Volta ao Algarve: Pogacar confident ahead of Malhão showdown

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) saw his lead at the Volta ao Algarve reduced slightly when he was caught on the wrong side of a split in the peloton on stage 4, but the Slovenian did not appear to be concerned by a concession that does little to alter his task on the Alto do Malhão on Sunday.

It helped, of course, that Enric Mas (Deceuninck-QuickStep), the man most likely to deny him overall victory, was also wrongfooted in the white-knuckle finale and rolled home alongside Pogačar, 7 seconds behind stage winner Dylan Groenewegen.

The reshuffle of the general classification leaves Søren Kragh Andersen (Team Sunweb) second overall, 29 seconds down on Pogačar. Wout Poels (Team Sky) moves up to third overall, at 30 seconds, while Mas remains 31 seconds down, albeit now in fourth place.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We achieved our goal so we can be happy that we defended the yellow jersey,” Pogačar said before mounting the podium on Saturday. “The stage was pretty calm, I had everything under control. We were just careful in the last 20 kilometres because it was really fast, so I’m really happy to keep the jersey.”

Pogačar’s advantage continues to look like a winning one, not least because of the way he climbed en route to taking victory atop the Alto da Fóia on stage 2, though the Malhão, just three kilometres long and wickedly steep at the bottom, offers a different, more explosive kind of test.

The neo-professional maintains that he is more at home on longer ascents, though given his body of work so far this week, it seems difficult to envisage him conceding half a minute on its slopes.

All in on the Malhão

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com