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Published on Friday, 28 July 2017 21:44

Vuelta Stage 2

Nîmes to Gruissan

Sunday August 20th, 203.4kms

Stage two of the Vuelta and it's the first opportunity for the sprinters to shine with a flat run along the Mediterannean. 

It has almost no profile concerns to worry about, but there could be something you can't see on a profile that could have a big impact...And that could be the wind.. Because after only about 40kms they will be on the coast and spend the next 90kms or so almost entirely 'au bord de la mer' as they say. The winds coming in off the coast are generally a south-easterly wind that can gust up in to the mid twenties regularly and can almost guarantee echelons on these exposed sections.

It would also mean that they would have a tail wind as they turn in off the coast with around 70kms to go and then a headwind as they turn back south again for the last 30kms to the finish in Gruissan. Froome isn't afraid to tell his team to whip it up at the front when there is the opportunity to cause echelons and splits and put his opponents in weaker teams under pressure so early in the race. And I wouldn't be surprised to see him put Stannard, Moscon, Knees and Puccio to the front somewhere between Marseillan Plage and Sete. 

It may be still over 100kms to go but if they can form a split somewhere along here on the really exposed section there may be some who will struggle to get back on. They don't have a sprinter here at all but the teams who have sprinters who make the split will help to push things on with them - I'm looking at the echelon experts like Quickstep for Trentin, LottoNL for Lobato, Lotto Soudal for Debuscherre or even AquaBlue might pitch in for Adam Blythe. 

Stage 1 Review

A crazy, difficult, hard, tricky opening TTT, in the words of the riders who rode it. And a shitty set of close calls see all our bets go down, it was one of those days. BMC naturally won, in hindsight I should have just smashed in to the evens available on them.. Sky missed out on 3rd by 3" after being level with Sunweb and QuickStep at the intermediate, a police car on the course may have cost them a few seconds at one point. And there was a surprise with Lotto Soudal beating Katusha, Katusha were 1/2 to win that H2H.  Annoyingly Trek managed to lose to Bahrain Merida to blow the other acca which looked like a winner up until Trek blew it. 

Rohan Dennis takes the first red jersey of the race then, leading the team home after doing most of the pulling at the front and finishing about 2 bike lengths ahead of his team-mates. Froome will be happy with his time though, he has gained time on all his rivals bar Wilko Kelderman, taking 22" on Nibali, 24" on Zakarin, 26" on Contador and 32" on Aru and Lopez. 

The Route

Not a lot to say about it other than what I've said above already, they leave Nimes and head south-west all day, skirting along the coast and passing through some of the most popular French holiday resorts like Sete, Serignan, Agde and Marseilan Plage. As they pass between Sete and Marseilan Plage they skirt along the narrow strip on the side of the Etaing de Thau where it could really whip up.

After Marseilan Plage with about 100kms gone they start to turn inland and they'll have a tail wind for some of it until Mirepeisset where they turn and start to head south-east for the last 30kms, in to a possible strong headwind. 

The run-in to the finish is very straight-forward with a long straight stretch for more or less the last 10kms as they head south from Narbonne. There is a wide roundabout they take a left at with about 2300m left to go and then the road arcs around gently almost in a half-circle shape going clockwise, with no real problems to worry the fast leadout. As they hit 500m to go though there is a roundabout they need to negotiate, but it's wide and fast and shouldn't really cause too many problems, but you will need to be in the first 20 here to have any chance. Then it's 200m of straight, a slight kink to the right and a 200m finishing straight. 

Favourites and Contenders

This is a far cry from the Tour de France where we had almost all of the best sprinters in the world lining up and it was hard to try to pick the winner (or who was going to come 2nd to Kittel as it soon started to become). The low numbers of sprinters at the Vuelta should make it easy right? Shouldn't take long to write, right?

Well I don't intend to spend too long going in to guys who maybe once came 3rd in a sprint when they were in a junior race, but let's see if we can try to find the winner anyway - but just because there aren't many sprinters here, doesn't make it any easier, as there's no stand-out sprinter really on paper at the moment, we'll soon get an idea of the sort of heirarchy amongst the sprinters and leadout teams.

To give you an idea of the quality of the sprinters here, the Pro Cycling Stats sprinter rankings have Magnus Cort Neilsen as their top sprinter and he's only ranked 12th in their scoring. Degenkolb is 15th in their rankings. 

Of course, the other issue though with the fadt that there aren't really any sprinters and sprinter's teams here is that there is very little reason for a lot of teams to chase the break of the day, and it will be all down to maybe two or three teams to do the chasing.. which could mean that a strong break that gets a big lead could make it all the way. But as it's the first stage and there are so few chances of sprints, I think even those teams with outside chances of a sprint win might contribute and help out. 

The standout sprinter from a Palmares point of view is of course John Degenkolb, he has won 10 stages in the Vuelta, as well as the small matter of Paris Roubaix and Milan San Remo. Two years ago he'd have been odds-on for this and I'd be all over him, but he's not been himself in the last two seasons, with only one victory to his name so far this season. He had a pretty poor TDF, but he did come closest to Marcel Kittel in stage 10 to Bergerac, and took 3rd in stage 16, but a lot of the sprinters had gone home by then. 

His only win this season came way back at the start of February in the Dubai Tour, beating Colbrelli, Lobato, Viviani and Groenewegen, not exactly a great line of form for this race 6 months later. He does have a decent leadout though with him here, Koen de Kort is one of the best and Jarlinson Pantano, Julien Bernard and Peter Stetina will be driving hard for him in the last 5kms, with Edward Theuns probably his last leadout man, and a very powerful leadout man he is too, given the form he has been in in the last month or so, taking a 2nd and a 1st in the BinkBank Tour. 

If Theuns and de Kort are in front of him in the first three places coming through that last roundabout, he has a big chance of getting a super slingshot from Theuns in to the last 200m and could well land the stage. 

According to the PCS stats though Magnus Cort Neilsen is a better sprinter at the moment than Dege and he too has won stages in the Vuelta, taking two scrappy sprint stages last year. He has won two races this year, although they were both in February too. He has come in to a little bit of form lately though and almost won the Surrey Classic, and he finished 4th in a stage of the TDS and 3rd, 6th and 7th in stages of the BinkBank Tour. 

He doesn't have a great leadout though, but he has Chris Juul-Jensen to do the heavy work in the last 20kms and Jack Haig, Sam Bewley and Svein Tuft will get him in a position to fight his own corner in the last 500m. And if he can produce a turn of pace like he did in stages 18 and 21 last year he has a big chance again (below). It needs to be noted though that besides finishing 3rd behind Meersman in stage 2 he wasn't anywhere near even the top 30 on any stage up until he won stage 18 last year, so it might be that he needs a bit of time to get properly fired up. 

Sacha Modolo has actually won more races this year than Dege and MCN put together, with four wins under his belt so far. He has also a bunch of top ten finishes too, a lot more than MCN.. His win in stage 2 of the Tour de Pologne was impressive in that he looked to be boxed in a little behind the guys in front but suddenly burst out from behind them in to the middle of the road and held good speed all the way to the line. It was a very messy sprint with riders all over the place and I have a feeling that this stage could be very messy too, they usually are in the Vuelta's opening stages.

He doesn't have a great leadout, but he only needed Mohoric and Ferrari in that win in Poland and although Ferrari isn't here, Mohoric is, and he and Polanc and Niemiec will help him get in the right place I think hitting 200m to go. I think he has a great chance at a top 3 finish here. 

Jens Debuscherre gets a rare chance to lead the Lotto Soudal sprint hopes, with André Greipel sitting this one out. And he's a decent option to have for a messy sprint like this too, he's got a lot of brute strength which might be needed to navigate the last 500m. Again, like with a lot of the others, it's a far cry from their A-team of leadout men, not that they were exactly firing on all cylinders this year anyway. He only really has Thomas de Gendt, Sander Armee and Jelle Wallays to lead him out here and they are pretty poor leadout men, he'll have to jump on the Trek train it looks like.

His two victories this year in the 4 days of Dunkirk and the Belgium Tour were against pretty mediocre opposition and besides his 2nd place in the 2nd stage of the 4 Days of Dunkirk, when he was beaten by Arnaud Démare, he hasn't come close to winning in any other race this season. Hard to trust how he will go. 

Matteo Trentin is the main man for QuickStep, the team who won the first two sprints last year with Gianni Meersman and further stages with De la Cruz and Brambilla - they were a team on fire last year in this race. Trentin got off the mark for the season with a very good win in the Vuelta a Burgos just a few weeks back, he looked very powerful indeed. In the next sprint he was 3rd in the bunch sprint, taking 6th in the stage. As you know, I've backed him for the points jersey, I'm torn as to whether I should back him tomorrow or not too!

And all the rest are pretty average or unsuited to flat stages like this, José Jaquim Rojas and Juan José Lobato will prefer hillier days with uphill finishes, Adam Blythe will be top 10 but maybe not top 3, and Anthony Roux has not won a race since April 2015. The only other guy I am slightly interested in is Michael Schwarzmann, as he has the freedom to go for it without Sagan in the race. He might come close against opposition the likes of these and Bora look to have a pretty decent leadout which should get him in a decent position. 

I am out tonight for a few hours, I'll try to post my picks as soon as I can when prices are out, but you have my thoughts for now above.  

Update - 11:45pm

As expected, Degenkolb is the favourite, but not standout at 3/1 with Modolo and Trentin at 4/1. Not a lot of value at those prices, but Modolo makes a little appeal but it's just a small 'e/w to nothing' bet I'm going to have as I think he's a pretty solid shot at a top 3 placing. Schwarzmann is 50/1 and I'm going to have a little nibble on him at that price, it was interesting to see that he really eased off today late on in the TTT, he rolled home with the fourth worst time of the day, almost 3 mins behind BMC, looks like he was saving his legs for this sprint. 

Recommendations:

1pt e/w on Sacha Modolo at 4/1 with various

0.25pts e/w on Michael Schwarzmann at 50/1 with various

Matchbets:

Theuns to beat Alaphilippe and Schwarzmann to beat Manzin 2pts at 1.3/1 with 365

Modolo to beat Trentin - 2pts at 5/6 with 365

 Adam Yates to beat Aru - 2pts at 5/6 with 365