2010 Volta a Catalunya

Participating teams

As the Volta a Catalunya was a UCI ProTour event, all 18 ProTour teams were automatically invited and obligated to send a squad. Four Professional Continental teams rounded out the event's peloton. Each team was entitled to eight riders on their squad, but Lampre–Farnese Vini, Team HTC–Columbia, and Team Milram sent only seven, and Team Sky sent only six, meaning the event had 171 riders at its outset.

The 22 teams in the race were:

Stage 1

The course for the brief individual time trial which opened the race was dead flat. This was the same course used the previous two years in the time trial. Paul Voss of Team Milram was the unexpected winner of the stage, beating out Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden.

Stage 2

This course included the race's first climb, the first-category Alt Els Àngels, which crested just before the 60 km (37 mi). The 110 km (68 mi) from after the descent to the finish line were mostly flat, leaving a sprint finish likely.

Peter Stetina and Jonathan Castroviejo formed a two-man escape after 9 km (5.6 mi) of this stage. They took a maximum advantage of eight and a half minutes, but the teams of the sprinters, namely Lampre–Farnese Vini and Team HTC–Columbia, had no trouble catching them. They did, for their efforts, gain the leads in the mountains and sprints competitions after the stage. The finish was contested in a bunched sprint, won by Mark Cavendish. It was Cavendish's first win of 2010 after a difficult early season.

Stage 3

This was a difficult stage, with several categorized climbs. The outside categorization Alt del Pedraforça was the Cima Peris, the race's hardest climb, and crested just before the 120 km (75 mi) mark, after two second-category climbs earlier on. Another category-two climb, the Alt de la Josa del Cadí, followed before a 26 km (16 mi) long descent to the finish.

A 21-rider break began this stage, but it was pulled back after an hour. A group of 14 was next on the attack, after 60 km (37 mi) had been covered. This group at one point had a three-minute advantage on the main field, but the steady tempo that Liquigas–Doimo and Team RadioShack were drilling out reduced that gap. Xavier Tondó, Joaquim Rodríguez and Óscar Pereiro attacked out of the main field when the catch seemed imminent. Pereiro quickly dropped back, as they had at this point reached the hardest parts of the Alt de la Josa del Cadí climb, but Tondó and Rodríguez stayed away to the finish. Tondó won the sprint to the finish line, but Rodríguez became the new race leader, since he had had a better time in the stage 1 time trial. Tondó expressed after the stage that the win had great personal significance for him, since he is from Catalonia and grew up 7 km (4.3 mi) from where the stage ended.

Stage 4

This course started at elevation, undulated gently for a while and then descended in preparation for two second-category climbs. The Alt de Paumeres crested 20.9 km (13.0 mi) from the finish line, and the finish came on a long descent from that height.

This was a very fast stage, with the first two hours of racing covering more than 100 km (62 mi). During that time, an eight-rider breakaway group formed. They were later reduced to four – Vladimir Efimkin, Thibaut Pinot, Francesco Bellotti, and Jurgen Van De Walle. During the Alt de Paumeres climb, Jens Voigt, who had earlier been dropped from the peloton, made a solo bridge to the four leaders. Once with the group, he set a pace that eventually cracked all of them, sending them back to the chase groups behind. Voigt was the first over the summit, alone. Rein Taaramäe and Roman Kreuziger caught up with Voigt on the descent. After dropping Kreuziger, Taaramäe and Voigt increased their lead over the Team Katusha-led main field, and finished 34 seconds better than them at the finish line. Taaramäe did most of the pace making in the final flat section, since he started the day seventh in the overall standings and stood to gain more than Voigt from having as big a time gap as possible on the peloton. Voigt was therefore able to win the sprint to the line easily.

Stage 5

This was another hilly stage, marked by three categorized climbs, including one 15 km (9.3 mi) from the finish line. The finish again came on a descent.

Four riders escaped just 2 km (1.2 mi) into this stage. These were Davide Malacarne, Javier Ramirez, Sergio De Lis, and Gustavo César. Since Malacarne, 29 minutes behind race leader Joaquim Rodríguez, was the best-placed man in the group, the peloton was content to let them go. Their advantage quickly ballooned to ten minutes. The lead fell a little on the day's second climb, the Alt de Porrera, as Team Katusha and Liquigas–Doimo started an aggressive chase. Malacarne shod his breakaway companions 20 km (12 mi) from the finish line and held on for the win. It was the first win of Malacarne's pro career, and it came on a stage that he and the team had specifically identified as one where a winning breakaway was likely.

Stage 6

There is a lot of climbing in the first half of this stage, including an uncategorized rise of 600 m (2,000 ft). The second half is mostly flat, concluding with a three-lap circuit in Barcelona that includes a visit to a small third-category climb on each lap. Forty-six riders finished the stage in the same group for a depleted bunched sprint. Cofidis' Samuel Dumoulin was easily the strongest sprinter in the group and won the stage, giving his team its 12th win of the season. His teammate Rein Taaramäe was second on the stage, the two of them securing their high places on a day when the financial services provider Cofidis decided to continue sponsoring the team for two more seasons. Each of the top ten riders in the overall standings finished with the leading group, so there was no significant change to those standings heading into the final day of racing.

Stage 7

This stage is flat, concluding with eight laps on the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmeló.

The field stayed together through most of this stage. All but 20 riders were together for a bunched sprint, won by Juan José Haedo. His brother Sebastian Haedo was his final leadout man, and took fifth place in the sprint. There was again no change to the overall standings after this stage; Joaquim Rodríguez, Xavier Tondó, and Rein Taaramäe finished on the event's final podium.

Classification leadership

In the 2010 Volta a Catalunya, three different jerseys were awarded. For the general classification, calculated by adding the finishing times of the stages per cyclist, the leader received a white jersey with green stripes on the sleeves. This classification is considered the most important of the Volta a Catalunya, and the winner of the general classification is considered the winner of the Volta a Catalunya.

Additionally, there was also a sprint classification, indicated with a blue jersey. In the sprint classification, cyclists got points for being one of the first three in intermediate sprints, with six points awarded for first place, four for second, and two for third.

There was also a mountains classification, indicated with a red jersey. In the mountains classifications, points are won by reaching the top of a mountain before other cyclists. All climbs were categorized, with most either first, second, or third-category, with more points available for the higher-categorized climbs.