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Axel Laurance Takes Tour of Catalonia Stage Win as Pogacar leads Race

Reigning under-23 World Champion Axel Laurance secured his first victory at WorldTour level in the Volta a Catalunya on Friday

Axel Laurance Takes Tour of Catalonia Stage Win as Pogacar leads Race

Axel Laurance narrowly won a bunch sprint to take stage five of the Tour of Catalonia on Friday and earn his first World Tour win, while Tadej Pogacar still leads the race.

The French Alpecin-Deceuninck rider finished just ahead of stage four winner Marijn van den Berg with compatriot Bryan Coquard coming in third on the 167.3 kilometre route from Altafulla to Viladecans.

The final few kilometres were chaotic as teams tried to get organised and Laurance threw his bike over the line to finish centimetres ahead of the Dutchman on the slight uphill finale.

The 22-year-old first-year-pro said afterwards, he had no idea if there a breakaway had already finished when he sprinted for the line. But Laurance opted to go for it, just in case - and after a near-miss at the Bretagne Classic-Ouest France last year, his prudence was rewarded with his first WorldTour victory.

"It's really amazing ... to be able to win a stage of a World Tour race as a first year is really nice for sure," said 22-year-old Laurance.

Slovenian two-time Tour de France winner Pogacar maintained his position atop the general classification by two minutes and 27 seconds from Spaniard Mikel Landa as he finished in the bunch.

Saturday's stage six runs 154.4 km from Berga to Queralt and is the third and final mountainous challenge in the race, with UAE Team Emirates rider Pogacar aiming to effectively seal victory.

"Today was a super hard stage, one of the hardest in general of all stages until now," Pogacar said to the press, "It was exciting racing until the end, I'm happy it's over and tomorrow is a big mountain day so let's go for it. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's stage, there's a big question mark all over it, a lot of climbing in a short period of time and it will be aggressive from the start."

HIGHLIGHTS: Tour of Catalonia Stage 5

Tour of Catalonia Stage 5 Top 10

1  LAURANCE Axel Alpecin - Deceuninck 3:36:05
2  VAN DEN BERG Marijn EF Education - EasyPost 0:00
3  COQUARD Bryan Cofidis 0:00
4  AULAR Orluis Caja Rural - Seguros RGA 0:00
5  WILLIAMS Stephen Israel - Premier Tech 0:00
6  KONRAD Patrick Lidl - Trek 0:00
7  GODON Dorian Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team 0:00
8  MIQUEL Pau Equipo Kern Pharma 0:00
9  BARCELÓ Fernando Caja Rural - Seguros RGA 0:00
10  VAN DEN BROEK Frank Team dsm-firmenich PostNL 0:00

Tour of Catalonia GC after Stage 5

1 -  POGACAR Tadej UAD 20:54:36 -
2 -  LANDA Mikel SOQ 2:27 -
3 -  VLASOV Aleksandr BOH 2:55 -
4 -  MARTINEZ Lenny GFC 3:21 -
5 -  HARPER Chris JAY 3:22 -
6 -  MAS Enric MOV 3:24 
7 - KUSS Sepp TVL 3:31 
8 -  POELS Wout TBV 3:31 -
9 -  BERNAL Egan IGD 3:50 -
10 -  ALMEIDA João UAD 3:52 -