La Vuelta 2023 Stage 1 and Stage 2 Betting Favourites
Betting on stage one of a multi day stage event is always a different ball game than the rest of the tour. Why? The "Does the rider have freedom?" question becomes roughly null and void. Almost all domestiques will be allowed to go and fight for the win on day one despite the potential that they'll be chained down for their leader in the following days.
Think of Fabien Cancellara who often won the opening prologue time trial at numerous events and then went on to be a faithful domestique for the team's GC leader.
It also gives the winner the opportunity to wear the leader's jersey for a day and add it to their collection. Who wouldn't want to have the yellow jersey, or in La Vuelta's case, the red jersey to be able to put on display for the rest of their lives?
How to bet
Generally you'll be looking for candidates from strong teams that will generally be locked down for the rest of the race. Why? Because generally the strong teams also have strong riders to be domestiques that will usually outclass most riders from other smaller named teams. It'll help to guess or know who the team is riding for, but it's not as important a question.
In the case of the Vuelta given that we're opening up with a team time trial, we should be looking at two potential betting days. The second day you'd still expect a large amount of freedom for potential domestiques before they're tied down. Especially given that the stage itself isn't completely brutal. Kinda. But not completely.
Don't get us wrong, there's still 2500m of elevation gain and a category two climb with a hefty kicker at the end. So we're still liking some of the GC contenders who have a great kick like Ayuso or Roglič. But that category two is ample ground to start a breakaway that might be able to hold on until the finish.
Think a Giulio Cicconne, or, given the more freedom hypothesis a Marc Soler. We'll probably put down some on Romain Grégoire as well - because we think he's ripe for a big surprise.
For stage one, between Attila Valter and Tobias Foss, Jumbo Visma should have the team trial locked down. It's going to be picking for second and third in our opinion. Soudal - Quickstep with Remco can probably nab one of those slots.
But if we put on our value odds opinion it's also a great opportunity for an upset. Similar to how EF Education First upset the status quo at the UAE Tour earlier in the year. It's also a technically difficult course, with a total of 16 hard corners over the course of only 14kms.
A team with good communication and who have been training together is absolutely necessary for this one.
