*Tour de France - Stage 9* Sunday 12th July

Stage 9 (TTT)  »  Vannes  ›  Plumelec   (28k)

It's team time trial time

It's a 28km course from Vannes to Plumulec in Brittany. This is a very unusual TTT. Normally team time trials are very early in grand tours to ensure everyone has a full complement of riders. It is not normal to have a TTT this late. Also, this has followed the most hectic start to a GT that I can remember. To be frank it is astonishing that all four of the main GC teams have 9 riders, given the start we have had. If any team had one or more riders missing they would be at a very big disadvantage.
28km doesnt seem like a long course, but we could see significant time gaps. There are three climbs on the route, including the 3rd at Plumulec which could really see teams suffer. What you want for this course, ideally, is two teams. You need to have 5 climbers. The last climb will be very hard. 1.7km @ 6.2% is a very sttep climb to come at the end of a team time trial. The watch stops on the 5th rider, so your first 4 can only go at the speed of the 5th rider. To give an idea of how steep this final climb is, the last time a road stage finished here it was won by Alejandro Valverde in 2008.

BMC are odds on favourites. They are very strong with several time trial specialists and other rouleurs. The issue for me with their team is that I can only see 4 climbers. They can only go at the speed of whoever will be hanging on (Van Avermaet?). They should podium but they are very short in my eyes. To me this is between Movistar and Sky. Movistar are incredibly strong. They have 3 specialist TTers is Castroviejo, Malori and Dowsett. Dowsett may still be recovering from his crash but this lineup gives them good flat speed. Moreover, they have 5 specialist climbers in Herrada, Valverde, Izaguirre, Quintana and Ancona.

Sky have at least 7 guys that could be there at the finish in theory, which is the most climbing power of any team. They might not have the flat power of BMC or Movistar, so it would not surprise me to see them down at the first checkpoint. I think they will use Rowe, Stannard and Roche or Kennaugh to power them on the flat and then they will use their considerable climbing strength on the final climb at Plumulec to try and claw back time on the teams that might be stronger on the level.

So I think it will be close between Movistar, Sky and BMC with the rest a bit further back. When you have three teams that you think are fairly equally strong it makes sense to go for the one at the bigest price. Personally, I've done Sky at 8/1 and 10/1, although for fairly moderate stakes. I wish I'd gone back in at 14/1 when Padds pushed them out to that price but I'd used both the accounts I have access to to the maximum I could get on. Other teams that look like they could perform fairly well here are Tinkoff and Astana. Astana look to have a very strong team and on paper they really could threaten at least a podium as they seem to combine flat speed and climbing power beautifully. However, there are huge form doubts about virtually their whole squad and on the basis of what we've seen in the last week or so I feel happy to discount them from my calculations. AG2R and Lotto Jumbo might outrun their perennial lightweight status in this particular test due to their decent number of climbers.
So, there are 3 potential winners in my eyes - Sky, Movistar and BMC. And its Sky here for me, and I may also look to do a small saver on Movistar as they are a very decent price in my eyes because BMC are so short in the market.

Match Bets Singles
Ag2r v Lampre 4/7
Lotto Jumbo v IAM Cycling 2/1
Sky v BMC 7/4
Lotto Soudal v Orica 1/2

Acca @ nearly 8/1
Sky v BMC 7/4
Lotto Soudal v Orica 1/2
AG2r v Lampre 1/2
Lotto Jumbo v Trek 2/5