After Vallter 2000 got chopped from the end of Thursday’s stage, Coll de Pal was ready for its close up as Friday’s HC-rated summit finish. The climb turned out to be a real pal to Jonas Vingegaard, who won the day’s flowers and took over the race lead from Dorian Godon. Tom Pidcock had a bad day at the office, crashing on a descent and disappearing from the top-10, and Remco Evenepoel dropped off the podium.

Preliminaries

Having won two stages, race leader Dorian Godon led Pidcock on GC by 13 seconds, Evenepoel by 14 seconds and Vingegaard by 24 seconds. Other GC contenders were in a clot of 51 guys at +0:26.

Not having a good race, Derek Gee-West did not start on Friday.

The Course

Friday flung a handful of heavy hitters at the peloton over 155 km. First came Cat. 1 Port Colldarnat before Cat. 2 Coll de Josa, the rather steep Cat. 1 Coll de Fumanya, penultimate ascent Collada Sobirana and then HC-rated Coll de Pal, 16.4-km of 7.2 percent. Well, that was the original plan–again the threat of wind trimmed the route, taking 2.2 km off the Coll de Pal.

The first big summit finish. Image by La FlammeRouge

Surely, there was no way that mountains classification leader Baptiste Veistroffer was going to miss the opportunity to pad his 22-point lead. Nope, the Frenchman missed out on the small breakaway and Gee-West’s teammate Giulio Ciccone started to chip away at Veistroffer’s lead, scoring maximum points on Port Colldarnat and Coll de Josa. Coll de Fumanya went Ciccone’s way too, and suddenly he was only 14 points in arrears.

Ciccone won the 2023 Tour de France polka dots and the 2019 Giro d’Italia KOM. Photo: Sirotti

After Cat. 1 Collada Sobirana, Ciccone trailed Veistroffer by four points. There were crashes in the peloton on the descent, UAE-Emirates’ João Almeida and Brandon McNulty among the riders on the deck. This fractured the field. Pidcock wasn’t accounted for.

What on earth was going on here? Moving cars and racers sharing a tunnel?

Ciccone spread his wings and flew towards the base of Coll de Pal. Ciccone still led by a minute with 13 km to climb. Ineos powered the peloton. The GC chaps started jabbing at one another into a headwind, which streamlined the peloton to 20 riders. Felix Gall, his teammate Lenny Martinez and Florian Lipowitz flew the coop.

With 7 km to race, Vingegaard attacked, bringing several fellows over to Gall et al. Evenepoel couldn’t hang, leaving Lipowitz as Red Bull’s main man. Ciccone was caught with 6 km to go and then Vingegaard bid adios to everyone. When he saw the red kite, the Lipowitz-Gall chase was a full minute behind.

Saturday’s final summit finish of the 105th edition is a Cat. 1 climb up to Queralt, but the brutal Coll de Predell in the middle of the route has an average grade of 11 percent in its final 5.5 km. Yowza.

2026 Volta a Catalunya, Stage 4
1) Jonas Vingegaard (Denmark/Visma-Lease a Bike) 4:13:44
2) Felix Gall (Austria/Decathlon-CMA) +0:51
3) Lenny Martinez (France/Bahrain-Victorious) +1:01

2026 Volta a Catalunya GC
1) Jonas Vingegaard (Denmark/Visma-Lease a Bike) 19:44:45
2) Felix Gall (Austria/Decathlon-CMA) +0:57
3) Lenny Martinez (France/Bahrain-Victorious) +1:09