Sep 2, 2012

Vuelta Stage 15 - Breakaway succeeds, Favorite wait for Tomorrow'


Today's Stage: Circle of Death – Part 2. The easy one of the three. Only three climbs, but the final one was the fearsome Lagos de Covadonga.

Who won today's stage? Antonio Piedra (Caja Rural) finally chose a correct break for his team (i.e. one that stays away) and paid it off by attacking at the bottom of the Lagos de Covadonga, winning the stage by over 2 minutes.

What matters in the GC race? Overall leader leader Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha), Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) finished together, but without Chris Froome (Team Sky) who was dropped and hung on for dear life just to stay with the second group of GC men. Froome lost 35 seconds more on the leaders and saw his chances at the podium start to slip away.

What matters in the other competitions?
Green Jersey (Points) – The breakaway picked up most of the points, but Rodriguez and Valverde did a score a small amount to extend further away from John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano). Rodriguez is the leader but Valverde will be wearing the jersey as Rodriguez is the overall leader.
Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains, it's blue in Spain, not red) – Simon Clarke (Orica-GreenEdge) didn't get himself in the breakaway today, but he retains his lead here. Rodriguez is 2nd and Valverde 3rd as none of the contenders scored points.
White Jersey (Allround, instead of young rider, calculated by adding the rankings in GC, Points and KoM, lowest score wins) – Rodriguez still leads (as expected). Valverde is second and Contador is third. Froome is fourth but falling further behind every day as he is in the GC battle.
Team Classification (top 3 times by team on each stage) – The entire race was remade today. Movistar had a man in the break and then had another with Valverde. They now lead by 2'52” over Euskatel who also had a man in the break and a domestique with team leader Igor Anton. Former leaders Rabobank have seen their hopes here explode with the cracking of Bauke Mollema the last two days. The team is now over six minutes behind and will need to find a successful breakaway to get the time back.

Biggest surprise: The breakaway got away and stayed away. With the exception of stage four, no breakaways have been allowed to go the whole race. The peloton has limited matters and then swept up the break up with plenty of time to go (Stage 12's breakaway win was an exception to this, but it was never allowed much time and Argos-Shimano just failed in its attempts to pull it back). Today, it just didn't care. The top riders rode tempo until the end and the break enjoyed a huge lead that including Piedra gaining over nine minutes on the leaders (not that it really helps him there as he is still over an hour behind).

Biggest disappointment: Nobody can make an attack stick. While this has been very entertaining, we are most certainly into a pattern with the racing: Contador or Valverde attacks, Rodriguez pegs it back, yo-yo with that for awhile, sometimes Valverde is dropped, Rodriguez wins uphill sprint unless Valverde is still there, then there is a battle for the win. It would be nice to see an attack go and work (see Thomas de Gendt at Giro d'Italia).

Other items of note: Two more casualties of the race bring the total to 15 men out of the race. Olivier Kaisen (Lotto-Belisol) and Rafael Valls (Vaconsoleil) both are out of the race.

What is coming tomorrow? Circle of Death, part 3, the hardest of this circle of climbing. Tomorrow starts with a simple category 3 climb, then climbs two category one climbs before finishing atop the beyond category Cuitu Negru for the first time ever.

Tomorrow's Prediction: Rodriguez will win stage and likely the Vuelta followed by Contador and Valverde, same as its been.

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