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).
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.
That’s not really true, Spain announced quife a few new measures during the Vuelta.
Well, that’s at least something - not all talk then. I still think it’s crazy that he’s “proud” that protesters are breaking the law to ruin an unrelated event, but there you go.
The Australian government recently piggybacked off a very large pro-Gaza rally to attempt to boost its popularity, so I wondered if perhaps something similar was happening. I don’t know enough about Spanish politics to know if that’s the case, though.