Ciccone wins as Catalunya mountain takes toll on Ineos

AFPVallter 2000, SpainGiulio Ciccone won a tortuous, mountainous slog on stage two of the Tour of Catalunya yesterday just ahead of Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel.The trio had chased down and overtaken Colombian climber Esteban Chaves over the final 500m of a twisting shoelace climb to set up a pulsating struggle to the summit finish at a snowy 2,150m altitude.The result leaves Slovenian Roglic in the overall lead on a race already bearing the familiar pattern of Jumbo-Visma’s black and yellow tunics heading up the main peloton.Trek’s Ciccone led the Tour de France as a rookie after claiming the fabled yellow jersey at La Planche des Belles Filles in 2019.Here the Italian’s performance earned him the King of the Mountains jersey on a Tour where it takes on particular significance due to its mountain-packed route."This is the most beautiful win of my career, a magical day,” said Ciccone. "It was a really fast climb from the bottom of the ascent, Bahrain made a good tempo and then Chaves attacked, but in my mind, I knew I just had to follow Evenepoel and Roglic,” he said afterwards. "So I followed their wheels and then I did my best in the last 500 metres. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve lost many times, especially with Roglic – he’s won everything. But after a long climb, here we’re arriving at 2,000 metres of altitude and everything changes. I felt good, and I did my best.”Pretenders Mikel Landa, Jai Hindley and Joao Almeida were all close at the finish of a 164km ride featuring three climbs.Adam Yates won here the last two times the Tour of Catalunya passed but he fell on Monday and rolled across the line battered and 10mins behind. Former Tour de France and Giro d’Italia winner Egan Bernal fell off the pace dropping 2min 45sec and seems to be still recovering from a life threatening accident 16 months ago.Bernal’s Ineos teammate Geraint Thomas also dropped 2min 24sec on stage two as the Welsh veteran played it cool.The race left the seaside town of Mataro, a 30-minute drive north of Barcelona in bright sunshine headed for the ski resort of Vallter in the Catalan Pyrenees led by an eight rider break that would be caught at the foot of the final climb.