Vuelta a España
This year, the Vuelta starts on Saturday from Italy, where the first 4 stages will be held, the 4th finishing in France. Curiously, there is no rest day between this Italian sequence and the following stages in Spain. In spite of the presence of a high-speed train connection between the 4th stage finish and the 5th stage location, the transfer will be by plane.
There will be 1 time bonus sprint per stage. Depending on the stage, it will either be at one Intermediate Sprint or at the top of a categorised mountain climb.
For points classification: there will be 1 Intermediate Sprint per stage, rewarded by 20 points (only the first 5 riders score points). Concerning stages victories, only the very first and last stages bring 50 points; the rest (half-half) brings either 20 or 30 points; points are always awarded to the first 15 riders.
Mountain classification (white jersey with blue dots):
- 4th cat. : 2 points (2 riders)
- 3rd cat. : 3 points (3 riders)
- 2nd cat. : 5 points (3 riders)
- 1st cat. : 10 points (5 riders)
- HC : 15 points (6 riders)
- Angliru : 20 points (6 riders)
The 5 Pro-Teams engaged are: Q36.5, Lotto, IPT, and the 2 Spanish teams Burgos and Caja Rural. Kern Pharma who won 3 stages (!) last year was not invited.
Vingegaard (🇩🇰 Visma), who has yet to win something this year, is probably the favourite for GC, with Almeida (🇵🇹 UAE) as a contender. Carapaz cancelled his participation again, after cancelling his participation on the Tour of France… Outsiders could be Tiberi (🇮🇹 Bahrein), Gall (🇨🇭 Decathlon), Ciccone (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek), O’Connor (🇦🇺 Jayco), perhaps Gaudu (🇫🇷 FDJ) if he suddenly returns to being a pro rider.
Pedersen (🇩🇰 Lidl-trek) will go for the green jersey and stage wins. I fail to see any contender or even outsider, as there are almost no top sprinter (but Philipsen (🇧🇪 Alpecin)) or 4x4 riders (but Pidcock (🇬🇧 Q36.5) ?) on the startlist.
Nothing seems to have happened in the mountain part, except for the first climb to decide of the breakaway.
Nothing happened in the valleys, nothing happened on the punchy climb 40 km from the line.
Gaudu (🇫🇷 FDJ) attempted to get a time bonus at the I.S. but finished 5th behind a pair of Lidl-Trek and a pair of IPT. Vingegaard (🇩🇰 Visma) looked like he was going to take part in the sprint, but stayed watching the others when it really kicked in. Philipsen🇧🇪 and the whole Alpecin team didn’t do a single effort to contest the sprint.
Then Armirail (🇫🇷 Décathlon), out of boredom, decided to break away alone with still 30 km to go.
There was a crash of several riders 10 km from the line, at low /very low speed. Then, the trains accelerated as it is common, but strangely, the speed seemed to go down again after the 5 km banner.
Pedersen (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) lost himself in the last curves. Philipsen (🇧🇪 Alpecin) stayed behind his launcher way too long before kicking his sprint. Therefore Turner (🇬🇧 Ineos) wins. Pedersen showed a rather good finish but he started from far, thus only caught up one of the 6 guys battling for victory. It is yet another failure for Lidl-Trek, but Pedersen’s 6th place is just enough, together with his good Intermediate Sprint, to take the Green jersey before Vernon (🇬🇧 IPT) 4th today and Philipsen 2nd today.
Gaudu🇫🇷 stayed ahead a long time but went backwards in the end; however it was sufficient to arrive enough places before Vingegaard🇩🇰 and get the Red jersey the Dane wasn’t interested in keeping.
Nicolau (🇪🇸 Caja Rural) took the Dotted jersey, but not by much as today’s climbs were only ranked as 2nd and 3rd categories and the points were shared among the breakaway partakers. I don’t know if there were big fights for the mountain sprints or not, as the TV coverage started only after all climbs were finished.