Tour Down Under  - Stage 6

Adelaide Street Circuit - 85.5km

Richie Porte rewarded his backers who had come for him yesterday with a stunning attack that left the rest of the main protagonists in his wake to take stage 5 up Willinga Hill in Style. Backed from 12/1 in to 7/1 to win he jumped half way up the climb to land the gamble and the stage. 

Simon Gerrans let Evans go after him and waited patiently, riding with Ulissi to reel him in. They caught evans inside the last kilometre, but there was no catching Porte who won by 10" from Ulissi who landed our 9/2 each way bets at least. Better news though was that Gerrans made a late burst and sprinted away from Evans like I predicted he would to steal 8" in total and move back in to the race lead now by 1". 

Even though it is only 1" and there are 19" up for grabs on the final stage it would seem to be all over as Gerrans is unlikely to lose that sort of time to Evans, and is actually more likely to just extend his lead to be safe with some intermediate sprints. He is just 1/25 with BetVictor so it looks like yesterday's recommendation to back Gerrans for the overall at 11/4 is going to be another winner for us, on top of the pre-race recommendation of 11/4. It was a silly price considering the likely way yesterday's stage was going to go, I would have had him closer to 6/4. Diego Ulissi also looks to have cemented his top 3 placing to land the 20/1 each way bets recommended pre-race. 

The Route

Stage 6 - Adelaide Street Circuit, 85.5km

Not a lot to say about this stage, other than it is a flat, fast loop of Adelaide, taking in 18 laps of a 4.75km circuit. There are 3 bonus sprints along the way, so if a break goes up the road OGE would probably be happy to let them go to sweep up the points and protect Gerrans lead. If not, OGE will do what they did two days ago and set up Gerrans for the intermediate sprints, which he should place in and secure victory.

Two tricky bends in the last 500m will make it interesting at the finish when they are going flat out but it should be a pretty straight forward sprint and hopefully we will get to see the first proper sprint of the race.

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Contenders and Favourites

When I started writing this mid afternoon today I quickly took a look at the prices on offer and saw that Paddy Power were quoting 6/4 for Kittel and Griepel, again making it a match bet between the two, which I can't argue with. I really can't see anyone else troubling these two and they will probably be 5-10 metres ahead of the rest at the finish. 

The cross winds and a sleeping Team Giant Shimano ruined the prospect of a sprint finish on stage 4 and cost us who had backed Kittel, but there should be no such problems today. Kittel will be desperate to make amends today and I think he will win today's stage from Griepel. Kittel beat him in the People's Choice and I can see a similar sort of result here - Lotto Belisol will lead out Griepel perfectly, Kittel will be his shadow and will simply outsprint him at the finish. 

Add in to the mix the amount of work that Griepel did for Hansen yesterday to help him win the KOM jersey - he was driving hard in the lead up to Willunga for a while and it may have fatigued him a litte, certainly a lot more than Kittel who rolled in over 11 minutes down in a 'grupetto' with Viviani, Renshaw, Goss and Ewan.

I think 6/4 is a very fair price to take (he is 8/11 with BetVictor and 5/4 with Ladbrokes) so I have had a 4pt win bet on him at that price. Really hard to pick anything else with confidence to fill the 3rd spot, Viviani being the most likely given his fast finish on Stage 4 - he says he wasn't happy with his position as he had to come from a mile back, he should be closer this time. But there are some very big prices below Viviani, with Renshaw next best at 25/1 and Matthews and von Hoff at 33/1. With it being Australia day, Renshaw could be worth a small e/w at 25/1 to fill the 3rd spot, he too got caught in the cross-winds and will be looking to make amends. Matthews worked his socks off yesterday for Gerrans and may be tired too.

Recommendations:

4pts win Marcel Kittel at 6/4 with Paddy Power

0.5pt each-way on Viviani at 10/1 with BetVictor

0.5pt each-way on Mark Renshaw with BetVictor