Stage 15: Sabiñánigo › Sallent de Gállego – 118.5km
Sunday’s stage will bring a second straight day of GC action, though the parcours is markedly different. Stage 15 is quite short at only 118.5km, and the climbs aren’t as challenging as those the bunch faced Saturday.
However, the pace will be very high given the length of the stage, and that can sometimes lead to unpredictable results. Plus, the final climb is far more challenging than the metrics (14.5km at 4.6%) suggest. For one, the ascending begins long before the official start of the climb. In fact, the final 25km or so are mostly uphill, with an average grade of over 3%. That’s a long way to be going up. On top of that, the officially rated section of the climb is not completely steady all the way up, with a few steeper sections that could launch attacks.
It’s proven quite a challenge predicting whether mountain stages at the Vuelta thus far would come down to the breakaway or the GC men, and Stage 15 is another tough one to call. Though the race will be hard to control on this profile, and though the peloton has allowed serious breakaways ride to two straight stage victories, the short distance will see a high tempo that could make a successful break hard to pull off. As such, I think the top GC men deserve favorite status, if only slightly.
As usual, I see Chris Froome and Nairo Quintana as the likeliest red jersey contenders. Given what we’ve seen all week, I’ll give Froome the slight edge on this parcours, though it’s very close.
Don’t count out the Orica duo of Esteban Chaves and Simon Yates for the win, however. The team showed off its knack for racing strategy in Stage 14, which leads me to believe in the potential for Orica to get creative having two rider so close on GC. Either one could attack to set up a later move by his teammate, making them a dangerous pair.
Samuel Sánchez and Alberto Contador are worth watching too, as both have ridden aggressively (if not entirely successfully) on the mountain stages of this Vuelta. Leopold König may have a better shot than either home favorite—he may not have quite the press in the first week, but he’s proven capable of holding his own with the heavyweights in this race.
As for potential breakaway candidates, a number of riders have established themselves as the go-to potential protagonists in a stage like this: Pello Bilbao, Mathias Frank, Ben Hermans, Gianluca Brambilla, Thomas De Gendt, Pierre Latour, Luis León Sánchez, Robert Gesink, and Kenny Elissonde are all worthy of attention as long-distance threats.
VeloHuman Stage 15 Favorites
1. Chris Froome | 2. Nairo Quintana | 3. Esteban Chaves