{"id":128856,"date":"2025-09-08T13:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/128856\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T13:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:16:13","slug":"close-battles-abound-as-the-vuelta-heads-into-final-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/128856\/","title":{"rendered":"Close battles abound as the Vuelta heads into final week"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are plenty of tight competitions and all to race for as the Vuelta heads into its final week starting on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Jonas Vingegaard holds 48 seconds over Jo\u00e3o Almeida with one week to go. They were locked together on the Angliru and La Farrapona summit finishes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Big Two on the Angliru.<\/p>\n

Although the GC after two weeks isn\u2019t as tight as this May\u2019s Giro d\u2019Italia, it\u2019s the closest margin between the Vuelta\u2019s first and second since Richard Carapaz took 10 seconds over Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d into the final stages of the 2020 edition. Rogli\u010d would go on to prevail. Last September Ben O\u2019Connor led Rogli\u010d by 1:03 going into the last week\u2014again the Slovenian would wear the final red.<\/p>\n

The podium battle is a fascinating one between Tom Pidcock, Jai Hindley and Felix Gall. Only 52 seconds seperate the trio. Hindley has a Giro pink jersey and runner-up spot on his palmares. Gall was already fifth in this year\u2019s Tour de France.<\/p>\n

Although Mads Pedersen enjoys a big lead in the green jersey competition and Jay Vine has a 22-point buffer in the polka dot jersey standings, the white jersey contest is as close as sixth place Guilio Pellizzari at +4:21 and seventh place Matthew Riccitello at +4:53. Both are racing their third Grand Tour. Pellizzari came sixth in this year\u2019s Giro GC, where he finished runner-up in the young rider competition to Isaac del Toro. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pellizzari has had a fine first season with Red Bull. Photo: Sirotti<\/p>\n

Tuesday finishes on a long climb that\u2019s half categorized and half uncategorized. Wednesday\u2019s even longer summit finish flips the script and is half uncategorized and half categorized. Vingegaard is expected to get the better of Almeida on Thursday\u2019s Valladolid time trial. Don\u2019t let Friday\u2019s lack of categorized climbs lull you into believing it\u2019s one for the sprinters. Saturday\u2019s Bola del Mundo summit finish is almost as taxing as the Angliru. Sunday is the procession into Madrid.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Bola del Mundo is the final GC battlefield. Image by La FlammeRouge<\/p>\n

The breakaway action should be fierce in the final week as only six teams have scored wins in the first 15 stages, although Stage 11 had no winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are plenty of tight competitions and all to race for as the Vuelta heads into its final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[20825,37377,49,48,635,42477,5900,82,11588],"class_list":{"0":"post-128856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-2025-uci-worldtour","9":"tag-2025-vuelta-a-espana","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-cycling","13":"tag-joao-almeida","14":"tag-jonas-vingegaard","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-spotlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}