The epic twentieth, penultimate stage did not answer every question. On the final, celebratory, friendly stages of the Grand Tours — now a tradition — only the most prestigious final sprint is usually contested; most prestigious because here it is fought by the sprinters who have made it over the mountains for three weeks. We would truly have been disappointed if this year’s Vuelta had left its hero of previous years without a win: he had taken 9 stages here before, but this year he just couldn’t find the position or rhythm to win a sprint, and this was his last chance. It’s a joy that John Degenkolb took that chance and claimed his tenth, jubilee stage — in Madrid, no less!
John’s tenth stage Photo: Tim De Waele/TDWsport.com
So it was this time too, but there was one more prize whose owner hadn’t been decided over the previous twenty stages: the green jersey. I’ll talk about Grand Tour jerseys in general another time; for now I’ll only say that the Vuelta’s green jersey (MAILLOT VERDE) is specific and can’t be called a traditional sprinter’s jersey. It goes to the winner on points, which are distributed as follows: on stages, the first fifteen get 25–20–16–14–12–10–9–8 and so on down to 1 point, and one intermediate sprint per stage gives its first 3 riders 4–2–1 points respectively. The race’s profile leaves the sprinters not even a minimal chance of winning this classification, and under such conditions the intermediate sprints matter very little. This time, though, it so happened that on the last, friendly stage the two Spaniards in the top two places of the classification were separated by just two points, and the chaser, Alejandro Valverde, had no intention of calmly giving up this prize. And so it was: Alejandro fought and took the green jersey off Joaquim (Purito) Rodríguez. Considering the riders’ specializations, Purito’s chances here weren’t even minimal.
Alejandro Valverde, winner of the points classification Photo: Tim De Waele/TDWsport.com
Featured image: Yuzuru SUNADA (the 2015 Vuelta podium: Joaquim Rodríguez, Fabio Aru, Rafał Majka)
Inside post thumbnail image: Tim De Waele/TDWsport.com (the 2015 Vuelta winner, Italy’s Fabio Aru of Kazakh team Astana)
Translated from Georgian with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), reviewed by the Velorbola editors.
In history, only three riders have won all five Monuments: [...]
April 15, 2019
