Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

[Kevin S]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

I must say I was a bit disappointed not to see an ITT this year for a bit of decisiveness. Agree with you about stage 6; perhaps fatigue will have set in given the smaller team sizes, though in that case it could even be won by someone in a break on the long stage 7. Hartside has a summit finish for stage 5, of course, 8km at 5%, but unlike a classic British climb it's a pretty constant gradient rather than having odd sections of double-digits.

Agree with you about Cav. And I think even when everything goes right, a fully fit Kittel would still beat him these days.

[longeared]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

In the last ad break ITV broadcast a trailer "watch Chris Froome go for double glory in the Vuelta". How's that going to work then?

Big selection at the ToB. Eight riders off the front including most of the main teams, the peloton and another big group off the back. The last group includes Cav, Wiggo, Dowsett and Viviani. Looks like they've sat up for the day.

[Kevin S]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

My word, this is a tense finish...

[longeared]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Great ride from Petr Vakoc to hang on there, one to file under "name for the future"

[Kevin S]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Superb stuff, in his rather fetching Czech champion jersey.

And chapeau to Wales' Owain Doull; along with Lobato one of only two riders to get top ten on both stages. Wish I'd picked him in my team! That said, I've got four of the top ten - including my sneaky pick of Rasmus Guldhammer - so hopefully closed the gap on Toro a bit... that was the kind of selection I'd wrongly expected yesterday.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Has taken me ages to catch up on the highlights of the Vuelta after my hols, so apologies for absence.

Feel a bit torn about Dumoulin, since I was dreading the TT as it would favour Froome, I oughtn't to cheer him winning via that route, but still, his battling through the climbs has been impressive and the outsider card...but then I was labouring under the misapprehension he was Belgian, so cheering a 6 foot Dertch rider feels wrong. Maybe I'll bet on Aru to survive/snatch it on the last climb on saturday(?) to balance my feelings.

I'd really love Purito to win it, but...

Anyway, what a great Vuelta!

ToB is a source of grinding annoyance, as I checked out going to the Blyth finish and the Prudhoe start, both places I ride to/through...and find I have a Faculty Conference today (the worst 8 hours of the year, honestly) and a Programme Assessment Board tomorrow, so I'll just have to see what ITV makes of Blyth and Prudhoe.

[longeared]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Brian Smith on ToB commentary "You cannot fall asleep in a breakaway"

I wouldn't have thought it a sensible idea in the peloton either, Brian.

[ad hoc]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

This is all rather fun. Not sure how Roche is going to feel when he notes that Nieve keeps attacking and bringing the contenders up the hill

[ad hoc]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Tight as a gnat's chuff at the end. Great sprint from both of them

[Toro Toro]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

I think he'll be okay about it now!

[longeared]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Thought you'd enjoy that, Toro.

Nice to see Zubeldia in the break again, that's twice in this race now. Very unlike him.

Going to the ToB tomorrow, will be somewhere on Millstone Edge (before the live coverage starts)

[longeared]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Made it to the top of the climb. Decent crowd here already.

Noted that the KoM point is not where the website says, it is before the plateau I mentioned up thread. This means the riders will get a brief but stiff climb they won't have seen in the road book.

[moo cowe]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

I had half a mind to go to the stage start tomorrow, having seen a couple of TdF stages midway and the stage finish of the Tour of Britain last time it was in Norfolk, however work and weather mean that's not on.
Work permitting I hope to catch them in the City at some stage.
I see there's a KoM on a stretch of road I know and have ridden without moving out of the big ring. We do have hills here, but they're all on the coast. It'll be fascinating to know who's fastest up the slight gradient.

[Toro Toro]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

OOOOOOOOOOOH!

[Toro Toro]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Absolutely stunning ambush.

[Toro Toro]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Desperately cruel. Incredible work by Astana, they genuinely could not possibly have played their hand better there.

[longeared]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

That was really impressive from Astana, though they had either good fortune or brilliant planning to link the two from the front group up with Aru just at the time Dumoulin looked as if he might get back on. Not for the first time in the Vuelta we've seen action taking place in a location not necessarily designed for it, so all credit to Astana for trying something different. Don't think anyone would have had Aru - Rodriguez - Majka as a podium at the start though, and it's been a really good race overall.

Unlike the Tour of Britain, which seems to have regressed to the sort of race it churned out about five years ago. They've got the course wrong this year, too many bunch finishes, no TT to provide any gaps and having most of the peloton finishing 45 minutes back on the Nottingham stage was daft. It's all the more regrettable considering what an excellent route they had last year. There was a bit of bad luck in that a lot of the attacking riders seem to have chosen the Canadian races as Worlds build up and that teams have brought sprint trains, but they need to find a more varied route and not waste climbs at the start of stages.

There have been other criticisms too. Greipel and Dowsett both criticised the long transfers. There's elementary errors in the planning of the race - the KoM at Millstone Edge being in a different place from the roadbook being an example (My folks were outside Fox House, they said several people arrived and asked where the KoM was). The KoM is all weird anyway - the "climb" Moocowe refers to shouldn't be classified as such, and there was one in Alnwick that was 1k at 2.6%. That's not a climb, that's false flat. The TV direction is poor and often chooses the wrong shot.

In other words, all the same operational mistakes they make at the Women's Tour, so at least Sweetspot are consistent.

[Kevin S]

Vuelta a Espaņa & Tour of Britain 2015

Good post longeared. Bit of a letdown for Movistar getting fourth and seventh overall; I wonder if the co-leadership idea is actually hampering them a little when compared to the other teams? Pleased for Aru to get his first grand tour at 25. He's a great rider to watch, in that proper tradition of aggressive Italian GC winners. It'll be interesting to see if he will be happy to have the same Giro+Vuelta schedule again next year, or whether Nibali wants to win the Rosa again, giving Aru a crack at Le Tour.

But also a bit gutted for Purito. Once again the time trial is not his friend. His Vuelta results now read: 26,42,38,17,6,7,4,19,3,4,4,2. So he's getting a bit nearer, I suppose, and still has five years on the Horner clock...

I enjoyed the ToB but not in the way I had done in previous years, it was more about the novelty of the race going through places I know well. In recent years as you say we've had a good mixed parcours, but this was very much like many of the Scandinavian stage races where the winner is someone like Kristoff, Boassen-Hagen (ding) or Breschel etc. (Which was why I had Rasmus Guldhammer and Boassen-Hagen in the fantasy team, as it goes, since they have done well in those this year.) And of course it was in 2009 that EBH won it before. So I thought it was ok as it goes, but not really what I now hope for and expect from the ToB. I think there's a place for a stage race like this in the calendar, but perhaps at 2.1 level, and leave the ToB as the genuinely high level race it has become.

KoM is a silly title for a jersey in the ToB. King of the Hills is a bit more like it, but of course that means this.


The sprint and the KoM classifications are also a bit guilty of double counting the breaks when the climbs don't come late enough, or are not long enough, too. As moocowe says, the hillier bits of East Anglia, such as they are, feature on the coast, with only Beacon Hill outside West Runton of much note, about 5.5% for 1.3km (it's the highest point in the east of England, fact fans).