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Published on Tuesday, 01 May 2018 17:50

Points Jersey Betting 

Who will win the Points Jersey at the 2018 Giro?

Not only does the Giro have a very different and distinct leader's jersey compared to the ubiquitous yellow jerseys of so many other races, but it also has slightly unusual colours for the winners of the Mountains and Sprinters jerseys.

The leader of the sprints competition has worn red in recent years, but the organisers switched back to the Cyclamen coloured jersey which the Giro Points leader used to wear in bygone days for the 100th edition last year. The leader of the Mountains still wears the deep blue coloured jerseys sponsored by Banco Mediolanum, as won by a country mile by Mikel Landa last year.

Points Jersey

The Giro's 'sprinters' points jersey can often be difficult for pure sprinters to win, such is the amount of climbing that needs to be done over the three weeks. It's difficult, but not impossible - as was clearly demonstrated by Fernando Gaviria last year.. I thought he wouldn't go all the way to the finish and thought he was a poor bet, he defied the nay-sayers like me though to cruise to victory over Jasper Stuyven, with Sam Bennett in 3rd place.

I picked Giacomo Nizzolo for this for the last three years running, two years ago advising to wait a few stages for a bigger price and we got 5/2 instead of the 7/4 he was pre-race. The year before we backed him at 11/2. Nacer Bouhanni led a bunch of sprinters in 2014, but the likes of Nizzolo and Mezgec weren't far off either. Mark Cavendish won the year before that. Prior to that, Joaquim Rodriguez won in 2012 and Michele Scarponi in 2011,  with lots of climbers in the top 10.

So where does this route sit in terms of being climber or sprinter friendly? There are not a lot of sprint opportunities in the race, and most of them come quite early, with two opportunities in Israel potentially and another two possibly in Sicily, although they are quite challenging. Stage 7, 12, 13, 17 and 21 should also be sprint stages, so it will be important to be still in contention coming in to stages 12, 13 and 17 as good results here could see a sprinter pull away and hold on to it until Rome. 

But most importantly they need to finish the race.. I didn't think Gaviria or Bennett would last year, but they managed it, we have a similar dilemma with Elia Viviani this year.. And as the points are skewed more towards sprint stages it does make it a little easier for sprinter types to win it again this year, hence we have all the sprinters at the top of the market, Matej Mohoric at 66/1 is the first non-sprinter in the betting...

How the points are awarded

The number of points up for grabs depends on the stage - the sprint stages offer more points in a bid to try to ensure the sprinters jersey is won by a sprinter! They changed the allocation of points last year, but have kept it exactly the same this year as far as I can see. 

For Category A+B stages (Stages 2,3,7,12,13,17 and 21) they offer points for the first 20 riders in the following allocation: 50-35-25-18-14-12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. For the Intermediate Sprints (marked TV for Traguardi Volanti on the route maps) there are points for the first eight allocated as follows: 20-12-8-6-4-3-2-1. With 20 points up for grabs for each TV they could play a big part in the outcome of the jersey again like last year..

For Category C stages: (Stages 4,5,8,10,11) there are points for the first 10: 25, 18, 12, 8, 6, 5, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1. For the TV there are points for the first five: 10, 6, 3, 2, 1, same as last year.

Category D stages: (Stages 1,6,9,14,15,16,18,19 and 20) offer points for the first 10: 15, 12, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. For the TV there are points for the first three: 8, 4, 1, both sets are the same as last year. 

The Contenders 

When you start thinking about a potential winner of this jersey, one important thing to keep in mind is that not every sprinter will make it all the way to Milan, crashes may take some out, but others will just decide that the torture of trying to get over the hills of that final week just isn't worth it and pack their bags early to save the legs for the Tour de France.. 

We start with Elia Viviani who has opened the 10/11 favourite with Bet365 on Monday, a very short price to be taking on someone as flaky as Viviani.. Yes, he's probably the fastest sprinter in the race, by quite a bit, only Bennett could probably come close to him. And yes, he has a super team with him that looks built to try to deliver stage wins and the jersey to QSF, they don't really have anyone for the GC, and you just know looking at that team that there will be several of them will be out in breaks on the lumpy days, taking points off everyone else to try to preserve his lead. 

He has a good chance of starting the race with a bundle of points in Israel, as early TV points could see QSF try to keep it together early to start to build up points right from the start. But was we well know, Viviani gets dropped on the ramp up to the presentation podium the day before a Grand Tour starts, he's not the best at going uphill. So there will be plenty of days when he will be nowhere to be seen and will be suffering a lot. It may even be that we don't see him at the finish of stage 4 in Sicily, and almost certainly not on stage 5, and stages 7 and 12 could see him ejected out the back on the little hills before the finish. 

Sam Bennett is similar, a fast sprinter with a strong team that seems to be built around delivering stage wins for him, save for maybe Formolo trying to have a crack at the top 10. He is a little bit harder than Viviani too when it comes to the hilly finishes, he famously won that hilly stage in the TOB a few years ago and just before that almost won on the uphill finish, but was just caught by Ciolek in the line. Ok, that was a few years ago now and he's now more of a flat-line sprinter, but he can deal with little hills a lot better than some, and also with situations like bad weather, cross-winds and echelons. 

He's warmed up for this with a 2nd and a 3rd in Catalunya with Hodeg beating him on stage 1, but he won the sprint on the final stage, only for Schachmann and Rubio to have stayed away out front.. He had a lot of the other sprinters here behind him though on both occassions, and is well capable of beating most of the opposition here, Viviani included on a good day.

He has been away training for a month specially for this and showed his legs in the Eschborn-Frankfurt race on Tuesday when he was in a great position coming in to the last 500m, but suddenly his race was ruined by Fernando Gaviria making a big mistake on the final bend and putting Bennett on the front with over 300m to go and he blew up. He said afterwards though that he was delighted with how good his legs were for the Giro. I think there is a stage or two at least here for Bennett, he won't get a better chance I think to win some Grand Tour stages. And with it, he could put himself right in the hunt for the Points jersey.

Third favourite is Danny Van Poppel, and he's the first of the sprinters who is not a great sprinter, but much more of an all-round guy who could be picking up points when there is no sign of the two sprinters above. He started the season with a 1st and a 2nd in Valenciana, took another stage 2 of Abu Dhabi (behind Viviani) with the likes of Ewan, Kristoff and Greipel behind him, but he was only 8th and 9th in the other two sprints. He was also 2nd in the low-quality Clasica de Almeria but has struggle a little for results since then, battling his way through the northern Classics without much joy. 

Will he be able to finish a Grand Tour at just 24? Well he finished the Vuelta in 2015 at just 21.. and took a stage win and a 2nd place along the way.. But that year he was nowhere to be seen on the other stages and finished 20th in the points competition. Ok, he was young, it was not a target at all for him, it was just to get to the finish probably, but you wonder as well why they haven't given him a run in a GT since then, maybe it wiped him out and he doesn't have the capacity to do three weeks.. I'm kind of worried about that and it's enough to make we want to look elsewhere for some value.

Sacaha Modolo is made of slightly sterner stuff than the top two guys here, his results this year shows why he'll be popping up all over the place on this race snaffling points when the other guys will be riding in 15 mins down.. 14th in the Omloop, 14th in MSR, 11th in GW, he also won a stage and took a 2nd place on lumpy stages of Andalucia earlier this year. 3rd in the points competition here in 2015 and 2016, he didn't have a great Giro last year and went home on stage 17. 

But one thing that draws me to Sacha this year - he tweeted over the weekend before the Giro started that he had just got engaged to his girlfriend.. I think that it will provide him with extra motivation and ambition to try to do something special in this race.. I wouldn't be surprised to see him win a stage and immediately see him hugging and kissing his fiancé at the finish, I've mentioned before how much extra motivation having someone at the finish line can give you.

I think he is well capable of a stage win and I will be backing him in the 'other markets' preview that I will get on to soon to take a stage at 5/6 - I think he will have his eyes on 5, 7 and maybe 12 and 13 too.. I will be backing him again this year, he's a point better than last year at 7/1, but he has a lot less opposition this time around and a course that suits him more. 

Kristian Sbaragli is just 8/1 and I think that's a terrible price. Nothing in his career to date has shown why he should be considered in the top 3 here. He has only one win in his whole pro career, a stage in the Vuelta in 2015, three 2nd places and no 3rds at all.. four podium finishes in seven years as a pro. He's not going to score enough points to come anywhere near winning this, unless Bennett, Modolo and Viviani crash in to each other on stage 2 and are taken out of the race.

I guess Bet365 are thinking that he will be inspired riding for the Israel Cycling Academy in the first two sprint stages, maybe even that palms have been greased to give them a stage win, but even that's not going to be enough. 

Niccolo Bonnifazio is 20/1 and at least he knows how to win - 9 pro wins in his career, inclulding the first stage in Croatia a few weeks ago. He has only started one GT in his career though and he only got as far as the 7th stage in the 2016 Vuelta, but he has won the points competition in the Tour of Hainan (I know...), came 2nd in the TDU and 3rd in the Tour of Poland and was 4th in the recent Tour of Croatia..

He is consistent and he is capable of a number of top 10 placings, even top 5 or 6 in a lot of these stages, his 3rd on the uphill finish in the Victor Harbor stage of the TDU of 2017 shows that he could have a chance on some of the punchier finishes here too. At 20/1, he's worth an e/w I think, his only problem is that the team will be mostly focused on delivering Pozzovivo to a top 6 placing, he might be fighting on his own on some stages, but Boaro and Mohoric will be good helpers for him. 

Jakub Mareczko is 50/1, but he's a terrible lightweight too, we might not see him last the three weeks, and same goes for Andrea Guardini, he'll be the lantern rouge probably if he does manage to finish. And then you have the likes of Jens Debuscherre who will be up there in the top 10 of some sprints, higher maybe in the more challenging stages, but will also fancy getting in to breaks some days and hoovering up the bonus seconds out on the road - he's 66/1. And it's fancy prices the rest, including Froome at 80/1 and Dumoulin and Pinot at 100/1.. 

But I'm happy to have a go at the two Italians again, usually it's been Nizzolo and Modolo, this year it's going to be Modolo and Bonifazio... And of course, we'll reassess as the race goes on. 

Recommendations:

1.5pts each-way on Modolo at 7/1 (you might get bigger with other books later in the week)

0.5pts each-way on Bonifazio at 20/1