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Published on Friday, 17 August 2018 17:13

2018 Vuelta a España

Redemption for lil' Richie? 

3,254.7kms, 46 mountains, 9 summit finishes, 6 flat stages, 2 time trials.. it's time for the 2018 Vuelta a España.. Can Richie Porte take redemption after yet another disastrous Tour de France?

So Sky's Chris Froome didn't win his fifth Tour de France then after all, denied by his Welsh team-mate Geraint Thomas, in a far more PR-friendly result for the team than could otherwise have been the case.. Thomas deserved his win as he was the most consistent over the three weeks and never seemed to falter, the others befalling bad luck or bad legs to take them out of the running. 

It mightn't have been a vintage Tour, but there were still some brilliant stages, and brilliant riding, with the stage to Roubaix being one of the best, helped in no small part by us landing the big one on John Degenkolb at a tasty 33/1! Last year's Vuelta was pretty good for us, with Sander Armee and Tomas Marczynski landing monster results at 80/1 and 150/1 respectively, but there were also some other pretty nice results along the way. 

No foreign starts for the Vuelta this year after their three days in France last year, in fact, they don't venture in to France at all, although they do take a trip to Andorra towards the end of the race. It's an interesting route this year with some brutally hard climbs along the way, but even though it seems to have a lot of summit finishes at 9, it is less than then number of summit finishes in 2016 with ten.

The race opens with a short prologue and there's also an individual TT on stage 16, same as last year, which was won by Chris Froome. That takes the total TT'ing distance in the race up to 40.7kms, making it a reasonable amount of kilometres for those who favour racing against the clock, but not too much for the climbers to worry about. 

Last year's race saw Chris Froome comfortably lands the evens bets, taking the lead on only the 3rd stage after taking 3rd on the stage to Andorra la Vella (a town they pass through on stage 20 of this year's race). He never relenquished his grip on the jersey for the rest of the race, winning by 2'15" from Vincenzo Nibali, with Ilnur Zakarin finishing an impressive 3rd, just 35" behind Nibbles. 

Kelderman, Contador, Poels, Woods, Lopez, Kruijswijk and Van Garderen impressed with top 10 finishes, Aru, Chaves, Bardet and Yates disappointing with finishes outside the top ten. Matteo Trentin also impressed with four stage wins, several of which we backed him for, but it wasn't enough to win the points jersey, Froome sprinting to 11th place on the final stage was enough to steal it off his back and deny us the 18/1 win on him. Luckily we had Froome as a saver at 4/1 though to land the 1-2.. 

David Villella won the KOM jersey almost by accident, getting in an early break, taking an early lead and then basically being allowed go in every break after that to rack up points on a regular basis.. No one really looked like they could be bothered to challenge him, and the 3/1 pre-race favourite Omar Fraile had a disaster, his Dimension Data team being decimated by a virus that saw them reduced to just 3 riders when Fraile pulled out on the 13th stage. 

The 2018 Route

The 2018 route sees the riders start in the Andalusian town of Malaga and they head in an S shape route that goes up along the south-east coast for a bit, then cuts north-west across the centre of Spain before looping back along the northern coast, in to Andorra and the Basque country before they fly back down to Madrid for the final crit. 

Stage 1 is a prologue of 8kms in the sea-side town of Malaga, it's pan-flat and not too difficult, there shouldn't be very big time differences between the main protagonists

Stage 2 is a lumpy day that starts with a Cat 2 climb right out of the gate and ends with the summit finish to Camenito del Rey (right) where Esteban Chaves landed a 150/1 win for us 3 years ago.

Stage 3 is another lumpy day in the saddle with a 20km Cat 1 climb that starts after just 25kms, but is likely to end in a sprint finish of some sort. 

Stage 4 is a day where we could see the first real picture of the GC candidates form with a tough stage that has a Cat 1 climb half-way through it and ends with a Cat 1 climb to La Alfaguara, 13kms long at an average of 5.4%, but with some parts in double digits.

Stage 5 looks like a perfect day for a breakaway win with a lumpy course and a Cat 2 climb less than 30kms from the finish.   Stage 6 should end in the first bunch sprint and  Stage 7 could well end in a bunch sprint too, but with a hilly finish we might not see all the sprinters present. 

Stage 8 could be a battle between the sprinters teams and the break, the break could make it, but with an uphill sprint finish, it looks perfect for the likes of Peter Sagan.   Stage 9 is a brute of a stage over 200kms in length and with a Cat 1 climb after just 35kms, and ends with the first Esp climb of the race to La Covatilla at almost 2,000m in height. 

Stage 10 brings them back after the rest day and it's a straight-forward day for the sprinters, Stage 11 looks like a break stage, with hardly a flat metre of road for most of the longest stage of the race at 207.8kms. It has four categorised bumps, but I count about another seven uncategorised hills along the way.

Stage 12 starts them on their run along the north-coast, heading towards the Pyrenees, but on this day they are heading in the other direction on a stage that should end in a bunch sprint, although there are plenty of challenges along the route that could make it close between the break making it or not. 

Stage 13 climbs more or less from the start, gently at first, then over a tough Cat 1, then descends gently for 60kms before the summit finish to La Camperona, a very hard finish to the day with gradients hitting up to 19% in places and averaging 10% for the last 10kms. 

Stage 14 could be very exciting, the break could be big today and they have a big chance of making it on a very tough stage that has three Cat 1s, a Cat 2 and a Cat 3 along the way. But if some GC candidates try to kick things off early on in the stage it could turn in to a wild one. 

Stage 15 could well be one of the defining stages of the race, with a shark's tooth profile that ends with the Esp climb up to the Lagos de Cavadongas - there could be big time gaps today if you are struggling at all. (below)

Stage 16 like last year is an individual time trial, this year it's dead flat and 8kms shorter at just 32kms. It will make some differences to the GC, but not as much as it could have if the likes of Froome or Dumoulin were up against the climbers.  Stage 17 is reasonably short at 157kms, but it will be action all day as they go over climb after climb and ends with the Cat 1 climb to Balcon be Bizkaia which hits a max of 23% in one part. 

Stage 18 gives the climbers a break and the sprinters their second last chance to get something out of the race, on a flat run to Lleida, but Stage 19 takes them in to Andorra and ends with the vertical ascent to the Coll de la Rabassa which takes them to over 2,000m

Stage 20 could possibly be the stage to decide it, and is quite similar to last year's stage in that it is short and punchy and ends with a brutal finish. Last year it was the Angliru, this year it's the Coll de la Gallina. It's only 97kms long, but being the second last day of a tough three-week race, we could well see some major winners and losers in the GC. 

And Stage 21 is the usual procession sprint stage in to Madrid - it's short at just 100.9kms, they should be sprinting in Madrid some 2 1/2 hours later. 

The Favourites

So no Chris Froome this year, he's had his fun for this year and is heading to the Tour of Britain instead to do a lap of honour with Geraint Thomas. 

But what a lineup we have here, and with no Froome or Thomas, and it looking like David de la Cruz will be leading Team Sky, we shouldn't get Sky drilling it at the front day after day, boring us to death. 

Top of the betting is Richie Porte at 9/4 after he was forced to switch focus after crashing out of the Tour de France on stage 9. He's only done this race once, back in 2012 and he finished over two hours behind Alberto Contador.. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then though, and he was in great form heading in to the Tour after winning the Tour de Suisse.

Simon Yates isn't far behind at just 3/1 and he'll also be looking for redemption after his spectacular collapse in the Giro, after wearing pink for 13 stages. There's no Coll della Finestre here and no Froome to crack him, will he be able to last it through the tough final week this time?

Nairo Quintana's Tour was hot and cold, he was hot on the short stage to the Col du Portet, but he did finish a quarter of an hour behind Thomas.. He is one of four former winners of the race here though (2016), and he'll be looking to end his Grand Tour drought, if he isn't too tired after the Tour he could go very well here at 7/1.

Just after him in the betting we have his team-mate Alejandro Valverde at a very, very short looking 9/1. So we sort of have a similar situation to the 'trident' they had at the Tour, and we saw how that worked out.. Valverde will have his eye on a number of stages, maybe even the points competition, but I can't see him podiuming here. 

Miguel Angel Lopez was 8th last year, he lost over 3 mins in total in the TTs, Astana losing 41" in the opening TT and he lost 2'34" to Froome in the 40km TT. Other than that he had a pretty good Vuelta for a 23 year old, winning two stages and finishing 2nd and 3rd on two others. He has been in brilliant form this year though, capping it with a 3rd place in the Giro, winning the Young Riders category, and just last week took 2nd place in the Vuelta a Burgos.

Rigoberto Uran is another rider who crashed out of the Tour and will be looking to rescue something from a pretty ordinary season. He hasn't done the Vuelta since 2013 though, when he finished 27th, not sure he'll be on the podium steps in Madrid. 

Fabio Aru has had a terrible season by his standards, but he is another of the former winners of the race here, victorious in 2015 when he and Astana cracked Tom Dumoulin on the final day. A desperately disappointing Giro ended for him on stage 19 when he was in 27th place, not sure he'll be pulling up any trees here either unless he's had a miraculous change in form. 

Mikel Landa is currently on the startlist, priced at 18/1, but will he even start, and if he does, how good will his form really be after his nasty crash in San Sebastian? 

After Landa we are looking at riders priced at 20/1 and bigger, the first of which is Wilko Kelderman who rode very well last year but just slipped off the podium on the penultimate stage, when he lost time to Zakarin on the Angliru.

Thibaut Pinot is yet another rider seeking redemption after being forced to abandon the Giro before the final stage. He had been sitting in 3rd place in the GC before stage 20, but suffered like a dog all day and slipped down to 16th after rolling in with the grupetto. He ended up in hospital that night, suffering from dehydration and fever and the team pulled him from the race. 7th in 2014, he abandoned in 2014 on stage 11, but he has shown he is capable of podiuming in stage races like this. 

David de la Cruz leads Team Sky and is sure to be there or thereabouts in the top 10, George Bennett leads LottoJumbo and looked in great form in Poland, but they also have Steven Kruijswijk who rode very well in the Tour to finish 5th, while working for his team leader Roglic, who finished 4th. 

Vincenzo Nibali is yet ANOTHER rider looking to make up for a disappointing Tour after crashing out at the hands of an idiot spectator, but he's had a pretty disappointing year in general and says that he's only coming here to prepare for the World's.. but he is another former winner of the race of course, and can't be easily discounted. 

And there are loads more quality riders here like Enric Mas, Michal Kwiatkwski, Ilnur Zakarin (3rd last year), Dan Martin, Adam Yates, Michael Woods and so on.. It should be a great GC battle. And then you have Peter Sagan... The legend may have endured a torturous end to the Tour, and struggled in the Euros, but a few days later he was teasing fans on twitter that he liked the route of the Vuelta.. well, he's starting apparently, and he's going to be one to watch for sure with a number of stages that should suit him. He'll be taking on last year's Points Competition runner-up, four-stage winner and now European Chamption Matteo Trentin in the points competition. 

It's a tough Vuelta, with stages on only the second and fourth day that could make some real impact on some contenders chances of the overall win. The prologue shouldn't make much difference overall, but the 32km TT on stage 16 could go a long way to deciding the winner of the race. Throw in 9 summit finishes, and lots of mountains in between and we could be in for a really good battle, with quite possibly a very tight race between a good number of riders. 

So Richie Porte at 9/4 then.. Can he finally land a three week Grand Tour?? Can he even finish one? Four former winners, lots of riders with a point to make or seasons to rescue, it should be fascinating. A full preview of all the favourites, jerseys and special markets will be available in the days before the Vuelta starts and will be available to subscribers only.  Click here to subscribe now!