Another day, another flurry of activity in the Giro, with a
local boy taking a well deserved win in Enrico Battaglin, a distant relation
towards one of the few men to completely the Giro and Vuelta double in 1981, Giovanni
Battaglini, who in winning, provided not only a career highlight for himself
but also an overall highlight of the year for Bardiana Vavole CSF, who have to
be the smallest team in the race barring non – even the Colombians have
Government backing - and have gained the
exposure teams like that live and die on year in, and year out.
In terms of the general classification the biggest story was
Bradley Wiggins losing a large amount of time after he was in the wrong side of
a split close to the line, going from second to sixth, meaning that he is now
level on time with Hesjedal and 3 seconds behind Nibali. He still has his ace
card to play of the marathon like time trial in Saturday – and as such he is
still a strong favourite – but last year’s race came down to just 16 seconds at
the end and this is hardly ideal – remember that Ryder is a very strong time
trialist.
Today’s stage shouldn’t see anything like as many fireworks,
and has pucheur written all over it. There’s more than enough time for a break
to get away, and with the lumpy nature of the finish, stay away, today, with
the finish not testing enough for realistic GC hopes, or forgiving enough for
bunch sprinters.
The Montescaglioso is meant to be ‘just’ a Category 4, but
it averages 5.6% for it’s 4.5KM and has percentages of 10%, which means it’ll
be a serious struggle for any pure sprinter to stay in the main group. There’s
a sharp descent and then a sloping rise towards the line at 2.8%, which gives the
finish a classic feel.
John Degenkolb is a surprisingly strong favourite given the
lack of form he’s showed this season. He’s got grand tour form a plenty, but
whether anyone should be as short at 4/1 for this stage is worth questioning
and he has no wins to his name this year – and no top three’s to boot. Moviistar’s
Francisco Ventoso is second favourite and a more realistic market leader than
Degenkolb but still fairly short. If I had to go for a ‘sprinter’, Matt Goss
would be the choice, but the answer might be under our noses in Magalia Rosa
Luca Paolini, who is loving life at the lead under a team who have had a
storming start to the Grand Tour. An excellent descender and more than capable
of launching a race winning move – he was a convicting winner of Omloop Net
Niewsblad, and fifth in Milano-San Remo, if in the same form that he was on
Stage 3, and Katusha the same form they were when nearly setting him up
perfectly yesterday, then quotes upto 25/1 are far too generous and with the
main GC contenders not seeing him as a threat, he makes more appeal than any.
Advice
1 pt each/way Luca Paolini (20/1 Betfred)
No comments:
Post a Comment