Vingegaard, Evenepoel and the five storylines to watch at the Volta a Catalunya

We’re not easily impressed these days. Jonas Vingegaard won Paris-Nice by the proverbial street – 4:23, the biggest margin since 1939, to be precise – but that wasn’t enough to placate some observers’ questions about the state of his form.

Juan Ayuso’s crash certainly removed the rider most likely to challenge Vingegaard directly, but the Dane’s performance across the week was flawless. A man can only beat what’s put in front of him, and Vingegaard did that emphatically at Paris-Nice, cruising to two stage wins and going close to a third on the final day in Nice.

Vingegaard’s ‘failure’ to drop Lenny Martinez there was one of the chief quibbles with his performance, which shows just how much the measurement of standards has been skewed in the Tadej Pogačar era. 

By any sensible assessment, Vingegaard made a most successful start to his season at Paris-Nice, particularly bearing in mind that the idea this year is to build gradually towards a Giro-Tour double. 

Vingegaard will look to maintain that momentum at the Volta a Catalunya, where both the terrain and the opposition provide a test more in keeping with what he can expect in May and July. 

His head-to-head with Remco Evenepoel draws the eye most of all, of course, but it’s also a chance for Vingegaard to strike a psychological blow against Giro rivals João Almeida and Derek Gee-West in his final race before the corsa rosa.

It’s always feast or famine when it comes to the noise around Remco Evenepoel. When he scorched the earth at the Challenge Mallorca and the Volta Valenciana, there were those tempted to couch him as Pogačar’s biggest rival at the Tour. When he fell well short at the UAE Tour, some of the same voices were ready to discard him from the reckoning altogether.

As is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere between those extremes. Evenepoel is one of the very best riders in the world, but he remains at least a rung below Vingegaard in the hierarchy beneath Pogačar. In moving from Soudal Quick-Step to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, he hopes to start closing that gap in earnest.

The Volta a Catalunya, and a rare head-to-head confrontation with Vingegaard, should tell us more about his long-term prospects in 2026. Evenepoel wasn’t entirely sure what went awry at the UAE Tour, but a long spell at altitude on Mount Teide in the meantime should have helped him to right the ship ahead of Catalunya. 

The race also sees him link up with his Tour co-leader Florian Lipowitz, who is also looking to bounce back after an underwhelming Volta ao Algarve. Red Bull’s head of sport Zak Dempster is adamant that the multi-leader approach is the way to go in Grand Tours these days, and it will be fascinating to see how Evenepoel and Lipowitz combine to take on Vingegaard here.

Oscar Onley was solid if unspectacular in his Ineos debut at the Volta ao Algarve, but he endured an ill-starred outing at Paris-Nice. It started well enough, with Onley helping Ineos to team time trial victory and then making the key split in the echelons of stage 4. Onley crashed out of that front group, however, and he would abandon the race through illness ahead of stage 6.

The Scot is back in action quickly, and he lines out in Catalonia at the head of an Ineos squad that also includes Carlos Rodríguez. After circumstances took him out of the hunt at Paris-Nice, Onley will have a chance to measure himself against Vingegaard and Evenepoel here, the men he hopes to compete against for a Tour podium place in July. 

He held up well enough against Ayuso and Paul Seixas on the Alto da Fóia and the Malhão in Portugal, but the long ascents of Vallter on stage 5 and La Molina on stage 6 will tell us a whole lot more about how Onley is shaping up after leaving Picnic-PostNL.

The Volta a Catalunya was moved to various slots in the calendar over the years, but since 2010, it has settled firmly into its current, late-March date. It didn’t happen overnight, but that shift has eventually seen it become a popular waystation for Giro d’Italia contenders, and this year is a case in point. 

Vingegaard is the headliner, both here and in May, but a sizeable cohort of riders with Giro ambitions will be running through their scales in Catalonia. The most notable is João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), who missed Paris-Nice through illness. The Portuguese rider is the man most likely to deny Vingegaard at the Giro. Like Roglič and Evenepoel in 2023, this could be a tense week between the two favourites.

Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek), Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), Jai Hindley (Red Bull), Enric Mas (Movistar), Ben O’Connor (Jayco-AlUla), Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) are also using the Volta a Catalunya as a preparation race for the Giro, so pointers for the corsa rosa should be plenty across the week.

It’s also striking that the bulk of the Giro men, Vingegaard included, are not currently scheduled to race again between Catalunya and the Grande Partenza on May 8, preferring to fill those six weeks with altitude camps. 

One exception is Gee-West, who is also slated to ride the Tour of the Alps next month. The Canadian joined Lidl-Trek in midwinter after his difficult departure from Israel-Premier Tech, but he looked quite solid at the UAE Tour despite that period of flux. He will expect better in Catalunya, though he knows he still has time on his side before the Giro.

Tom Pidcock has always been a rider to watch, but his narrative has become all the more compelling since he opted to leave the WorldTour and join Doug Ryder’s Pinarello-Q36.5 squad. A podium finish at last year’s Vuelta a España was the long-awaited confirmation of Pidcock’s Grand Tour potential, but the Briton – a double Olympic champion on the mountain bike – has always resolutely refused to be pigeon-holed. 

Even though the Tour de France is the centrepiece of his season, Pidcock’s primary focus in the opening phase of 2026 has been one-day racing. After frustrating outings at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Strade Bianche, he scored an impressive win at Milano-Torino before coming within four agonising centimetres of beating Pogačar at Milan-Sanremo.

Pidcock’s resistance on the Cipressa and the Poggio underlines his enormous quality and underscores the strides he has made since departing Ineos. The Ardennes Classics in late April are underlined in his agenda, but before then, Pidcock has signed up for a mountain test at the Volta a Catalunya. His dextrous talents make him a threat across all seven stages, of course, but those summit finishes on stages 5 and 6 might be the most telling when it comes to gauging his prospects in July.