This last week restarts from the greebrowneries of Galicia and heads to Madrid in the centre of the country, through Castile-and-Leon and the Sierra near Madrid, which requires several long transfers as the stages themselves do not progress much in the right direction. The Time Trial will be held on Thrusday in Valladolid.
Standings after stage 15
General
- J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma
- J. Almeida 🇵🇹 UAE – 48″
- T. Pidcock 🇬🇧 Q36.5 – 2′38″
- J. Hindley 🇦🇺 Bora – 3′10″
- F. Gall 🇨🇭 Décathlon – 3′30″
- G. Pellizzari 🇮🇹 Bora – 4′21″
- M. Ricitello 🇺🇸 Visma – 4′53″
- S. Kuss 🇺🇸 Visma – 5′46″
- J. Lecerf 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS – 5′49″
- T. Træen 🇳🇴 Bahrain – 6′33″
Lecerf enters top-10 thanks to the large breakaway on stage #15, which was given some 13 free minutes by the peloton. Ciccone drops despite being in the same breakaway, as he had lost a lot on the mountain stages.
Points
- M. Pedersen 🇩🇰 Lidl-trek – 237 pts (+117)
- J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma – 139 pts (+39)
- G. Ciccone 🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek – 88 pts (+27)
- E. Vernon 🇬🇧 IPT – 111 pts (=0)
- J. Philipsen 🇧🇪 Alpecin – 105 pts (=0)
The composition of top-5 hasn’t changed, but its structure has. After two relatively sluggish stages blocks in that respect, Pedersen finally created a significant gap by going into breakaways (and those weren’t easy ones!) and grabbing many Intermediate Sprints, as well as winning stage #15. Vernon, who was previously going for I.S., didn’t score a single point; neither did Philipsen (who wasn’t).
Mountain
- J. Vine 🇦🇺 UAE – 61 pts (+27)
- J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma – 39 pts (+24)
- L. Vervaeke 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS – 32 pts (+9)
- J. Almeida 🇵🇹 UAE – 29 pts (+25)
- J. Ayuso 🇪🇸 UAE – 26 pts (+6)
- M. Soler 🇪🇸 UAE – 26 pts (+26)
Quinn and Nicolau left top-5. Vine kept on accumulating points in breakaways, to keep the two GC guys at bay. Soler scored all his points during this block.
Teams (rounded)
- UAE 🇳🇱
- Visma – 35′
- Bora – 1h05′
- Décathlon – 1h07′
- Caja Rural – 1h24′
Soudal-QS, Astana and Bahrain follow closely. First and second places seem to be anchored now. The performance of the Pro Team Caja Rural is noteworthy. The bottom of the classification is occupied by a quatuor of French and Belgian teams, 5 hours and more behind, which do worse than the weak Burgos team reduced to 4 men (among said teams, only Alpecin is voluntarily only playing sprints).
Stage 21 (last): Sunday 14, 16:40–16:44 → 19:20–19:40
I don’t see this stage reaching its end, giving how it went on Stage #20 (however the circuit is only 6 km long). Anyway, 3 Philipsen victories instead of 4 do not change anything…
NB: compared to my profile and my map, an extra 3 km is now planned somewhere in the first part before Madrid.
Was this the only result I predicted well this year? 😆
I think you’ve had some decent predictions 😁
Shame about the race. I feel like the point was better made with the thousands of Palestinian flags along the roads instead of ruining the race for everyone.
That would be true if the point was to race awareness about the genocide, but my understanding was that the protestors were specifically trying to force IPT out of the race. Disrupting it as much as possible was probably the only realistic way to attempt to do that.
It would be illegal for the Vuelta to kick them out without the UCI or CAS of something like that having decided on a suspension.
Also, why? It’s not an Israeli national team, there were no Israelis on the team…
I’m not sure if the protestors actually understood that nuance. A lot of debate I’ve seen online seems to equate IPT with UAE Team Emirates or Bahrain Victorious, when it’s not the same situation. IPT does receive a small amount of funding from the Israeli government but is that really enough to qualify it as an “Israeli team”, as the Spanish PM also implied? My understanding is that the “Israel” in the name is there because of Sylvain Adams (the owner), not the Israeli government.
Yeah, if working for someone who supports Israel is enough to have your work disrupted… well, we should see a lot more events distupted!
To be honest, I was more sympathetic towards the protestors at the World Championships a few years ago who also disrupted the race by blocking the road. Climate change is something that will affect all of us and it’s also disturbingly under-reported despite being the most significant crisis of any. Yes, the pro-Palestine cause is just, but it’s also in the news literally every single day (at least here in Australia). It’s not really something you can raise more awareness for via protest and if you aren’t raising awareness or effecting meaningful change (I’m not sure I’d consider IPT being removed from a race as meaningful) then what are you doing?
I agree, the situation in Gaza is atrocious but the only people who can do anything meaningful about it is the Israelis themselves and the Americans - and they don’t want to. The EU could stop trading with Israel - it wouldn’t stop the genocide, but it would be something.
But then - that’s something the protestors should take to the Spanish Prime Minister who said he was “proud” of the protestors - for disrupting an unrelated event only very tangentially related to Israel, while he - an actual politician with political power - does nothing.
It is a sort of evening race; for your afternoon, there is the Grand-Prix de Fourmies (Women, then Men) in the north of France, which is a one-day .Pro race.
Actually, I never understand why this type of race is granted a .Pro classification when it should be .1 at best.