Primož Roglič held off Juan Ayuso on a summit finish on stage four of the Volta a Catalunya on Thursday to take his first victory of 2025.
The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider went with UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Ayuso when the Spanish race leader attacked with under 3km to go on the climb to Montserrat Mil·lenari. Despite the latter's best efforts, Roglič managed to out-power him, and took the race lead with it. The pair are now on the same time, but Roglič has claimed the lead on count-back. The Slovenian repeatedly tried to drop Ayuso on the run-in, but failed to do so, and had to resort to a sprint to the line.
Another group of favourites, led by Enric Mas (Movistar) came in three seconds behind, while other riders like Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) came in further down.
Three more stages remain in Catalunya, including a mountainous stage six, and the classic final hilly affair around Barcelona.
"It was annoying, a fast tempo from the start, wind..." Roglič said post-race on television. "I had something left at the end, so luckily I won.
"Definitely not," he replied when asked if the battle was over. "[There are] hard days still to come. Anyway for the moment, I'm going well, we are in a good position, and we will see. We go day by day and we will see by the end.
"Obviously, for the moment, the difference is really small. You never know. Maybe he goes away with minutes, maybe I go away with minutes. We will see how it goes."
On Wednesday's stage three, Ayuso pipped Roglič to the line on another summit finish, so little separates the pair at the moment. They are both heading to the Giro d'Italia in May, so might tire each other over the next few weeks.
Ayuso said following Wednesday's win: "I was trying to come up on the outside, but Primoz behaved like a champion because another rival might have shut me in or even made me crash and he made it a fair sprint, so chapeau to him. Then we had to go to the line and I'm glad I could beat him. I managed to win against a great rival."
The Volta is just Roglič's second race of the year following the Volta ao Algarve in February, where he was largely anonymous, finishing eighth overall.
