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Published on Thursday, 17 August 2017 21:13

Vuelta a Espana St. 1

Nîmes to Nîmes

Saturday Aug 19th, 13.7km

The Vuelta a Espana starts once again with a Team Time Trial, the eight year running that the race has started with a TTT. Last year's TTT saw Team Sky and Movistar finish on the same time, with Sky being awarded the win by hundredths of a second. 

This stage holds fond memories for me after backing Sky at 5/1 with Corals when 5/2 was available to lay on Betfair, I had a big bet on Sky at 5/1 and laid back some at 5/2 and had a very profitable opening day to the Vuelta! The race is beginning outside Spain for only the third time in it's history and take three stages before it gets to Spain in fact.

It's unusual for the Vuelta to spend three days in a row outside the country, and it's especially unusual for the Spanish race to start in France! The opening TT is only 13.7kms long this year, almost exactly half of last year's opening TTT, so it should take them only about 15 minutes to complete the course.

There was nothing at all between the top two last year, only hundreths of a second, and only 7" separated the top 4 home.. With half the distance this year it could be even tighter, so there shouldn't be much between the top GC riders after the first stage, unlike last year when Contador's Trek squad lost by 52", immediately putting him up against it. 

Bizarrely there is a KOM on a Cat 3 tiny little bump of a hill at almost exactly the half-way point in the race, where the KOM points will be awarded to the first 3 riders over the line from the fastest team. So we could possibly see a strange situation where a team with no real GC candidate goes absolutely flat out for the first 7.3kms in an attempt to try to get one of their riders in to the KOM jersey and then eases back for the last half.. possible, but unlikely!

The Route

It's a tricky circuit that twists and turns through the old streets of Nimes and rises a little bit in the middle up the Alto de Nimes, a Cat 3 climb that probably won't really impact their rhythm too much, it's only 1.6% average for 2.4kms. The opening 3kms are quite tricky with lots of bends as they navigate through the old town of Nimes.

But there are lots of long straights in the second half after the Alto de Nimes where the strong teams can really put the hammer down. It will require a team that is very cohesive and coordinated, there can be no loose edges on this course, a tiny mistake on one bend could cost the stage win.  

One interesting element of the course is that they ride right through the centre of the Arena of Nimes, a Roman Coliseum dating from 70AD as you can see in the pic below.

Weather watch - a sunny, warm day with no rain at all. Wind is a northerly of around 11-13mph, and looks to be pretty consistent for all teams, and as they are effectively riding around a loop they'll be getting the wind from all sides so it doesn't really make any difference to the outcome of the stage.  

Favourites and Contenders

Team Sky won this stage last year by the tiniest of margins, the clock stopping with them on the same time as Movistar, and briefly appearing to show them 0.4" behind.. It was tight, it was tense, but it was ultimately joyful for us who had hit the 5/1 on them to win. They have to be right up there amongst the favourites again to take this stage, as it's a similarly strong team to last year's. Froome, Knees, Puccio and Lopez are here from that team that won last year, but only Puccio and Froome finished in the first five home, Lopez was 9" down and Knees lost over 2 mins after giving everything and pulling over early on. 

They are joined by the power of Ian Stannard, Gianni Moscon, Woet Poels and Diego Rosa, and you'd have to think that's one of the strongest squads here - Poels, Stannard and Moscon bring some serious firepower to the team, we'll probably see Stannard, Nieve and Knees burying themselves in the first half of the course and the rest staying together until the finish. Froome likes to try to lead from the start and he knows an early psychological advantage means a lot in a race like this. We might even see them give Lopez the first Red Jersey of the race, as long as he can hang in there with them this time. They opened at 6/1 went in to 11/2 and are now out to 13/2 and that is tempting. 

BMC of course are going to be a huge danger to them - but they were the 2/1 favs to take this stage last year and could only manage 4th, 7" behind Sky, with Movistar and Orica ahead of them. They are masters at TTTs though and they have a really strong team here with them this year, with Van Garderen from last year's team joined by TT supremo Rohan Dennis, Kilian Frankiny and Alessandro de Marchi. Those five guys were in the team that demolished Froome's Sky team in the Vuelta a Catalunya TTT in March, beating them by 44", with 3rd place Movistar 58" down, BMC were almost a kilometre an hour faster than Sky. 

They are joined by Nico Roche, Daniel Oss and Francisco Ventoso and suddenly they look like a very formidable opposition to Sky for this opening TTT. TVG, Oss, Dennis and Caruso were also together when they blitzed the 22km TTT in Tirreno Adriatico earlier in the year, beating Quick-Step by 17". This kind of course suits Dennis down to the ground and I can imagine already seeing him take monster turns at the front every time it comes around to his turn, he could almost win this TT on his own. They opened at evens and are now in to 5/6 so are being backed it would seem to take this. 

Quick-Step Floors are sure to be challengers too, they always are.. any team with Bob Jungels and Nikki Terpstra in it are always going to go well, and they are joined by Julian Alaphilippe, Enrico Mas, Matteo Trentin, David de la Cruz, Eros Capecchi, Tim Declercq and Yves Lampaert to make a strong lineup. There won't be much between them and the two teams above though, Jungels and Terpstra will be strong, but Alaphilippe, De La Cruz, Capecchi and Declercq are pretty average TT'ers on the flat like this, if it was uphill it would be a different story. They opened a very short 7/4 and are now 15/8 and that's too short for me. 

Orica Scott are always a danger in TTTs but this team here looks pretty average with too many light climber types and not enough strong diesel engine types. With the two Yates brothers in the team you are always going to struggle in a TTT, they are poor triallists, and add in Carlos Verona and Chaves and they really are down to just five guys to push it. And those five are Chris Juul-Jensen (big engine), Svein Tuft (big engine, lots of experience), Jack Haig (big engine, ok TTer), Magnus Cort Neilsen (sprinter, not a great TT'er) and Sam Bewley (terrible TT performances last few years).. so it looks like it will be CJJ and Tuft dragging the rest of them around, and they'll have to take it easy to avoid dropping Adam Yates and Chaves, so I think they are definitely a team to take on. 

Astana have two strong GC hopefuls here with Fabio Aru and Miguel Angel Lopez - Lopez can TT, Aru can't.. And the rest of the team aren't a great bunch of TTers either, with LL Sanchez the only decent TTer amongst them, the rest are pretty awful, and I can't imagine they will be a very cohesive unit either. 

Movistar also look pretty average this year with a team of light climbers and none of their strong TT engines like Castroviejo, Amador or Valverde. Instead they have Carlos Betancur, Dani Moreno, Ruben Fernandez, Marc Soler, Richard Carapaz, José Joaquín Rojas, Jorge Arcas, Antonio Pedrero and Nelson Oliveira, probably the weakest Movistar team for a Grand Tour we've seen in a long time. 

Nelson Oliveira is probably the best TT'er in the team, but I'd expect to see him around 30th-40th in the ITT later in the race, so he's no Rohan Dennis. Jorge Arcas and Marc Soler aren't too bad, but again are 30th place riders in the ITT, not challengers. And the rest are just passengers. I think they will really struggle here. 

Trek Segafredo will be looking to start the race well for Alberto Contador, the last thing he wants is to be chasing time from day 1. And they look to have brought a reasonably strong team here for him for the TTT, maybe with that in mind. Stetina, Theuns, De Kort, Pantano, Irizar and Degenkolb are all strong riders who will be able to put out a lot of watts and keep a high tempo and I fancy them to do a lot better than some of the teams named already above. Contador showed his TT is still pretty strong with his fine performance in the TDF, so he should drive them on to a top 5 placing, maybe even a top 3, but I don't think they are strong enough at all to trouble Sky or BMC. 

And the rest are a pretty mixed bag as well - Bahrain Merida will want to start well for Nibali, but it will be hard for them to punch their way in to the top 3 with that squad, there isn't a decent TT'er amongst them. Sunweb might go ok, but they don't have their big TT guns here and again, looks a team of climbers than TTers. Bora Hansgrohe have improved a lot in TTs in the last year or so, and they haven't a bad team here at all really, but again are probably a 5th to 10th team. Katusha might go well, Zakarin will want to go well too from the start, and they have some big engines in that squad. But LottoNL-Jumbo, Lotto-Soudal, AG2R and the rest are just not good enough either and will struggle. 

So it looks like it's probably between BMC, Sky and QuickStep Floors I think and BMC are probably going to take it. But at the prices I have to back Sky like last year and hopefully we'll get off to a good start again. The matchbets look ok too to me so far, I might add more when Will Hill opens with their markets.  

UPDATE: 12:55pm. 

Sky are 4/6 with Bet365 to finish in the first 3, and that to me looks like a great bet. I know Froome might ask them to throttle back a little bit on this twisty circuit, no point in crashing out on stage 1, but I think they are still head and shoulders above most teams here and will go really well I think, possibly even good enough to win it as I've already made clear. I also have added another matchbet Acca below, I think all of these are pretty solid. 

Recommendations:

1pt win on Sky at 13/2 with Bet365 

3pts on Sky to finish in the first 3 at 4/6 with 365

Matchbets

BMC to beat QuickStep, Katusha to beat Lotto Soudal, Sky to beat Sunweb - 2pts at 5/2 with 365

Cannondale to beat Caja-Rural, Dimension Data to beat Manzana, Trek to beat Bahrain and LottoNL to beat AG2R - 2pts on the acca at 16/5 with 365 (it's only 13/5 with Will Hill)