Category: Vuelta a Espana
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Chris Froome minces his rivals in the time trial
He minced everyone, in fact; minced them as if he had some sort of grinder hooked up to his oval chain ring and a hunger for mince that could not be sated. Only Movistar’s time trial specialist Jonathan Castroviejo got within a minute of Chris Froome, finishing 44 seconds down in second place, but the…
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Is Magnus Cort Nielsen really a sex symbol?
It took a while, but we finally got a fairly normal sprint stage. Danish rider Magnus Cort Nielsen – whose nickname is purportedly ‘Sex Symbol’ – took the win. If we’re to categorise this year’s Vuelta stage winners, he probably goes down as ‘up and coming’ rather than ‘low profile domestique having his day in…
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Chris Froome looks on his last legs
Maybe it’s all that running he did earlier in the season – efforts which have reportedly earned him an invite to take part in a 10km run in Barcelona. The final climb of stage 17 was a proper almost-come-to-a-standstill Vuelta climb. The overall contenders maintained an impressive pace up there and while the main four…
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Jempy Drucker gets some attention
We’ve had a couple of long stage reports recently. This one doesn’t really warrant it. It was a messy sort of sprint finish as those looking to contest the win ran out of lead-out men early due to an urgent need to chase down Daniele Bennati who’d struck out alone with a couple of kilometres…
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Team Sky have an absolute bloody nightmare
The peloton is long. Containing getting on for 200 riders, it is a long way from the front to the back. It is even further from the back to the front, particularly when the damn thing’s going flat-out. This normally only happens at the end of sprint stages. It happened right from the off on…
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Robert Gesink has a new modus operandi
Without wishing to sound too wilfully contradictory, Robert Gesink is an interesting rider for how boring he is. A man who has finished fourth and sixth in the Tour de France and who has three top ten finishes in the Vuelta a Espana is clearly among the very finest riders in the world. Except that…
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Valerio Conti was one of 12 riders who bothered to race
A peculiar day with the break being given not just a gap, but a chasm. They finished half an hour before the peloton – although none among them had been within half an hour of the lead, so it was irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. Young Italian rider Valerio Conti was by far…
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Jens Keukeleire exploits a rare non-summit finish
With Steven Kruijswijk having ridden into a bollard earlier in the race, I was confident in my spelling for the rest of this Vuelta. Then along comes Jens Keukeleire to win what you could probably just about describe as a bunch sprint. I’ve worked it out though. Keukeleire – if in doubt, it’s an E.…
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Chris Froome outsprints Nairo Quintana
I love a one-on-one sprint between two climbers. They’re so ill-equipped. It’s like watching a number 11 batsman trying to make the crucial runs that will win a Test match; a taste of the amateur world dropped in at the very pinnacle of the sport. The key, of course, is that every bike race ends…
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Chris Froome’s pacing strategy reaps second-place rewards
Well that was spectacular. Nairo Quintana took the stage and regained the race lead, but it was Chris Froome’s bizarre, ‘okay, you have a head start’ ride that was the most memorable. The final climb had barely started when Froome was 45 seconds adrift. Assigned two team-mates to pace him up the lower slopes, the…