Tour de France on TV

Category: Vuelta a Espana

  • Domenico Pozzovivo doesn’t like abanicos – add them to the list

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    Alex
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    You can always count on crosswinds to make a race pleasingly scrappy. While stage 17 with its abanicos wasn’t anywhere near as compelling as the Echelons! stage of this year’s Tour, it still did some damage. Not entirely unsurprisingly, the day’s biggest loser was Domenico Pozzovivo. I mean that he was the biggest loser in…

  • Warren Barguil claims a slice of the 2013 Vuelta

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    Alex
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    When he won the other day Warren Barguil was just some rider who I hadn’t really heard of. When he won again today, it seemed more meaningful. Now he was ‘that bloke who won the other day’. It was a cracking win too. The bit that impressed me wasn’t when he opened a lead on…

  • Nicolas Roche makes a move

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    Alex
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    Mountain stage tactics usually revolve around little beyond being fitter and more spindly than everyone else, but Nicolas Roche and Team Saxo-Tinkoff actually did something slightly more interesting than that on stage 15. It wasn’t a move that was particularly devilish in its complexity, but it worked reasonably well. Basically, they stuck someone in the…

  • Vincenzo Nibali is impervious to bad weather

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    Alex
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    After winning a snow-hit Giro, Vincenzo Nibali was at it again on stage 14 of the Vuelta. And by ‘it’ I mean ‘cycling along not really being too bothered by the weather’. It wasn’t a day of attacks. It was a day of sadly and mournfully ticking off riders as they ebbed off the back…

  • Sprinters at the Vuelta

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    Alex
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    The Vuelta seems to be carving a niche for itself as the Grand Tour that can’t really be bothered with sprinters. Summit finishes are everywhere, but even the flat stages tend to end with an uphill run. If not, they have a near-wall deposited in the middle to weed out anyone who can’t climb. This…

  • Oh look, Philippe Gilbert’s turned up

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    Alex
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    Someone needs to step in and turn the pages of Philippe Gilbert’s calendar for him. He keeps turning up five months late. Phil always aims for April and the hilly spring classics, but this year and last year it hasn’t been until the Vuelta that he’s won a race. Last year, that late season form…

  • Domenico Pozzovivo does an okay time trial

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    Alex
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    Better than okday, actually. This is big news. This is big, big news. Time trialling is most definitely not on the list of things that Domenico Pozzovivo does well. That list again: Climbing Somehow, the man they call Dr Pozzovivo winched his minuscule 53kg frame around the course faster than everyone bar Fabian Cancellara and…

  • Who’s leading the 2013 Vuelta and who’s going to win?

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    Alex
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    I vaguely promised something about the general classification and vague promises are meant to be just-about-fulfilled. Here’s the top ten while we lounge about on the rest day. It’s starting to make a bit of sense, but you tend to think there are going to be a few more changes. Chris Horner (USA) RadioShack Leopard…

  • Little Chris Horner attacked on a corner

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    Alex
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    What were you doing in 1971? Chris Horner was being born. That was a long, long time ago and yet here he is, in 2013, beating the fittest athletes in the world on a mountain stage of the Vuelta a Espana to take the race lead. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. In one…

  • Joaquim Rodriguez, Alejandro Valverde and the relationship between their wheels

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    Alex
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    It’s not like I haven’t written about Dan Moreno and uphill finishes before. He went up the final climb like a cockroach up a wall – which is intended to be descriptive, rather than insulting – and secured a second stage win as well as the race lead. Thus far, Moreno’s been doing what his…