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Vuelta a España Who will win the 2022 Vuelta a España? Third rest day poll

Who will win the Vuelta?


  • Total voters
    126
It is between 3 riders: Roglic, Remco and Mas. The third week is all about recuperation and I'll go with Remco based on that. There is a chance for Roglic to win taking advantage of the strength of the team, but I see Remco's team strong enough to hold the attacks of others. But they have to be careful because third week is full of traps.

I will trust Johan Bruyneel in his assessment of Roglic on this one. He came to the Vuelta limping because of his injury. In today's cycling it seems to be very hard to recuperate with the miles. Speeds and stages are fought at every minute. Hard to recuperate.
 
The problem for Roglic and Mas is that stages 17, 18 and 19 are all probably too easy to do much. That means they will likely have to break Evenepoel on Morcuera like Aru did to Dumoulin, only this time it will be even harder to do so given that Evenepoel is a better climber than 2015 Dumoulin and the huge gap in domestique quality that year doesn't exist this time.
 
I'm still going for Primoz. What we're witnessing is a GT showdown ala Tour 2019 when Ala held on the YJ until it was inevitable that he'd lose it. Same scenario here with Remco holding on to the RJ quite bravely, but sometime next week the elastic will snap, because Primoz & Co will force attacks that inevitably Remco must respond, and that's when Primoz will capitalize.
 
No need to assume.
No need to assume, indeed...

I voted for Other/Vino, Vincenzo. He set it all up. He has them exactly where he wants them: after 15 stages, we all agree that Remco in red by a minute and a half over Roglic would have satisfied many just weeks ago. Primoz must feel great, coming back in the GC but it may be too little, too late.

So while the two watch each other with Mas unwilling or unable to Carapaz the race, Nibali can strike.

We have the Vuelta Spanish Championship going on, a Portuguese Wolf who can wreak havoc, so the subplots are there. Remco is in a great place but the pre-race questions about his durability have not been answered. Can Primoz do to Remco what Pogacar did to him? How uplifting it would be.

Definitely an 8 for me, not that it was the question. The bag is not open much these days, but it's a trick you learn at the markets in Messina :cool:. Never show your cards.

Piece of cake...
 
I'm still going for Primoz. What we're witnessing is a GT showdown ala Tour 2019 when Ala held on the YJ until it was inevitable that he'd lose it. Same scenario here with Remco holding on to the RJ quite bravely, but sometime next week the elastic will snap, because Primoz & Co will force attacks that inevitably Remco must respond, and that's when Primoz will capitalize.
For Evenepoel it was all about this weekend. I think the time he lost saturday was either because of a bad moment (basically 5 bad minutes) or because his bruise simply prevented him from putting out the watts we were used to, and day after day that will get better. Since he was actually better on sunday, the hardest day, after another hard day on saturday where he actually lost time (meaning two consecutive hard days, of which the first one was bad) i think it had nothing to do with him fading. In that case the scenario where Evenepoel will lose time in week 3 seems a lot less likely all of a sudden. And i think the odds of him knocking his opponents out in the next few days are bigger than them knocking him out.

Of course he should think like that but he did lose time. He may not crack. But then he might. I think Remco still has big question marks on his week 3 ability.
He lost time because he dragged Roglic' ass up a 20k climb at 2500m altitude, after which Roglic took 15s out of him. Yeah, i don't think he needs to be thinking Roglic is stronger than him right now.
 

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