After Milan–San Remo ended, there were only two days in between before March 18 to 24 brought the third stage race of the season, one of the seven major week-long races on the UCI WorldTour: the Volta a Catalunya.
The race was held in Spain.
Since Pogačar of UAE Team Emirates had announced his race schedule for the year early on, the leaders of other teams naturally avoided him like the plague.
After all, when the Martian entered a stage race, every team knew that unless it was the Tour de France, they were really just competing for second place.
But none of the top teams were idiots, and no team would be so bored as to send its leader out to be runner-up.
Especially after seeing UAE Team Emirates, perhaps annoyed that Pogačar had finished only third at Milan–San Remo, field a lineup at the Volta a Catalunya that could practically be called an early Tour de France squad rehearsal.
Team leader: Pogačar. Domestiques: João Almeida, Marc Soler, Sivakov, Jay Vine, Domen Novak, Felix Großschartner.
Clearly, with such an outrageously luxurious UAE lineup, they would have been title contenders even if they had been dropped straight into the Tour de France.
Seeing that Visma–Lease a Bike, Quick-Step team, Ineos Grenadiers, and other GC-focused teams had all kept their respective stars, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, and Thomas, safely hidden away, Aldag naturally had no intention of going crazy or getting carried away by sending Roglič and Hindley, his own core leaders, to fight for second.
After some consideration, he also focused on giving the squad race experience. He sent Vlasov, who had finished fifth overall at the previous Paris–Nice stage race, as leader, supported by veteran and younger riders mainly from the third-string roster, including Lipowitz, Sergio Higuita, Anton Palzer, Frederik Wandahl,