Matteo Trentin (Quick-Step Floors) kept his hopes of winning the Vuelta a Espana's green jersey alive with a strong seventh place finish on stage 18. Trentin started the day third in the competition, but has now moved up a spot and trails classification leader Chris Froome (Team Sky) by just 16 points with three stages remaining.
There is a total of 87 points still up for grabs in the final days, leaving victory wide open. Trentin led the classification throughout much of the opening week thanks to three stage wins and some second-place finishes. He is keeping the battle for green in the back of his mind, but he thinks that his chances of success are less than slim.
"It's in my mind, but I know that it's going to be about a five percent of possibility to bring it to Madrid. It all depends on the results of the GC guys day-by-day," he told Cyclingnews ahead of stage 18. "For example, if Froome hadn't cracked a little bit [on Los Muchacos] then for sure he would win it after the stage. It's just a points jersey and not a sprints jersey."
ADVERTISEMENT
Trentin says that going for the intermediate sprints is a fruitless task, with so little on offer and so late in the day. And while there are a tidy 25 points on offer for the winner of the day, 15 riders get awarded points towards the classification with little separating the top riders. As the competition wishes to reward it, a rider that can be consistent across most stages will come out the winner, and with such a tough Vuelta a Espana course the better climbers have the upper hand.
"[The intermediate sprints] are useless, they are always so close to the finish and with so few points available," explained Trentin. "The stage result makes a lot of difference, but the difference in points between the fourth and seventh or eighth is not that much. So, if you win you get quite a lot but if you're always well placed like the GC guys in this kind of parcours, like the GC guys always are they have much more advantage than me. If you see the GC and the points classification, I'm the only non-climber in that group.
"If for any reason the green jersey comes to me then I'll be happy but I'm not going to go and die on the road to try and bring it home. Like I've said since the beginning of the Vuelta, it's almost impossible."
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2wOZ7jY
No comments:
Post a Comment