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).
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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.
I don’t see this stage reaching its end
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.
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?
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.
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.
Stage 19: Friday 12, 13:50–13:55 → 17:20–17:40
This is the flat-hilly stage for which Alpecin has been waiting for so long 😀
Vingegaard regained about half of what he lost yesterday, by winning the peloton’s Intermediate Sprint, while UAE had completely forgotten about it until it was too late for them. 😀
Otherwise, one poor Caja Rural fellow alone for hours in a breakaway, and another Philipsen victory as expected.
Stage 18: Thursday 11, 14:12–17:01 → 14:40–17:30
It’s TT time. This time trial in the streets of Valladolid is flat, except for that one lump which is harder than it looks on the official profile (more than 500 m at more than 7%).
edit: for reasons of law enforcement, the TT will be shortened by 15 km and thus only be 12.2 km long. I imagine it may be the round trip to the south that is cancelled (as it looks longer at first glance) and the little wall in the first part could remain.
So in fact they had removed part of the South loop and part of the West loop, so the wall had disappeared and it was pure flat.
No big differences were made. Vingegaard is probably grateful for the shortening because he looks still ill. I suppose he could answer like Küng who was asked if he wouldn’t have preferred the full length: “given my condition, it was better like this! 😀”.
Gall was passed by Riccitello but that’s just a matter of a handful of seconds.
Not a bad ITT by a Vingegaard in rough shape, but also a super strong Almeida performance. Had it been the full length I am sure it would be closer. Tomorrow will be a breakaway or sprint, so all will be decided on stage 20. Let’s hope everyone is healthy for a good final battle.
So I was listening to Lang Distance, Mads Petersen’s podcast with an old mate, and apparently Ciccone is looking to sell his Ferrari - and Mads Pedersen had offered him 150.000 euros for it, but it’s worth something like 240K. So they made a bet, that if Mads Pedersen won the TT Cicco would accept the lower bid. Bet he was sweating bullets from the 2nd timing point to the finish :D
Rumours are there’s a video of him watching Mads riding and looking more and more pale, but I haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s just an internal video :D
Stage 16, Tuesday 9, 13:05–13:12 → 17:15–17:45
This stage takes place in Galicia, near the Ocean and the Portuguese border. None of the climbs are very difficult individually, but there are many in the second half of the route.
I cannot comment much about this stage as my Internet connection (the TV provider forced us a couple of years ago to give up on satellite TV which was working 99,999% of the time, and switch to ADSL/fiber TV which is prone to many sources of failure) held a protest for over one hour and, the stage being shortened, I could only see the last 5 km or so. 😀
Brieuc Rolland (🇫🇷 FDJ) seemed perfect again in his role of The Invisible Man, whom no camera can see.
What happened to Felix Gall (🇦🇹 Décathlon), was he abducted by aliens?
Top-2 of the race looked like a high-school 20 years reunion 🤣
Gall cracked on the second last Cat. 2 climb and was dropped by the Red Jersey group. There was an incredibly steep section of 20% or so that thinned out the group significantly.
Stage 20: Saturday 13, 13:00–13:10 → 17:15–17:45
This mountain stage in the Sierra next to Madrid is the last chance for GC leaders to make differences. There are 5 climbs spread over the distance, plus a bit of rolling terrain and a few flattish transitions; so, before the start, scenarios are pretty open. It is now up to the riders to do something out of it, or not.
It is now up to the riders to do something out of it, or not.
The answer was: nowt.
UAE didn’t put anyone in the large breakaway, lead the peloton all day but only caught the breakaway a couple of miles from the line despite the breakaway having never managed to build any gap, therefore UAE didn’t go for intermediate time bonuses, didn’t attempt to accelerate or anything potentially destabilising for other teams, and never attacked through any of its riders at any moment.
Pidcock🇬🇧, who was on the verge of breaking all (last) climb long, managed to stay in the lead group; group which was even caught up by Riccitello🇺🇸 in the end. The former thus manages to stay on the podium, and the latter grabs the White Jersey from Pelizzari🇮🇹 who failed hard today.
Kuss🇺🇸 passes Gall🇦🇹 in GC thanks to the time bonus at the finish for 2nd place behind his leader Vingegaard🇩🇰 (I mean, on top of the fact that Gall🇦🇹 was dropped too early, but this alone wasn’t enough).
Ciccone🇮🇹 finished only 1 minute behind Kuss🇺🇸 despite having been in the breakaway all day! (I guess this is also telling about the ‘sustained’ pace UAE was supposed to impose all day).
Stage 17, Wednesday 10, 13:30–13:41 → 17:00–17:20
On the eve of the Time Trial, this is a somewhat rolling stage concluded by a single but terrible climb.
Chances this stage is shortened before the final climb? It’s not looking good for the ITT, either.
It reached the expected finish line. Regarding the wind, it wasn’t a problem (and they hadn’t set up all the useless fancy stuff along the road). Regarding protests, the police seems to have decided that the party was over.
Well, the two GC leader looked as cooked as the landscape. They were the only ones in the group who didn’t attack at all, they didn’t relay anyone (except in a way Almeida, when he had to make up for his traditional early drop), and they weren’t able to sprint at all, finishing last 2 of their group, conceding tiny splits.
I do not understand the level of Pidcock. It was admittedly only one climb, but a long one (rather long and hard), so I am surprised to see him once again with the best true climbers and GC leaders. His level is probably highlighted by the declining form of Vingegaard and Almeida (which may also have kept a bit for the TT tomorrow), though.
