{"id":193785,"date":"2023-08-25T11:53:05","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=193785"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:53:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:53:05","slug":"in-a-sprint-poor-vuelta-expect-evenepoel-to-win-the-skoda-green-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2023\/08\/25\/in-a-sprint-poor-vuelta-expect-evenepoel-to-win-the-skoda-green-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Sprint-Poor Vuelta, Expect Evenepoel to Win the \u0160koda Green Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>What\u2019s the most difficult thing to find in this year\u2019s Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a? No, it\u2019s not a fish; it\u2019s a sprinter. Almost all the teams are packed with climbers or riders with climbing ability to help their team\u2019s GC riders win some of the many mountain stages in the race and, they hope, the Vuelta itself. \u00a0Because this year the Vuelta consists of mountains, mountains and more mountains, with scarcely a flat stage to be seen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That is something of an exaggeration, but not much. To be precise, the route contains six flat stages, but two of them end with summit finishes, so forget a bunch sprint there. In addition, there are six hilly stages, seven mountain stages, a team time trial and an individual time trial. So there is not much for the sprinters to do. And even if one of them somehow scrapes together enough points on those four true flat stages and the intermediate sprints to be in the running for the \u0160koda Green Jersey, they have to make it over all those mountains and to the nine summit finishes within the specified time to be able to collect their jersey. It\u2019s a long shot, at best.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the record, there are only two bona fide sprinters with Grand Tour experience in the race: Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) and Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck). Less-experienced sprinters in the peloton, such as Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-Easy Post) and Juan Sebastian Molano (UAE Team Emirates), will try to grab a stage or maybe two. In any case, that\u2019s not a lot of sprinters.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-controller-wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"es\" dir=\"ltr\">\u2764\ufe0f\u00a1<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EvenepoelRemco?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@EvenepoelRemco<\/a> lo tiene claro&#8230; \u00a1ha venido a ganar La Vuelta! \ud83d\ude0c\u00bfLo conseguir\u00e1?<\/p>\n<p>1\ufe0f\u20e3 last year &#8230; where do you think Remco Evenepoel <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/soudalquickstep?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@soudalquickstep<\/a> will finish this year? \ud83e\udd14  <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/LaVuelta23?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#LaVuelta23<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wLqKvzgC8T\">pic.twitter.com\/wLqKvzgC8T<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; La Vuelta (@lavuelta) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lavuelta\/status\/1694789162199658778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 24, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async data-src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Given this reality, I can see that Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), last year\u2019s GC winner and a favorite this year, will win a few stages on the climbs that suit him, because he is an excellent climber and very fast in a sprint, and so will probably collect enough points to wear the \u0160koda Green Jersey when the race ends in Madrid. He may regard that success and winning the white jersey for best young rider in the race as decent consolation for not bagging the GC victory, which will probably go to one of the two Jumbo-Visma leaders, Jonas Vingegaard and Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d (who, <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/lidl-trek-is-trying-to-sign-primoz-roglic\/\">reports say<\/a>, is apparently talking to Lidl-Trek about a possible move to that team).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Vuelta has really not been very sprinter-friendly over the years. Three riders hold the record of four points classification wins in the race: Sean Kelly, Laurent Jalabert and Alejandro Valverde. Kelly, who also won four Tour de France green jerseys, started as a sprinter, but was an all-rounder and superb Classics rider for most of his career; Jalabert was a pure all-rounder, winning the green jersey and the mountains classification at the 1995 Vuelta; and Valverde was a GC rider.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The winner of the \u0160koda Green Jersey in last year\u2019s Vuelta was Trek-Segafredo\u2019s Mads Pedersen, who is really more of a puncheur than a sprinter and climbs very well. Second was Fred Wright, of Bahrain Victorious, who is not a sprinter. Third was Movistar\u2019s GC rider Enric Mas, and Evenepoel came in fourth. Groves was the only pure sprinter in the top 10, finishing in ninth place, behind the Ecuadorian high-altitude specialist Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easy Post).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But this year\u2019s course seems almost cruel in its disdain for bunch sprinting \u2013 though there is some logic in it. My guess is that because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lavuelta.es\/en\/\">the Vuelta<\/a> is the last of the Grand Tours and even comes after the World Championships this year, the race organizers wanted to create a race that stood out from all those that preceded it \u2013 because this year\u2019s Tour de France was really extraordinary and the Worlds were also special. They are tough acts to follow. The organizers understand that mountain racing is far more dramatic than waiting for a flat stage to reach its climax, the sprint. Summit finishes are especially exciting, which is why two of the flat stages end on a mountaintop. Let\u2019s hope they got it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s the most difficult thing to find in this year\u2019s Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a? No, it\u2019s not a fish; it\u2019s a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":190561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[6875,4514,479,3559,1221,3544,3065,717,3453],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-193785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-2023-la-vuelta","tag-enric-mas","tag-la-vuelta","tag-mads-pedersen","tag-primoz-roglic","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-richard-carapaz","tag-sean-kelly","tag-skoda-green-jersey","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In a Sprint-Poor Vuelta, Expect Evenepoel to Win the \u0160koda Green Jersey -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What\u2019s the most difficult thing to find in this year\u2019s Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a? 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