procycling

This last week restarts from the ~~gree~~browneries of Galicia and heads to Madrid in the centre of the country, through Castile-and-Leon and the Sierra near Madrid, which requires several long transfers as the stages themselves do not progress much in the right direction. The Time Trial will be held on Thrusday in Valladolid.

Standings after stage 15

General

1. J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma
2. J. Almeida 🇵🇹 UAE – 48″
3. T. Pidcock 🇬🇧 Q36.5 – 2′38″
4. J. Hindley 🇦🇺 Bora – 3′10″
5. F. Gall 🇨🇭 Décathlon – 3′30″
6. G. Pellizzari 🇮🇹 Bora – 4′21″
7. M. Ricitello 🇺🇸 Visma – 4′53″
8. S. Kuss 🇺🇸 Visma – 5′46″
9. J. Lecerf 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS – 5′49″
10. T. Træen 🇳🇴 Bahrain – 6′33″

Lecerf enters top-10 thanks to the large breakaway on stage #15, which was given some 13 free minutes by the peloton. Ciccone drops despite being in the same breakaway, as he had lost a lot on the mountain stages.

Points

1. M. Pedersen 🇩🇰 Lidl-trek – 237 pts (+117)
2. J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma – 139 pts (+39)
3. G. Ciccone 🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek – 88 pts (+27)
4. E. Vernon 🇬🇧 IPT – 111 pts (=0)
5. J. Philipsen 🇧🇪 Alpecin – 105 pts (=0)

The composition of top-5 hasn't changed, but its structure has. After two relatively sluggish stages blocks in that respect, Pedersen finally created a significant gap by going into breakaways (and those weren't easy ones!) and grabbing many Intermediate Sprints, as well as winning stage #15. Vernon, who was previously going for I.S., didn't score a single point; neither did Philipsen (who wasn't).

Mountain

1. J. Vine 🇦🇺 UAE – 61 pts (+27)
2. J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma – 39 pts (+24)
3. L. Vervaeke 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS – 32 pts (+9)
4. J. Almeida 🇵🇹 UAE – 29 pts (+25)
5. J. Ayuso 🇪🇸 UAE – 26 pts (+6)
6. M. Soler 🇪🇸 UAE – 26 pts (+26)

Quinn and Nicolau left top-5. Vine kept on accumulating points in breakaways, to keep the two GC guys at bay. Soler scored all his points during this block.

Teams (rounded)

1. UAE 🇳🇱
2. Visma – 35′
3. Bora – 1h05′
4. Décathlon – 1h07′
5. Caja Rural – 1h24′

Soudal-QS, Astana and Bahrain follow closely. First and second places seem to be anchored now. The performance of the Pro Team Caja Rural is noteworthy. The bottom of the classification is occupied by a quatuor of French and Belgian teams, 5 hours and more behind, which do worse than the weak Burgos team reduced to 4 men (among said teams, only Alpecin is voluntarily only playing sprints).