-Garmin. Losada’s group came in 22-seconds later with the Katusha rider taking tenth.

Today’s stage was the hardest so far this week, with four climbs featured in a counter-clockwise loop around the Spanish city of Girona. An early break was brought back near 40 km to go, setting up the major race action to all play out in the final part of the race. Many crashes occurred during the climbs, with the delays opening up gaps on the descents. The chaotic road action produced a change in the general classification with Pierre Rolland (Europcar) moving into the leader’s jersey at 1.08 to former leader Maciej Paterski (CCC) and 1.16 to Bart De Clercq of Lotto Soudal. The gap to fourth place Pozzovivo is 2.14.

Tomorrow is the true queen stage in this year’s race. It’s the only summit finish with stage 4 starting in Tona and ending atop the category 1 climb to La Molina (Alp) at 188 km where Katusha’s Joaquim Rodriguez took the win and the leader’s jersey in last year’s race.