Date: Tuesday 9 September
Distance: 168km
Start location: Poio
Finish location: Mos
Start time: 13:05 CEST
Finish time: 17:17 CEST
A peculiarity of this year’s Vuelta a España route is that the race has been spent travelling almost entirely in the same westward direction since the start up until now, the first day of the final week. Two weeks ago it began in unfamiliarly eastern territory across the border in Italy, and since reaching mainland Spain has stuck to traversing in the same direction across the northern region. Today marks the end of that trajectory, as the riders reach the route’s westernmost point, for a stage held in the nation’s westernmost region of Galicia.
The riders will catch a glimpse of the Atlantic coast for the first time when they set off from Poio, a town on the Ria de Pontevedra estuary, where they’ll head towards a finish further south in Mos, a place with some cycling pedigree as the birthplace of Óscar Pereiro. While Pereiro never finished higher than 17th at the Vuelta a España, he was a much better performer at the Tour de France, and is most famous for being one of that race’s most unlikely overall winners when he triumphed in the messy 2006 edition. On a strange, race-changing stage of the second week, he was deemed a benign enough threat to be given 30 minutes by the GC candidates, and the yellow jersey; a jersey which he defend expectations by holding on to during the Alps, then ultimately won after the only man to eventually overtake him on GC, Floyd Landis, was disqualified for doping.
Pereiro’s breakaway coup that day might be the ultimate example of a rider who benefited from an uncontrolled break being allowed too much freedom by a complacent peloton, and today’s parcours is of a similar kind that requires the GC men to be attentive. While it’s not a mountain stage, there is still enough climbing around the low summits of Galicia for the riders to accumulate 3,472m of elevation gain. And many of those climbs and these undulating roads were the same as used for the penultimate stage of the 2021 Vuelta, which caused a significant upheaval in the GC, with Miguel Ángel López the casualty. Starting the day in third overall and on the brink of a podium finish, the Colombian was caught napping, failing to follow a move made on a climb about 60km from the finish, and losing more and more time as the stage progressed. He was so incensed that he quit the race altogether.
While today’s stage shares the same two final climbs as that day, the Alto de Prado (4.3km at 8.9%) and finish at Castro de Herville (8.2km at 5.2%), the Alto de Groba (11.3km at 5.4%) that precedes them is not quite as steep as that which López lost ground. He did so as a result of the pace set by Ineos Grenadiers on that climb, and it could be that no team feels compelled to do something similar, especially considering that its summit comes 58km from the finish. Nevertheless, even if nothing does happen before the climb to the finish, it’s still hard enough to force the GC contenders into a fight.
Contenders
Stage 16 is going to be a battle between opportunistic attackers who want to try their luck from the breakaway and the general classification riders who are looking to gain time overall. If the GC men decide that they want to battle it out for a stage win and keep the gap between them and the break small, then we could see an uphill sprint led home by current race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). Vingegaard will go to battle with the likes of Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) and João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), who are his current closest challengers when it comes to the fight for the red jersey.
However, as we have seen from their seven stage wins so far in this Vuelta, UAE Team Emirates do not sacrifice their chance of individual victories in the name of protecting Almeida’s GC campaign. This means that the likes of Jay Vine, Marc Soler and Juan Ayuso are likely to be given freedom from their team to go for the breakaway and try and win yet another stage on Tuesday. If they do so, it will contribute to a historic performance from the team at this Vuelta and bring them closer to breaking the record for the most number of wins from a team in a singular season.
There will be plenty of riders hoping to spoil the UAE party, though. Santiago Buitrago has been active in breakaways so far for Bahrain-Victorious and has a couple of top-10 finishes on stages with similar parcours as stage 13. The same can be said for David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ who won stage three of the Vuelta after proving his good form by outsprinting Mads Pedersen on an uphill finish. Andrea Bagioli is an option for Lidl-Trek on stage 13 considering the final climb is likely too difficult for Pedersen and Pablo Castrillo of Movistar is also a rider to watch when it comes to the breakaway.
Other contenders for a breakaway victory are Michał Kwiatkowski of the Ineos Grenadiers and Gijs Leemreize for Team Picnic PostNL.
Prediction
We’re expecting another UAE Team Emirates-XRG victory today and think that Jay Vine is going to add to his win tally in this race.