Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) underlined his crushing domination of the 2017 Volta a Catalunya this year with a superbly timed sprint to a third stage win on Sunday, this time in a small group finish in the Montjuïc park in Barcelona.
Already victorious this week atop La Molina and the crucial summit finish of Lo Porto, on Sunday's seventh and final stage the Movistar rider chased down a surging late attack by Dan Martin (Quick-Step Floors) with just three kilometres remaining in the last of eight hilly laps in Montjuïc. Valverde then fended off the bunch, crossing the line just half a bike length ahead of Jarlinson Pantano (Trek-Segafredo) to take his seventh career Volta stage win and to wrap up his second career overall title in Catalunya.
In the closing stage of the Volta on the traditional series of 6.6 kilometre laps around the Montjuïc park that always concludes the event, Valverde and Martin held off the front group of around 15 riders by a handful of seconds on the fast descent to the finish.
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But with barely 50 metres to the line, a last ditch acceleration by the mini-peloton all but brought the front group back together again – at which point Valverde put in his own final dash for the line, narrowly besting the pursuit. Pantano crossed the line hammering the bars in frustration at such a close near-miss, with Arthur Vichot (FDJ) in third and the rest of the top GC contenders just behind and all holding onto their respective positions overall.
"The good weather today and hard work from the team meant we keep the day's break at the margin we wanted," said Valverde, whose consistency is such that his worst finish all week has been a 14th place in the opening sprint stage. "And then the other teams helped us pull them back in."
"I knew that Martin would attack at that point in the finishing circuit because he always does, I really had to work hard to get across. We only half-collaborated, so we started the sprint a lot slower than the bunch that was coming up behind. I finally won, but it was by the skin of my teeth."
How it unfolded
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