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Published on Saturday, 15 September 2018 22:28

Vuelta Stage 21

Alcorcón to Madrid

Sat 16th Sept, 100.9kms 

So on to the final stage, the traditional end of Grand Tour parade, with a short stage to Madrid and a likely sprint finish. Can Viviani notch up the hat-trick, or will a resurgent Sagan beat him again like in stage 18?

This time last year, Alberto Contador arrived on to the first circuit of the finishing loop ahead of the main pack, celebrating not only an incredible stage win the day before on the Angliru, but also his final Grand Tour as a pro rider. The action hotted up pretty soon after that and the inevitable sprint finish saw Matteo Trentin land the win for us at evens, and looked like he had done enough to take the sprinters jersey too..

But no, Chris Froome decided to play the greedy bugger and sprinted to 11th place in the stage, taking enough points to win the jersey by just 2 measley points.. That denied us an 18/1 winner in Trentin for the points, but at least we had the e/w on him and Froome as a saver at 4/1. 

Stage 20 Review

As we expected, it was chaos from the very start, with breaks all over the place to start with. Eventually a strong break with the usual suspects went, with Majka, De Gendt, Mollema, Kwiato, Woods, Roche, Nibali, Fraile, Herrada, De la Cruz. They never really got a big lead though, but De Gendt secured the KOM jersey by leading over the first climb and finishing 2nd over the next.  

Up front, it was chaos - Lopez got Fraile and Cataldo to pull him away, Quintana attacked, Quintana got dropped, Mas and Yates came up, there were riders all over the place. Lopez and Mas took off, Yates went with them, but strangely, couldn't hold their pace and Mas and Lopez went on to fight out the stage. Behind Valverde was crumbling and saw his second place disappear, and not only that, but 3rd place on the podium disappeared too as Lopez and Mas pulled out an impressive gap. 

Uran and Pinot went after Yates, dropping SK in the process, and he too saw his podium place disappear. Pinot ended up 4th, we were unlucky with him, and I think we were unlucky overall too as you'd have to wonder where he'd have finished if he hadn't lost time stupidly in the first week. The good news though was that Lopez' heroics today saw him leap on to the podium to land the each-way for us at 14/1. Kelderman also impressed, coming home in 6th and in doing so sneaked in to the top 10 to land the top 10 bet for us too at 4/5, so we had two out of three with Kruijswijk also finishing in the top 10, but Zakarin lost out through early misfortune. 

So with Lopez landing the top 3, and Izagirre and Bilbao winning their matchbets we landed a 3.5pt profit on the overall. Valverde hopefully has won the green, so we've won 6.4pts on him, but it was a bit of a disaster with the KOM bets, with a 5pt loss as none of them, except for Lopez came close to winning it. The matchbets broke even, but the funny thing with Pardilla Vs Meintjes was that neither of them scored a single KOM point, so money back on that one. 

Movistar won the team classification for us to add 4pts there, but the matchbets lost 3pts as there were surprises to me in EF Cannondale beating LottoJumbo by almost an hour, Bennett and Kuss both disappointing too often to help out SK. We're up 3pts on the 'to win/not win a stage' markets, but if Viviani wins tomorrow it'll add another 2pts as we are sweating on him landing the over 2.5 stages bet. 

The Route

A flat jaunt around the south-western and southern suburbs of Madrid, before moving on to 11 laps of the traditional 5.9km circuit around Madrid.  

Contenders and Favourites

A very short preview tonight, don't think there's much point in going in to too much detail - it's either Viviani or Sagan. Sagan was flying in the last sprint when he jumped so soon, but that was a chaotic, crazy finish and I think he got lucky to get so far ahead. Viviani sat in and trusted his leadout men before being released, he finished like a rocket again, almost catching Sagan on the line. But his leadout, and all the other leadout trains has screwed things up and not caught Wallays. 

I really think it will be a different matter tomorrow, QSF will take control, Morkov and Sabatini will make no mistake this time and Viviani will be released perfectly to take the win. Sagan will be on his wheel, he won't be far away at all, but I think Viviani has the speed to beat him. 

Danny Van Poppel is probably best of the rest, he seems to be getting faster too as the race goes on, I think he'll beat Nizzolo. Consonni, Sarreau, Soto, Gibbons, TVDS, Garcia Cortina, Trentin and the like will be fighting it out for the remaining top 10 places, I've picked out some matchbets below that I like. 

So that's it, it's not been a bad Vuelta, Pinot has been great for us in the last week, adding over 42pts to the pot in total. I hope you enjoyed the previews and backed some winners too along the way, this could well be my last Grand Tour I'm going to do, the time and effort required is taking its toll... 

Recommendations -

3pts win on Elia Viviani at 4/6 Betfair

Matchbets

DVP to beat Nizzolo 2pts at 8/11

Consonni to beat Sarreau and Gibbons to beat TVDS - 2pts at 1.33/1

Consonni to beat Sarreau and Garcia Cortina to beat Trentin - 2pts at 6/4

Aberasturi to beat Van Asbroeck - 2pts at 8/11