{"id":855793,"date":"2026-03-28T09:45:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/855793\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T09:45:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:45:17","slug":"favorites-stage-6-volta-a-catalunya-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/855793\/","title":{"rendered":"Favorites stage 6 Volta a Catalunya 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tour of Catalonia<\/a> heads into Stage 6 on Saturday<\/a>, and that means another important day for the general classification riders. After several tough stages, the differences remain relatively small, which means opportunities are still there. Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> already hinted that we can expect something, and that only adds to the intrigue. IDLProCycling.com lists the favourites for Stage 6.<\/b>Route stage 6 Volta a Catalunya2026\"volta-catalunya-6\"\/<\/p>\n

This stage is going to really take a toll on the legs… After the grueling fifth stage, we\u2019re just going to keep climbing. Not right at the start, though: from the start in Berga, it stays easy for a long time. After 25 kilometers, the road begins to climb gradually, and it stays that way until the summit of the Coll de la Batallola, about 95 kilometers from the finish.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fairly easy climb, but these will likely be the last easy kilometers. After a gradual descent, the riders tackle the Coll de la Pradell, a two-stage assault. The first 9 kilometers aren\u2019t very steep, but the final five kilometers average over 11% grade. Time to scramble!<\/p>\n

After a descent, there\u2019s an intermediate sprint, followed by another downhill stretch. Immediately after that comes the Collada de Sant Isidre, a 5-kilometer stretch at 8%: so not exactly a walk in the park either. The loop concludes with the return to the starting point in Berga, where there\u2019s an intermediate sprint. From there, the route climbs to Queralt (6 km at 7%) all the way to the finish. After 4,000 meters of elevation gain, we\u2019ll have a clear picture of the standings!<\/p>\n

Times<\/b>
Start: 12:50 PM local time
Finish: approx. 4:35 PM local time<\/p>\n

Weather stage 6 Volta a Catalunya 2026<\/p>\n

The weather in Spain has been strange all week, with the wind being particularly troublesome. But on Saturday, it doesn\u2019t seem like it will be a problem: 14 degrees with a force 3 wind. No rain: it looks like a beautiful day for cycling! Although conditions can still get a bit rough on the mountain passes…<\/p>\n

Favorites stage 6 Volta a Catalunya 2026After Friday, it\u2019s clear: Jonas Vingegaard is in top form. The Dane from Visma | Lease a Bike took control in the queen stage, and he\u2019s not about to let it go. \u201cI\u2019m not ruling out going for another stage win. I need to recover, and then we\u2019ll see how I feel tomorrow,\u201d he said Friday after his stage win<\/a>. That\u2019s promising!Jo\u00e3o Almeida<\/a> was, on paper, one of Vingegaard\u2019s biggest challengers, but the Portuguese rider from UAE Team Emirates-XRG crashed on Friday and lost two minutes to the Dane. The same was true for Tom Pidock, though the British rider from Pinarello-Q36.5 lost even more time. It remains to be seen whether\u2014and if so, to what extent\u2014they will have recovered by Saturday.Performing well on Friday: Felix Gall<\/a> (Decathlon CMA CGM), Florian Lipowitz<\/a> (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious), and Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal Quick-Step). That quartet lost around a minute and thus came closest to a rampant Vingegaard.As for Remco Evenepoel<\/a>, it remains to be seen how his legs are holding up. The Belgian rider from Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe crashed earlier this week and didn\u2019t seem to be in top form on Friday. Riders like Oscar Onley (INEOS Grenadiers), Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), and Carlos Rodriguez (INEOS Grenadiers) lost even (much) more time than Evenepoel.<\/p>\n

Of course, keep an eye on riders like Ben O’Connor (Jayco AlUla), Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), Cian Uijtdebroeks (Movistar), Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana), Matthew Riccitello (Decathlon CMA CGM), and Enric Mas (Movistar) as well. They are all within two minutes of general classification leader Vingegaard.<\/p>\n

A bit further down in that standings, riders like George Bennett (NSN), Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step), Juan Pedro Lopez (Movistar), and Jai Hindley (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) might just surprise us. And have riders like Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) and Einer Rubio (Movistar) recovered from their efforts in the breakaway the day before?<\/p>\n

Top favorite: <\/b>Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike)
Outsiders:<\/b> Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), Florian Lipowitz, Remco Evenepoel (both Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious)
Long shots<\/b>: Jo\u00e3o Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal Quick-Step), Oscar Onley (INEOS Grenadiers), Ben O’Connor(Jayco AlUla), Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), Matthew Riccitello (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tour of Catalonia heads into Stage 6 on Saturday, and that means another important day for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,191215,77930,184882,77931,31323,25893,16151,79,243948,16,15],"class_list":["post-855793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-felix-gall","tag-florian-lipowitz","tag-idl-productions","tag-joao-almeida","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-previews","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-sports","tag-tour-of-catalonia","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116306164210995304","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}