March 23, 2026
Billed as one of the hardest week-long stage races all season, the 105th edition will be no exception. The difficult parcours offer a great opportunity for GC riders to hone their form with eyes to the Giro or to get a benchmark for goals later in the season. The opening stage starts and finishes in the coastal town of Sant Feliu de Guíxols after nearly 173 kilometers of racing. In most stages this week, there will be three intermediate sprints per day and the first on day one will be after 35KM in the town of Salt. 15KM later through the town Angles, the 16 kilometer climb of Alt de Sant Hilari begins. It's a category one climb but the average gradient is just a hair under 3%, making it a gentle introduction to the climbing coming later in the week. There are two more intermediate sprints, one in Arbucies and the other in Hostalric at 88 and 71 kilometers to go respectively. The next 45 kilometers of the stage are flat and relatively straightforward. The final 20 kilometers are all along the coast as the riders will make their way North back into Sant Feliu de Guíxols. The road gets a little lumpy with four or five bumps between 4-6% but all are under 2KM in length which should set the race up for a bunch sprint. The final 600 meters rise at about 4% making this more suited to a puncheur or lighter sprinter.
Highlighted Riders:
Sprinters to watch this week: Henri Uhlig, Noah Hobbs, Ethan Vernon, Mathieu Kockelmann, Sam Bennett, Dorian Godon
GC Riders to watch this week: Remco Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz, João Almeida, Jay Vine, Brandon McNulty, Jonas Vingegaard, Sepp Kuss, Mattias Skjelmose, Giulio Ciccone, Lorenzo Fortunato, Mikel Landa, Felix Gall, Matthew Riccitello, Oscar Onley, Lenny Martinez, Santiago Buitrago, Georg Steinhauser, Richard Carapaz, Enric Mas, Cian Uijtdebroeks, Ben O'Connor, Tom Pidcock, Byron Munton, David Gaudu
Race Summary
A stacked start list rolled out of Sant Feliu de Guíxols and when the flag dropped at KM0, attacks went straight away. A group of five got away that included Baptiste Veistroffer of Lotto Intermarché, Hugo Aznar of Equipo Kern Pharma, Unai Aznar of Euskatel-Euskadi, Josh Burnett of Burgos Burpellet-BH, and Tyler Stites of Modern Adventure. Veistroffer took the main prizes of the day including the main climb as well as the intermediate sprints and set his eyes on holding off the peloton. Unfortunately for him, the break had just 1 minute 10 seconds on the peloton with 73KM remaining on the approach to the final intermediate sprint in Hostalric. The bunch was in single file and were being led by a coalition of Ineos, NSN Cycling, and Bahrain Victorious.
Veistroffer was orchestrating when to go hard and when to back off. With 45KM to go, they had wrestled 50 seconds away from the peloton to build a gap of nearly 2 minutes. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe moved to the front along with Pinarello Q36.5 and Lidl-Trek on the first of the hills as the race approached the coast. The gap was cut in half on the first of the small climbs and it continued to drop as more teams came forward for positioning.
By the time they reached the coast road and turned North along the Costa Brava with 22KM to go, the gap was down to 15 seconds and the catch was imminent. The coast road followed the twisting curves of the headland along the cliffs which constantly pinched those riders on the inside of the corners as the leading riders followed the shortest path. Lidl-Trek took control of the peloton and the first surprise rider to drop was Ethan Vernon of NSN Cycling which signaled Brady Gilmore was going to be their designated sprinter of the day.
Burnett put up a good fight and to be the last man standing from the break but he was caught just outside 11KM to go. UAE-XRG had taken over from Lidl-Trek and seemed to be leaning on the pedals a bit harder. Riders were being jettisoned out the back but a blob of around 70 riders were still hovering around the front. Bahrain Victorious accelerated and took control of the pace with 6KM to go. The speed went up another level and the entire peloton was strung out in single file. As quickly as Bahrain Victorious had moved up, they disappeared just as fast which caused a swell of riders who all pushed forward at the same time. Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike was left on the front and kept the pace going from 4.5KM to go down to the bottom along the beach, 2.5KM later.
Vingegaard's teammate, Sepp Kuss, arrived at the front and took the peloton through the penultimate corner at 1,300M from the line. Alpecin-Premier Tech led through 1KM to go but trains were coming from behind as the road started to tip upwards. NSN Cycling came forward with Gilmore in second wheel followed by Tom Pidcock of Pinarello Q36.5 in third with Dorian Godon of Ineos slotted in fourth position. Pidcock went long at 400M and Remco Evenepoel of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe sprinted to get on his wheel. Evenepoel opened up in his bid for the line at 200 meters but Godon came out of the slipstream and the pair were side by side with 100 meters to go. Godon was bobbing and looked labored with the effort but they were completely matched at 25 meters from the line. When they hit the finish, Godon briefly raised his hand but immediately put it back down because it was impossible to tell who won. The helicopter found Godon as he was recovering and when the replay was shown, it could be seen that Godon did in fact have the win by the depth of a rim. Pidcock hung on to third place on the day on the same time but there was clear daylight between him and Godon. Nearly 70 riders finished on the same time with all of the expected GC riders present.
Godon will wear the leader's jersey tomorrow with another group finish likely in Banyoles.