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Published on Tuesday, 08 September 2015 00:06

Vuelta Stage 17

Burgos to Burgos

Wed 9th September, 38.7km 

The race of truth, the race against the clock, the race that decides this Vuelta? It could well decide not only the winner of this race, but the finishing order of the entire top ten. There's only 1" between the first two in the GC and only 3'11" between the first eight in the GC. And besides Dumoulin, there's not exactly a wealth of top time triallists in this race! It's all to play for!

So we finally had 'one of those days' for the right reasons, with a superb win by Frank Schleck at 66/1 (well done to Simon who got 70s on Betfair!) and Rodolfo Torres chasing him home to land the each-way money at 33/1. There is no better feeling than to have picked two guys who get in a break, the break gets 20 minutes, so you know you're in with a shout, and then they ride away from everyone else on the final climb so you know you're guaranteed a winner. And even the order was perfect, with Torres weakening and Schleck riding away to victory, we had Schleck to win, Torres each-way!

Schleck was immense all day, taking it upon himself to really start pushing it hard on the 3rd last climb as Tinkoff started to crank it up behind and the gap started to tumble, and he single-handedly held the gap at around 11 minutes for almost all of the last 25kms. Torres was trading at odds-on, around 4/7 I think he was, as it looked like his lighter frame would be more suitable for the cruel finish. He danced on the pedals and Schleck looked in trouble, but he rode back to Torres and continued to grind. He then put in a big acceleration, and Torres went pop. I was getting a little worried for a while though that Warbasse would win after tipping him up but not backing him! But he died away too on the penultimate climb. 

Four out of four in the matchbets too made it an excellent day and makes up a little bit for the horrible run of bad luck we've been having. Hopefully we can land a few more winners before the end of the race. 

As for who is going to win this race? I still haven't a clue - no one does! The odds on Betfair show Aru and Dumoulin both around the 2.6 level, making it around a 37% chance one of them will win, Rodriguez, the man wearing the red jersey at the moment is 5.8, making him a 17% chance of winning, with Majka a 5.5% chance. Dumoulin has done incredibly well again today to minimise his losses, losing only 27" to Rodriguez, but again Rodriguez showed he was marginally the best climber, finishing ahead of Aru, Majka and Quintana. Chaves lost over a minute to Rodriguez, but just about holds on to his top 6 placing. 

So who's going to win? Well, Dumoulin is clearly the best time triallist, but can he take 1'51" back on Rodriguez and Aru? It's very possible, if Dumoulin was fresh - whether he can do his best possible TT given how hard he has pushed his body over the last 16 stages is another question. He must have lost a lot of weight too since the start of the race, he is looking incredibly lean, will he have lost some power in the TT position too? In the Vuelta last year there wasn't much between Purito and Aru (only 4"!) and they were 1'31" behind Fabian Cancellara who would be a good benchmark for Dumoulin. That was over 36.7kms, this TT is over 2kms more than that, so the gap might be around 1'40" - and he is only 1.51" behind! It is going to be insanely close and one mistake could make all the difference. 

But of course that's not the end of the race by any means and there are still four more stages to come, including the tough penultimate stage on Saturday which sees them go over 4 Cat 1 climbs. My gut instict says that Dumoulin might do enough in the TT to win it by the smallest margin. But I'm worried about a sub-par performance by him if he's tired after such a hard race. Purito knows he really is up against it and has said that he will only win if TomDum fails.. But he is fighting for probably the last chance he will ever get to win a Grand Tour so he could pull out the performance of his life on the TT bike.

Aru did a decent enough TT in Poland recently, losing 1'36" to Bialablocki and Kiryienka to finish in 17th place. But in the Giro TT he blew completely and lost 3 minutes to Kiryienka and 2'47" to Alberto Contador - if he repeats that sort of performance, he will not win the Vuelta. 

The Route

Not a lot to say about the route, it's 38.7kms of what look likes a pretty flat route, but it does roll along a bit and they climb a total of 330m along the way. It starts and finishes almost in the same place in the centre of Burgos, goes out on a loop of 21.8kms to the south-east of the town before starting on another loop to the north-west of the town. The last five kilometres are pretty technical and twisty as they come back towards the finish, there are eight warning flags on the map of the final kilometres as you can see below.. From the 5km to the 2km to go point they descend and the last kilometre is more or less flat.

The first 25kms or so are on big long straight roads which will allow them to get the power down and really go for it early on. The last 11kms are a lot trickier though as they ride around the roads to the north-west of the town so they will need to keep some energy back to keep the momentum going through the bends and turns of the final 5kms.  

Contenders and Favourites

The bookies aren't taking any chances are they - 8/11 best price on TomDum with Vasil Kiryenka best price 2/1, generally around 7/4. That makes it a 91% chance that one of those two wins and less than 9% chance anyone else of the 167 remaining riders win. And you know, it's probably even less of a chance than that! Dumoulin ordinarily would be a max bet job at 8/11, he would crush most of these guys if it was the first stage of the race or in something like the world championships TT. He is now one of the best TT'ers in the world, right up there with Martin, Cancellara, Dennis and Malori. 

He has had a hard race though, he has been made work incredibly hard over the last two weeks, right from the very first road stage of the race. He has been immense though - he has put many a so-called 'climber' to shame over the last two weeks, and he has never really looked like he was cracking - he has been dropped, but they have never broken him. In fact he must have broken their hearts with his surge to the finish on Monday when he limited his time loss to just 27" to Rodriguez, same on Sunday when he looked like losing a minute and a half, he powered to the line to reduce the loss to just 51". That says to me that he has just got incredible legs at the moment and there is still lots of power in them. With a rest day behind him now, I fully expect him to go out and give it everything he's got to try to win the Vuelta. I think he could beat Rodriguez by over 2 minutes and retake the lead of the race to set up a thrilling finale on Saturday afternoon.

Vasil Kiryienka was a hero for us in the Giro, winning the TT at 22/1 - we're lucky to get 2/1 on him this time around, the bookies are still smarting it looks like. He has been pretty anonymous in this race to be fair and despite many people fancying him for several stages, he hasn't done anything. But he hasn't really had to work overly hard in this race, Sky have not had to do much work, Movistar, Astana and Katusha have been the ones doing all the pushing. So he might have been waiting for this to really give it a go and test himself ahead of the world's. He is likely to be the closest to Dumoulin, he could get within 20". Winner of the European Games TT in June, he was 1'10" ahead of the second placed rider, Stef Clement.

After that, it's a lottery, but it's hardly worth picking anyone else as the bookies are only offering each-way betting on the first two, who are likely to be the two mentioned above. Luis Leon Sanchez is 3rd favourite and the only rider under 33/1 to win. Sanchez is a top time triallist too but not in the same league as TomDum and Kiry. 4th in the Spanish TT championships, but 2'11" behind Castroviejo, 3rd in the European Games TT, but was well beaten by Kiryienka too, finishing 1'32" behind him. A repeat performance will see him finish a long way behind the top two, but possibly good enough for 3rd. But not much value in backing him to finish in the top 3 at 5/6. The 5/6 on him not finishing in the top 3 almost looks the better bet.

Instead, I'm going to have a few small bets on some outsiders at big prices, just in case anything should happen to the top two in the betting. Nelson Oliveira is the Portuguese national TT champion and he showed on stage 13 that he is in good form at the moment. At 66/1 he could give this a good go. Maciej Bodnar came 10th in the Tour of Poland TT, 1'26" behind Kiry, and was 5th in the Tirreno-Adriatico TT on a much shorter 10km course, just 16" behind the winner, Cancellara and just 7" behind Kiry. If he can repeat that sort of ride he could come within a minute of Kiry which might be good enough for 3rd at 8/1 in the Bet365 top 3 market. 

Jurgen Van den Broeck, Steve Cummings, Niki Terpstra and Jerome Coppel could all go well so some of their match bets appeal. Dumoulin should be just too good and I think he should also do enough to take the red jersey back, a red jersey that will be very hard to take back off him again. Back him to win the overall as a hedge against our Aru bets at 5/4.

Recommendations -

3pts win on Tom Dumoulin to win the stage at 4/5 on Betfair

2pts win on Tom Dumoulin to win the overall at 5/4 with various

0.5pts on Maciej Bodnar to finish in the top 3 at 8/1 with Bet365

Matchbets

Brambilla to beat Meintjes - 2pts at 4/6 with 365

Fun accumulator - Majka to beat Valverde, De Clercq to beat Pozzovivo, Coppel to beat Howson, Rodriguez to beat Chaves, JVDB to beat Meyer, Oliveira to beat Cummings, Kiryienka to beat LL Sanchez - 2pts on the 7-fold pays 7.1/1 with Bet365