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Vuelta a España Vuelta a España 2022, stage 15: Martos - Sierra Nevada. Alto Hoya de la Mora. Monachil, 152.6k

The easiest GT queen stage in a long time has suddenly become one of the most hotly anticipated too. The good news for Evenepoel is that Unipublic changed the second half of the MTF a month ago to make it easier, but that alone isn't reassuring when you've just lost almost a minute on a climb that's still only half as difficult...

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The stage is very similar to the 2017 one, only with a longer run-in and the order of Purche and Hazallanas flipped.

Puerto del Castillo:
CastilloN.gif


Alto del Purche:
Alto%20de%20Monachil.gif


Alto Hoya de la Mora (apologies for the blurry profile, very hard to find one for this exact side as opposed to the harder route through Sabinas!):
sierra-nevada-por-haza-llana-ctra-principal-y-pradollano.jpg
 
Various scenarios are possible. If Remco is subpar again and Primoz feels good then an attack on the steepest sections of the final climb, far from the line, can give him substantial gains. Remco should feel more comfortable answering attacks on the shallower part of that climb. Then again, Remco's advantage is still good and if he's back to his best (with just one weaker day) then distancing him could be very difficult. My forecast is that the trend will continue: Remco will lose some time tomorrow (not sure how much though, maybe just seconds maybe a couple of minutes).
 
I don't know why Rolf Sørensen refuses to prepare for stages. Its easy to look at the profile, or even find a previous stage of La Pandera to know where the small descent is. For tomorrow, no mention of Alto Hazallanes, suggesting Rohan Dennis will do a big pull on Sierra Nevada and Roglic attacking with 4-5 km to go.

Have you seen the profile? Have you seen the last stages after the rest day? God damn, you get stupid sometimes listening to Il Binondo...