VideoSergio Higuita has become overall winner of the Tour of Catalonia. The 24-year-old Colombian from Bora-hansgrohe successfully defended the leader’s jersey in the seventh and final stage, around Barcelona, in which the Montjuïc had to be climbed six times. The final stage was prey for the Italian Andrea Bagioli (Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl).
Steven Kruijswijk was in the early flight. The 34-year-old from Jumbo-Visma from Brabant was the last rider to be caught by the thinned out peloton on the roads in Barcelona, thirteen kilometers from the finish.
On the last climb of Montjuïc, Portuguese João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) tried to put pressure on classification leader Higuita. However, the Colombian followed alertly. In the descent towards the finish several riders came back, causing a group of about twenty men to sprint for the stage win. In that sprint, Bagioli showed himself the strongest, ahead of Hungarian Attila Valter (Groupama-FDJ) and Spaniard Fernando Barceló (Caja Rural).
In the final standings, Higuita was sixteen seconds ahead of Olympic champion Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) from Ecuador. Almeida finished third in the final standings, 52 seconds behind the winner.
Higuita took the leader’s jersey yesterday by finishing second behind Carapaz. Earlier this year, the Colombian won a stage in the Tour of the Algarve.
Task Poels
Wout Poels was unable to finish the WorldTour stage race due to stomach problems. The 34-year-old Limburger, who was in sixth place in the general classification, got off early in the final stage. According to his Bahrain-Victorious team, Poels has stomach problems.
After six stages, the climber was one minute and ten seconds behind classification leader Higuita. Poels won the Spanish stage race Ruta del Sol last month. In Paris-Nice he finished in fifteenth place.
View the final classification of the Tour of Catalonia below:
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