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news
La Vuelta 2018 logo.JPGVuelta Stage 16: Rohan Dennis wins time trial, Simon Yates grabs 7 seconds over Alejandro Valverde
Rohan Dennis of Mitchelton-Scott has won the Stage 16 individual time trial at the Vuelta, while Simon Yates of Mitchelton-Scott has extended his overall lead overall over Movistar’s Alejandro Valverde by 7 seconds.
Meanwhile, Steve Kruiswijk of LottoNL-Jumbo has leapfrogged Movistar’s other main challenger for the overall title, Nairo Quintana, into third place.
The Dutch rider, who put in the fourth fastest time today, taking 1 minute 19 from the Colombian, and as the race moves into its final week the rest of his LottoNL-Jumbo team took it easy to save energy to support him in the days ahead.
Dennis, the strongest time triallist in the race by some margin, was seen as favourite to win today’s 32-kilometre stage from Santillana del Mar to Torrelavega and was the only rider to post an average speed in excess of 50 kilometres an hour.
By coincidence, the riders who came second and third – Joey Rosskopf of BMC Racing and Team Sky’s Jonathan Castroviejo – both finished 50 seconds behind the stage winner.
Yates is beginning the final week of a Grand Tour in the leader’s jersey for the second time this year – in May, his Giro d’Italia ambitions were thwarted as he endured a torrid day on Stage 19 just as Chris Froome of Team Sky launched what proved to be a race winning attack.
After today’s stage, he now leads the overall standings by 33 seconds from Valverde, with Kruiswijk a further 19 seconds back and Quintana now 1 minute 15 seconds off the race lead.
For Dennis, meanwhile, his stage victory today is his last participation in this year's Vuelta as leaves the race to start preparing for the world championships later this month in Austria.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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12 comments
More importantly will be see a Brit clean sweep of the grand tours? I'm hoping there's no choking in the final stages.
This said I'd like believe in Quintana again but he just doesn't seem able to make many decisive breaks when it really matters.
Yes, you just need a "Brit" to win the Giro and you're there
In what way do you feel that the previous winner wasn't a "Brit" ?
Oh, here we go...
Would he be British if he was born in another country but had shit hair and was unhealthily obsessed with Quadrophenia?
You have to love the "British (English)" amateur attitude to sport. He is a professional cyclist, the worlds TT is more important than expending his energy finishing the vuelta at the back of the bunch
Yes, I understand the reasoning, but I don't agree with it. In a nutshell that's one of the big dilemmas of professional sport - "more important" to whom? The rider / the team, or the fans, who want to see all competitors do their best? And yes, some fans will be up for that sort of "professionalism" (see club v country football for example), but I'm not one of them. I'm also Australian, by the way, though I'm aware that a lot of my countrymen think as you do.
Agreed, it's probably not policeable, but I don't think policing this sort of thing is the right idea anyway. It's more to do with the culture of the sport, the team and the individual athlete. Leaves a sour taste for me. As for Quintana, could be a bit early to say, but the signs aren't good so far.
I think the days of Quintana being seen as a major GC threat are slipping away, his TTing isn't good enough, the likes of Froome, Dumoulin and Thomas can TT significantly better than him and climb pretty much as well (at least on repeated days, maybe not in a flat out single day of climbing) and many of the other climbing GC riders like Yates etc can still time trial more effectively and seem willing to work on it.
No, I think it is disrespectful. It doesn't matter if it's been done before. Nor does it matter if other races are more "important". Nor does it matter if you or your team are out of contention. I wouldn't prefer that they lied, I'd prefer they didn't enter in the first place. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I think if you are going to sign up for a race then you give it your best shot through to the finish (including working for a team obviously, I'm not saying every man for himself). If you're not prepared to do that don't bother entering.
So Dennis wins the stage and then announces his withdrawal from the Vuelta to focus on the Worlds. I know he's not the first rider to withdraw from a grand tour for scheduling reasons, but they all know the schedules in advance. To sign up to a full tour with the intention of leaving mid-way seems disrespectful...
It's been that way for a long time, particularly for sprinter. Cipollini was famous for doing it. Would you prefer they lied and pretended to be injured / going down with a virus? It's not like he's going to figure in any of the stages between now and Sunday and BMC don't have a GC contender to work for.
The Vuelta is not the pinnacle of every rider's season (for that matter neither is the Tour) and has been used as preparation for the Worlds more or less since it moved from April. Now the ToB is long and tough enough it too is considered this way.
The problem is it's not policeable at all, he could just as easily have a team doctor sign him off as ill, or finish behind the time cut today, blame it on some punctures and bad luck and there'd be nothing anyone could do about it. Yes it's not great, but it's not like you could put them on a training ban for the remainder of the race they leave to try to discourage it.