Category: Vuelta a Espana
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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…
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David de la Cruz benefits from his own future failings
It might be confusing to see Nairo Quintana riding until his lungs burn to take the overall race lead one day before seemingly gifting it away the next. Spaniard David de la Cruz won stage nine from the break and finished far enough ahead that he also slipped into the leader’s jersey. The Colombian’s apparent…
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When Nairo Quintana attacks…
Cheap populist documentaries like When Animals Attack at least have plenty of source material. You’d struggle to put together more than a few minutes for an episode of When Nairo Quintana Attacks. This year’s Tour de France was three weeks of build-up only for it to never actually happen. It was therefore quite a surprise…