Years come, years go, and the same is true for stars even as great as Tadej Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard. But whoever is ruling the stage racing roost, the Volta a Catalunya's perennial role as the last major crossroads for those tackling the Giro d'Italia and those riders fully focussed on the Tour de France somehow endures.
Ever since its last date change in 2010, this March, the seven-day 104-year-old race always offers the first big incursion of the season into the high-altitude Pyrenees, or any other major European mountain range, for that matter. This March, no less than three successive summit finishes on stages of increasing difficulty feature deep in the mountains separating the Iberian peninsula from France, combining to provide a painfully realistic reference point on their major climbing form for the Grand Tour specialists.
