Vuelta a España 2019 – Stage 17 Preview

Only 5 stages left in this year’s Vuelta! The riders have had another well deserved day of rest today, in which they could charge up their batteries for the last few stages. Roglic is firmly in red and has not shown any signs of weakness so far. It seems that if he stays free from accidents or bad luck, he will win the Vuelta.

The two previous mountain stages were supposed to be spectacular, but they were quite an anti-climax GC wise. A combination of Roglic’ dominance and the insane climbs in the first week pretty much made the other teams clueless on what to do.

A benefit of this might be that the Grand Tour parcours-designers will reconsider their ever increasing need to make the races harder and harder. In the end it’s still the riders who decide if a stage get’s lit up or not. The parcours should simply be there to facilitate attractive cycling.

With that said, let’s take a look at the first stage of the third week of the Vuelta!

The Route:

Stage 17 takes us from Aranda de Duero southeast to Guadalajara across the Meseta Central, the massive plateau that makes up the center of Spain. Guadalajara was founded by the Andalusians in the 8th century. In the last 50 years, significant urban development plans have caused Guadalajara to become one of the fastest growing cities in Spain.

This is the longest stage of the entire Vuelta with a length of almost 220 kilometers. There are barely any significant obstacles on the route tomorrow, as this is one of the flattest stages of the Vuelta. Due to the stage going across the vast and open Spanish plateau, we are racing quite a few meters above sea-level for the entire day.

The profiles on the various sites differ a little bit, but one thing is clear is that the final 3 kilometer has an average gradient of about 3%. No ‘true’ flat sprint. A right turn at about 700 meters to go is the start of a 700 meter tailwind driven uphill drag race to the finish line.

The Weather

It will be a nice and sunny day with a temperature of around 20 degrees. As is often the case in central Spain, there will be quite a lot of wind coming from the north-northeast tomorrow. This will be beneficial for a breakaway as they will be harder to reel in.

The Race

Tomorrow is one of only 2 sprint stages left, with the other being the final stage in Madrid. Therefore, the sprinters team will ride to make it a sprint tomorrow because they haven’t dragged themselves across the mountains for nothing.

Normally, this would be a pretty easy sprint stage. However, as you could read above we are racing the Spanish plateau with long open roads and quite a bit of wind coming from a favorable direction. You know that the teams will need to take the possibility of echelons into account.

All the circumstances are there for the teams to create a very hard and tough day of racing. Nobody has been able to beat Roglic in the mountains, so maybe Astana and Movistar will try their luck to create echelons to distance him. This will be incredibly hard as Jumbo-Visma are experts on this terrain, and Roglic has Tony Martin to guide him through the stage.

Normally BORA and Quickstep will have to do all the work to reel in the breakaway as Mitchelton won’t be helping anymore with Mezgec having dropped out of the race. Since they are fresh from the rest day we don’t expect this to be too much of a problem, but the strong tailwind will mean that they will have to keep the break on a tight leash, or they will have to waste alot of resources to reel it back in.

The Favorites

Sam Bennett
Stated that he feels like he needs to win at least 3 stages this Vuelta. This could be his third! Fastest sprinter in the race and should be confident of adding another victory.

Fabio Jakobsen
Was dropped on the last ‘sprint’ stage on the 9% section just before the finish line. Tomorrow’s gradients should be manageable for him. He looked to be dealing with the mountains very well, so he should be the main challenger for Bennett tomorrow.

Fernando Gaviria
Will we finally see the real Gaviria tomorrow? The previous sprint stages shouldn’t give us too much hope, but you never know!

The Winner

Easy, Sam Bennett!