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Published on Thursday, 31 August 2017 21:53

Vuelta Stage 13

Coín to Tomares 

Friday 1st Sept, 198.4kms 

Possibly the final chance in this Vuelta for the few sprinters that are here, but it's not quite straightforward with a lumpy last 3kms that could see strong puncheurs mixing it up with the remaining sprinters. 

Not a lot to say about the route, a bit of lumpy start to it, but the flat last 30kms should see the break reeled in and the sprinters teams take over to make it a sprint finish in Tomares. It's quite a messy finish in Tomares though, lots of hazards and roundabouts, so if one team can take control at the front of the peloton and string it out then they should be able to place their sprinter in a good position, while all the rest scrap it out between GC guys behind. 

Stage 12 Review

Now that was more like it!! 150/1 Tomasz Marczynski is my new hero, a stunning victory for him, if not in the manner I expected... It was even better - I think we knew with 20kms to go that it was in the bag and made for a relatively stress-free finish. A lot less stressful than for a lot of the riders, with Contador setting things alight with a daring attack on the last climb, causing consternation behind. With the race in full flight, Froome crashed, changed his bike and crashed again - as the GC group were chasing Contador there was to be no waiting..

It was full gas and Froome had to lean on Nieve and Poels to help him limit his losses, and they did an admirable job to lose just 20" to the other GC guys by the finish. Contador picked up a little bit of time, but still sits over 3 minutes down. 

JJ Rojas got in the break again but was beaten to 3rd by Omar Fraile who finally showed that he is feeling a little bit better, but he clearly isn't 100% yet as Marczynski rode away from him today. It might be worth keeping an eye on him for the rest of the race though, it was a good spin for him today and he'll have an easy day tomorrow to recover.

The surprise again today was yet another short-price favourite not even featuring in the race, with Alaphilippe not in the break, nor Trentin, Rui Costa or Luis Leon Sanchez.. Another shitty day if you were relying on the short priced fancies, we'd have made a loss on the QuickStep boys if Marczynski hadn't delivered. 

The two matchbets delivered too for us, with Caruso beating Dennis and DLC beating Woods to make it a total profit of over 46pts today. We're back on track, on to the next one.. With a 40/1 2nd and a 33/1 3rd in the last two days we were getting closer, but struck the jackpot today thankfully... 

The Route

Nearly 200kms of a pretty boring looking profile as they head north-east towards Sevillle. They start climbing a few kilometres in and go over the Cat 3 Alto de Ardales after just 27kms and the next 140kms are spent rolling along until they reach Alcalá de Guadaíra after 167kms when they reach the flat roads on the run in towards Sevilla and ultimately Tomares, a municipality of Seville, 2kms west of Seville over the Guadalquivir.

It is a very tricky last 5kms as they enter the town, there are no fewer than 11 warning triangles in the finish map as you can see below. It slopes down a little until just after 5kms to go and then flattens out for almost 2kms, but the last 3kms drag uphill away from the river through wide, well surfaced roads. But boy, are the last 3kms sketchy, with 7 hazards to negotiate, including two roundabouts in the last 700m, the second one coming with just 340m to go. The finishing straight itself is only 320m long and slopes up at 2% to the line.  

Contenders and Favourites

This could be a very short preview - I think Matteo Trentin wins, and I could just leave it at that..

The break will be reeled in in time for a sprint, there's only two chances left for the sprinters to shine and Trentin will want to land a hat-trick and get closer to possibly winning the points jersey. He is clearly one of, if not the fastest sprinters in the race and he also has one of the best teams to get him in to position also. Bob Jungels will reel in the break on his own almost, then they also have Yves Lampaert, Julian Alaphilippe, Niki Terpstra, Enric Mas and Tim Declercq to pull him through those dangerous last 5kms. And it looks like they took today off to save energy. 

And he is just so confident and strong now, he surfs the wheels well and pops up and down like an excited meerkat, waiting to launch. If he is in the first 3 or 4, which he should be, hitting the last 300m, he wins I think. To think that if Lampaert hadn't stolen away on stage 2 he'd be going for his 4th stage win and might have the points jersey sewn up by tomorrow, he might be a tad pissed off afterwards if the points he lost out on that day costs him the jersey..  

But he's just 2/1... very short, but he was 7/4 earlier, so 2/1 is a bit better! But I really think he wins, I have to have some of today's profits on him..  

The only guy who got close to him really in the first sprint was Juan Jose Lobato of LottoNL. Can he do any better this time? Well he led out the sprint, jumping quite early, but when Trentin kicked he was just a different league to him. LottoNL haven't a bad leadout, with the likes of Lindeman and Clement, but they are not in the same league as QS and I think they could be a bit all over the place and Lobato will have to fend for himself. Lobato is from Andalusia though and will be extra motivated, he might be worth backing each-way too.

Sacha Modolo hasn't really got close enough in the two sprints so far to get me too interested in backing him for tomorrow, and I feel that he may have had a lot taken out of him in the last two weeks. He is surely going to get a bit closer than 5th or 6th this time, but 7/1 doesn't even offer a whole lot of e/w interest to me.

Edward Theuns went up the road today and put a lot of effort in to the break first, working hard and then attacking at one point, but was then made work even more at the end of the stage when Contador came up to him and he tried to help him stretch his lead. I think he is a lay for the top 3 tomorrow rather than a back, I think he's worth opposing.

Magnus Cort Neilsen has been told to work for the team in this race and not to sprint apparently, but with the GC charge starting to fall apart for them, maybe they will let him sprint tomorrow? Too risky to guess that will be the case though, it may be that he doesn't even participate in the sprint again, so even the e/w doesn't appeal.

Adam Blythe will be looking to come closer than his earlier 3rd place, and AquaBlue are raging at the moment after their bus was burned by some scumbag arsonist on Wed night. They were fired up today and attacked a lot at the start, ultimately getting Peter Konig in the break, but I could see them fired up for this one again and I think Blythe will be very motivated to get a result here against pretty mediocre sprinters with bad leadouts. 

Tom Van Asbroeck, Michael Schwarzmann, Mikel Morkov - all these guys are ok, but just not good enough and will be left fighting for the 5th to 10th places. 

It's all about Trentin tomorrow, hopefully he can deliver the stage win and lots of points jersey points to try to at least secure the e/w payout on our 18/1. 

Recommendations:

4pts win on Matteo Trentin at 2/1 with 365

0.5pts each-way on Adam Blythe at 16/1 with 365

Matchbets

Trentin to beat Theuns, TVA to beat Oss, Blythe to beat Schwarzmann - 3pts at 2.4/1 with Will Hill