The final Grand Tour of the year, the Vuelta a Espana starts in Barcelona on Saturday and ends 3 weeks later on the 17th September in Madrid with the riders having covered 3153.8 kilometres.
THE FIELD
The Vuelta, being the final Grand Tour of the year doesn’t have quite the same hype about it as the Giro and the Tour de France, but in recent years we have tended to get very strong fields with those who rode the Giro hard having had time to recover and riders that crashed out of the Tour de France early such as Enric Mas coming in relatively fresh.
This year we even have the Tour de France Champion, Jonas Vingegaard in the line-up as he and Primoz Roglic, the defending Champion head up a seriously strong Jumbo-Visma team. Past winner, Remco Evenepoel had to pull out of the Giro after Week 1 and lines up this week and other possible contenders include Juan Ayuso, Geraint Thomas runner-up to Roglic in the Giro.
THE ROUTE
The Vuelta is traditionally a race with plenty of climbs and in the past we often got fairly flat stages with a steep climb to end. This year though it is going to be even tougher than normal with some absolutely brutal stages.
The race kicks off with a Team Time Trial in Barcelona (we will have a separate preview for each stage) and there are 9 uphill finishes and probably only 4 stages nailed on for a traditional sprint finish.
There are some brutal climbs scattered over the 3 weeks including the mighty Angliru and we also go up the mythical Tourmalet.
THE BETTING – Click here to bet
Jonas Vingegaard 11/10
Primoz Roglic 9/4
Remco Evenepoel 4/1
Juan Ayuso 8/1
Enric Mas Nicolau 16/1
Geraint Thomas 18/1
Joao Almeida 33/1
Alexander Vlasov 50/1
66/1 and better the balance
RED JERSEY – Outright Winner
Jumbo-Visma go for the season’s Grand Slam having had Roglic win the Giro and Vingegaard the Tour de France. Both riders are here and justifiably top of the betting boards. Winning the Tour de France and the Vuelta the same year would be an incredible accomplishment, but I am going to be looking to take Vingegaard on at the top of the betting boards and I think Primoz Roglic, three times winner of this race, is the man to beat.
Roglic is well suited by some of these steep climbs and having had ample time to recover since his Giro win, I think he is the least likely of the pair to experience a bad day at some point.
Evenepoel will certainly make things interesting with his aggressive attacking style and a man I will be watching closely is Juan Ayuso who podiumed last year, but for my money hasn’t quite lived up to expectations so far in 2023. Enric Mas has a number of 2nd place finishes to his name and hopefully he can put the disappointment of his early Tour de France exit behind him while Geraint Thomas is in the twilight of his career, but has shown with his runner-up finish in the Giro that he is not to be taken lightly.
Suggested Bet: Primoz Roglic win at 9/4
TEAM CLASSIFICATION
Jumbo Visma are the 27/20 favourites here ahead of UAE at 4/1 and Ineos at 5/1, Spanish team, Movistar are 11/2 and of the 4 teams mentioned they are the most likely to focus on this competition whereas Jumbo Visma could end up winning it by default just due to the pure strength of their team. Having looked at the route I do believe this is going to be a tour for the breakaway and hopefully Movistar can have a few riders in it.
Suggested Bet: Movistar win at 11/2
POINTS CLASSIFICATION
You can’t blame the big name sprinters from staying away from this one and Kayden Groves heads the betting here at 3/1 ahead of Dainese, Van Den Berg and Roglic all at 9/2. This looks a really tough jersey to bet on and I am going to go with a speculative play here on Remco Evenepoel at 18/1.
Suggested Bet: Evenepoel win at 18/1
KING OF THE MOUNTAINS
I mentioned above that this is going to be a tour for the breakaway and that means the King of the Mountains Jersey is less likely to go to one of the GC riders. Vingegaard at 4/1 tops the betting and I am going to go for Michael Storer at 11/1, hoping his team focuses on the breaks rather than the GC. As far as the GC men go I do prefer the 18/1 Roglic to the 4/1 Vingegaard.
Suggested Bet: Michael Storer at 11/1
Look out for individual previews on each stage
Note: All prices correct at the time of writing but are subject to change
