THEMOVE - Has João Almeida Shifted the Momentum in the GC Battle? | Vuelta a España Stage 13 Analysis & Stage 14 Preview | THEMOVE+

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Johan Bruyneel and Spencer Martin break down João Almeida's massive win over Jonas Vingegaard on the legendary, and brutal, L'Angliru climb on Stage 13 of the Vuelta a España. They discuss what Almeida's landmark win means for the tightening GC battle, if Jai Hindley's resurgence threatens Tom Pidcock's podium chances, and the worsening situation around the Israel-Premier Tech protests. Before wrapping up, they preview tomorrow's summit finish, discussing how they expect the stage to unfold and who presents the best betting value. Use our special link to see where you can bet in your area and claim the best sign-up offers https://nxtbets.com/betoutcomes/

I would say this Vuelta is not one yet for Jonas. He definitely cannot permit himself to have a bad day. Of course, it can also happen to Almeida, right? We've seen already from Almeida sometimes great performances and then the day after, two days later, a bit less. It can happen to anybody. But, yeah, those two guys are the two strongest climbers. Everybody, welcome back to the movement.

Plus, I'm Spencer Martin. I'm here with Johann Bernal. We are breaking down stage 13 of the Volta of Spagna, won by Juala Meda over Jonas Vindigard, who still has the G.C. lead, but has lost four seconds to Almeida due to time bonuses. Jai Henley and third, Seppcus, fourth, Felix Gall, fifth on probably, as Juala Mata said, the hardest climb in pro cycling,

La Angrelou, and at the end, we will predict tomorrow's stage 14. But before we get Johann's thoughts, on how this shapes the G.C. What he thought of all the, all the, the moves of the day. I'll briefly catch us up. We don't see the first two-thirds of the race on TV. It comes live, live images with like 65K to go. And really, there's a breakaway away, but you immediately know they're not going to make it.

They don't have enough time because there's two super hard climbs before going into the even harder final climb. UAE hits the front, I believe, on this near the end of the second to last climb. and then they take it. They take the lead into the final climb, breakaway still out there, stopped by protesters, actually. I thought the organizers were a little nonchalant about that. They're just kind of like, yeah, we'll get them out of the way.

We'll get you move in. And they, like, aren't credited with the time or anything like that. I'm curious how they plan to, if they plan to change that in the future. But UAE's on the front. They have the three guys, really good lead out riders. Dominovac works first, then Jay Vine. and then Felix Groschartner, who is extremely strong today.

With 6K to go, Groschartner is on the front, like pushing so hard. He's actually gaping off Juala Mata and who's in second wheel. There's quite a bit of space there. And he's dropping Tom Pidcock. Really, at that point, it's just Jonas Vindigard, Seppkous, and Juala Meda. Almeda takes over, eventually drops Jai Henley, who then comes around Pitcock to get to Kuss, drops Jai Henley and Sepkouz. He's alone with Vindigard. it's super impressive this is steep pitches so this 4k takes a long time never looks back never asks

vindigard for anything just keeps pushing all the way to the finish line every i think everyone was waiting for an attack from yonis vindigard it never comes and it's kind of an awkward finish you always forget it's a really awkward finish to this climb it kind of descends down and it's really twisty turning into the finish i think yonis would like to have out sprinted him but just couldn't, A, couldn't get around him, and B, he was even struggling to hold the wheel once they were sped up into the finish line. So, really impressive from Joe Lamedo wins on this climb, gets a 10-second time bonus. Jonas Vindigard gets a six-second time bonus in second place. Jai Hinley finishes 28 seconds back, Sepp Kuz, 30 seconds back, and then Tom Pickack

finishes 116 back, still holds on to third place. He has a 52-second lead on Jai Henley, who moved up and the fourth is looking incredibly strong. But, Johan, what was your takeaway of the day? Well, you summed it up really well, Spencer. My takeaway of the day is, of course, Jawal made us impressive ride. I think it's the first time we see him in this Vuelta on such a high level and really determined riding his own tempo, not looking back. That was impressive.

of UAE did a really good race today. I saw this interview from Machin just before the stage. And the interviewer asked, you know, if they were going to send people in breakaway, straight away, he said no, like very, very like firm, no, straight away. He said from now on forward, all the team works for Jawal-Meda. So if that's true, what he said, and they keep that. That philosophy, I don't think we're going to see many UAE riders in breakaways anymore. And they shouldn't, you know, hey, six stage wins already.

I think they have to purely focus now on Almeida and surround him as much as possible with the whole team. I think Almeida deserves that. But yeah, I mean, the ride from Almeida was impressive. And then, you know, I wouldn't say disappointment, but, you know, I was expecting. an attack from Jonas. I think he himself was expecting a stage win today before the stage. He said that this was definitely an important stage and an important climb. And he did repeat that this was the climb where for the first time he found out that he could be a really good ground tour rider in 2020. We talked about it when he was doing that pulling for Ramos Rogledge.

And the attack never came. So it's difficult to see at the style of Jonas, right? I think he was not, I mean, he was on the limit, but he was not on the point of getting dropped, but he also hadn't anything left to accelerate. That makes the performance of Almeida even more impressive. You know, like I think that Almeida was totally expecting an attack from Jonas and definitely a sprint from him the fact that he was pulling all I mean he did more

than 10 kilometers of pulling I think um or maybe not maybe maybe seven it felt like 10 kilometers I think it was like seven yeah between six and seven yeah but still uh okay Angliro is also it's a climb does it really matter if you're on the wheel I would say not that much it's I think it's more a mental advantage than anything else because the speeds are so low that the drafting is, you know, really negligible, you know. But yeah, I mean, after seeing, seeing what I saw today, I would say this Volta is not won yet for Jonas. He definitely cannot permit himself to have a bad day. Of course, it can also. happen to almeida right we've seen already from almeida sometimes great performances and then

the day after two days later a bit less um it can happen to anybody uh but yeah those two guys are the two strongest climbers then also tom pitcock i would say you know bit tiny disappointment i would say we we are discovering tom pitcock he himself is discovering himself in this terrain uh we're now you know almost two weeks into the race he's never done done this for G.C. And today, it was not a great day for him, but he managed to limit the losses and still in third and was able to finish pretty good, I would say. There was a moment there that it looked not so good, looked pretty grim for Tom Pitcock when he had to let all these guys go, even he had to let Belizari and Felix Gal and Matthew Rickettello go.

But he kind of recovered and finished strongly. So, yeah, I think that's, that's a bit my, my, my takes of the day. I mean, Pitcock was 13th fastest time of all time. And that's like double counting. So SEPCUS is twice above him. You know, like that's, that's not a bad ride. And just to give people a feeling for how fast they were going today, Sep Kus went 21 seconds faster today that he did when he went up here in 2023.

and won the Valta Spagna. So they were absolutely flying. I mean, this is hands down. Jha made his best performance of his career. This is unbelievable. These are some calculations I was doing. The ascent, the official ascent, is 41, 57. One second slower than your rider, Roberto Horace.

Pretty impressive. He still has it since he couldn't even stand up because it was that rainy. And I have Omeda at around 6.3 watts per kilo. And Vindigard would, of course, be right around there as well because he went the same time. Maybe he got a little bit of draft. But it shows you the thing about that that's just impressive straight up. But the thing that shows you was Vindigard not nearly as strong as he was at the tour. Because when he was on Monvon, two, the last 45 minutes, he was probably six and a half watts per kilo.

So this is not like a sparkling gold, Jonas Vindigard. And to me, after this stage, it feels like it's been cracked. a little bit more open. I don't know. I don't know if you can call it cracked, Spencer. What for sure is that we kind of expected that today could be at the size of stage already that Jonas would probably, you know, decide the Vuelta today. And that has not happened.

And it's good. It's great. Yeah. I mean, if we assume if today we're like, oh, Zuel looks a little stronger than Yonis, actually, my theory, and I hope this isn't right. is I kind of wonder if they're stuck together for the rest of these mountain stages. Like neither can drops the other. They go into the time trial.

Almeida takes 20 seconds and then loses the overall by like 20 seconds. You know, you could you could kind of imagine that happening. Like Jonas just holding on because that guy we saw today did not. And he looked a little rattled in the tent at the finish. Like everyone was joking around. Jonas was by himself. I don't know if he's going to be able to drop Almeida. Almeida's been up and down, but like, this is also a different Almeida that we've seen in race's past.

Yeah. I think today's right, man. It's going to give him a huge morale boost. You know, that was, that was something. And you could see the pain on the face of Almeida. I was really worried that because Jonas didn't show that much suffering, although he was suffering, but you couldn't really see in his facial expression. So I was expecting.

I said, okay, you know, Almeida is going on the limit. Jonas will accelerate once and he'll lose 30 seconds. Turned out that Jonas was also on the limit. That means that what tells you is that he was on the limit is, you know, they get to like five hundred meters to go and they kind of go into the shoot. Like if Jonas could have, he would have passed because whoever is leading there is probably going to win the stage. All it took was like a little acceleration.

He didn't even have that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was actually, I think there was a tiny gap at some moment at some point. Yeah. With like 300 meters to go. Yeah, he was like struggling even to hold him in his wheel. Unfortunate for Almeida, the winner of his stage often does not go on to win the Volta.

No, no, no, it has never happened. I don't know if that's true because what about Contador in 2008? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, sorry, it's different. The one who was in the lead today has never won this stage. the rider with the leader's jersey today for this stage has never won on the Angliru no never they they talked about it on on Eurosport there's a guy there who has some good stats on on Belgian and so yeah that has never happened also another interesting thing about today so there's

four grand tour winners in this race vendergarde hindley kuss bernal three of those four finished top four on the stage. You know, Almeida's the only one in the top four that's not a grand tour winner, but it shows you like the cream is coming to the top of this race at this point. Yeah. I mean, we don't want to talk about him too much, but I would

say Egan Mernal is the guy, the missing guy there. Yeah, for sure. Four and a half minutes down. To me, this is a little deflating for maybe the Bernal Mafia because this might be what he is. It's a bit of a repeat from the Giro, no? Spencer, he started. It is. It is really, really,

good looking good attacking being up there and then kind of faded away a bit in the second part of the Gero and it looks like the story is repeating itself yeah and this is like yeah once you start seeing that repeat

it's like I don't know if what do you think is that just complications from the injury just not been able to bounce back to the level he was before that he is he is at his best level ever he was i don't know in this in this walta but um bernal got back to his numbers and even better numbers than when he won the tour in 2019 but for six years later those numbers mean nothing

yeah i even saw i even saw today that pitcock published some comments saying that he's he's breaking his records even today and yeah i would his best numbers ever and you know he's what is he seventh in the stage or eight i think he was sixth seventh no you're right yeah seven seventh fourteenth fastest time of all time think about that that's crazy but almeda i mean the wild thing to me about it so twenty twenty three we don't remember it but he was here he got sixth on the stage behind the the bisma fiasco like it just shows how much what fiasco spencer can you call it the fiasco one to three that was a fiasco an internal internal fiasco like p r p r fiasco yeah yeah if you if you look at it if you look at this through an american glasses then i would say yeah that that that didn't look

good it was it was almost more uproar about vizma and that Volta than there is about the Israel Premier Tech in this Volta if you can believe it. But it just shows you how much better Al-Meda's gotten since then. It's really impressive. Yeah. I mean, also, do you know who is ninth

on that stage in 2023? They're in this race. In this race? No, nowhere in G.C. No. Wanai used so. Oh, wow. but that's concerning to me that's that's clear regression right it's like you were ninth on the stage

and now i would say the not surprise of the day but the notable thing of the day was iuso dropped before the final climb after winning yesterday after dropping the day before it's like there's just clear he's no no intention of helping not interested he's absolutely not interested listen i mean you can say what you want i also i mean i i kind of think it's also probably a mental thing for Ayuso. He's still not used to suffering through the pain at some moment when it's not for him. Yeah. You know, like as a teammate, there are moments. You have to suffer through the pain and then at some point you kind of get through it and it so down a bit and you go to the front and you start to set your own tempo and all of a sudden you feel not going to see it great,

but you feel okay. With Ayuso, it's either he suffers 100% when it's, you know, for him and the stage win. And then I was surprised to see that happen because I repeat what Machin said. You know, today nobody goes in the break. And it's all for Joe Al-Meda. Turns out that they had somebody in the break anyway, Olivera.

Was his birthday, by the way, today. But, you know, he was in the break. And then finally, I think it was a good move because he was there at the bottom of Angliru and did an amazing pool for, for was it before j vine i think before j vine yeah um but you know i mean listen it's not normal it's not normal uh and the same by the way today goes for mark soler yeah you know yesterday both of these guys were in the break okay great they won the stage fifth stage win amazing

they were super strong both of them uh but today those two guys were not there and it's not normal that a guy, especially guy like Ayuso and even Solair is not there anymore when, for example, Dominovac is still there. That's not normal. How much work has Saler done for Al-Meda at this race? I mean, he's often not at the front when he needs him. Maybe he's leaving with him. But if I was Al-Mada, I'd be frustrated because it's like, well, you were off the front two days in a row. So clearly you're strong. And then when we need you, you're M-I-A. At least when we need you for this, your MIA, like, it's just something to keep an eye on. Like, maybe they circle the wagons, but the margins are tight at this race.

There's a 46 second gap between first and second. Like, they need all hands on deck from here now. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, normally, normally tomorrow, I mean, especially the way Almeida has proven himself today, normally tomorrow, no UAE can be in the break tomorrow unless it's again somebody like you know like olivera that

actually made sense because he was actually there when normally he would have not been there and you know a guy like olivaida today the way UAE rode would have not been able to do anything except of course everything we we don't see on tv right because let's not forget you know guys like Almei, like Olivera and Mikkel Björk and Novak, they do a lot of stuff before the TVs, the cameras come on, on the flats. You know, they keep Almeida in position. That's also obviously a big job to do. But, but yeah, tomorrow, UAE should not have anybody in a breakaway.

Let's see if that's going to be true or not. I'm dying to see. I cannot wait. But just to tie up a few odds and ends, Mateo Jorgensen finished the 17th, four and a half minutes down. Pretty deflating for his mini G.C. run that he's been putting together. Now he's third on Visma.

You'd have to imagine he gets slotted into a full team support role. For sure. You think that's true. Yeah. And the man, the myth of legend, Matt's Petterson, in the break again today.

It seems like he's endless power. I don't get it. And he wins the intermediate. immediate sprint point gets 20 more points. Now he's leading 192 to Vindegarde to 122. So he can start to feel somewhat comfortable here. Jonas would need to win four more stages, I guess, to be to be up there. Yeah, that's assuming that Pedersen gets no more intermediate sprats.

Yeah, for sure. No, it looks, it looks amazingly good for for Patterson for the points to Jersey. that would mean that he wins the points jersey in the two big the two grand tours that he's participated in this year in the Giro and in the end of Welta. Stage win would be nice to, you know, to put the cherry on the cake for him. That's definitely something he's still going to want to try. But of course, the way this course is designed, it's not going to be easy for Mats to win the stage.

Might have to win the time trial. or even like stage 16 the final climb is five and a half percent that's probably too hard for him but yeah yeah something like that but yeah you would be in the break with people who are better climbers is yeah and then another another thing we saw today um erased in the race is uh julio pelizari and mature ricketto for the white jersey right so initially i i looked like ricketto was in the best position. Pelizari had to back off a bit and lost a bit of time, not much. I think, you know, 15 seconds maximum. And, and then, you know, he managed that climb really well and, you know, Roderzan tempo came back and even took more time in the last 500 meters on Mathieu Ricotelo.

So, yeah, that's, I will see, we'll see. But the fact that Pelizari today is able to take time on Riquitello is definitely a good sign for the Italian. Yeah, I'm nervous now. Well, I mean, at the same time, you know, Rickettello moved up. He's in seven now, no, in G.C. So he moved up really nicely. And he had to fight to get at the start of this race. The team didn't want to bring him.

Yeah. Yeah. This seems like. That information that he initially he was told like last moment that he wouldn't be going to the Vuelta because. somehow somebody decided that the climbs were not good for him i don't know what kind of background that person has but uh if there's anything that's suited for him it's this felt uh you do you do see that sometimes where people will be like you know that climb just wasn't

good for me it was too explosive i'm like well yeah but just but hauling mass uphill yeah but yeah with the late uh how would i say it abandoned not abandoned but the late, not participation of Derek. Yeah. He got brought back in and, yeah, it looks, it looks quite good. I mean, listen, he's seventh now and I mean, I think he's probably going to stay there. He definitely staying in the top 10 needs to do a decent time trial at least, but we still have, we still have some really hard stages to come, which suit him very well.

I mean, it's kind of funny because you think he's probably doing better than Derek. G would be, this is the worst possible grand tour for Derek G to do. Yeah, this is not a good, this is not a good course for Derek G. Before we go to the prediction, so we did see, it didn't really matter, but the protesters also listener reached out to me said, I was incorrect. I probably phrased it incorrectly too, but so also we did, Yohana, we were wrong. Like, we thought that Israel was not on the Israel Premier Tech jerseys. It is.

It's not on the bus. But apparently the protesters, are explicitly protesting Israel Premier Tech being in the race. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't I hadn't picked up on that neither, but apparently it is. And you know, there is more and more pressure on Israel Premier Tech to leave the race from from riders, from other teams. I've seen an interview of one of the directors, a Spanish writer, a Spanish guy who's there already for a long time. And, you know, he, He explained a little bit his experience and says it's, it's horrible.

It's scary. At the end of the day, if we look, you know, nobody on this team in this Vuelta has anything to do with the problematic situation we're seeing. But at the end of the day, you know, you can say, oh, yeah, you know, well, this is, this has nothing to do with politics, right? Well, it turns out. It does. It does because, and let me see if I find this, yeah, it does because there's a tweet. When was it? Yeah, today actually, from the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin, what's, how did you pronounce it? Benjamin? Benjamin Netanyahu, potentially the most, you know, the vice of person on the planet. The guy at the core of the problem.

Yeah. Tweets, great job to Sylvan Adams and Israel's cycling team for not giving in to hate and intimidation. You make Israel proud. That tweet, I think, is the end of the participation of this team in this wealth. I think after this and also the fact that Adams publicly said, you know, because there were some rumors, there were some reports saying that. from next year on, the team would change, would leave Israel off the team name and just call it Premier Tech. Adams came in to correct that and said that never that's going to happen. Israel is always going to be in the name of the team. So I don't think it looks good for their continuation

in the Vuelta, Spencer. You know, today we saw a small protest, but it's not over. It's not over. And I think there's going to be so much pressure that they will have to leave it at well time. I mean, yeah, I think today didn't help. That is not help. Anytime Netanyahu is tweeting about you, it's not good. And I kind of thought, like, well, maybe on the rest day they could they could just move forward the name change, their Premier Tech. They have New Jersey's. You know, Adams would never do it because it's seen, it would be seen as like appeasement.

And I'm like, I don't know, you could massage it here. like it's not about politics and then after today it's like well there's no that that doesn't really work anymore because well it's it is political i mean if you if you see this this this yeah that's you know for sure now you now if you are really against them being in the race you have a pretty strong position yeah i mean you know the the the sad part is that none of these riders and none of the staff members have asked for this that's not why they are in this race right But they're contracted by a team happens to have the name of Israel. But, yeah, man.

I mean, today I heard a very strong rumor. I mean, I think it's kind of almost confirmed that they signed Biniam Girimae, Israel Premier Tech. I don't know if that's a smart move from Biniam. You know, I don't get that. Given this climate. And, yeah, I don't really get it. And then you, but I don't know, we've heard other riders are leaving the team and getting pay raises. One of them disputed there, G.

And then so it seems like are they, are they going to overpay Binium? I don't quite understand how they convinced him to do that. Well, I mean, you know, there was also reports that he was, he was on his way to UAE. I don't I didn't really see that because that means that there's obviously no two to the france for him if he's on israel premier tech that's definitely two to the france for him yeah but that means that needs to be then if the team keeps existing uh which could become uh an issue at some point i i agree i think it could become a serious issue but we saw the protest today they stopped the break didn't really matter break would have gotten caught anyway

but it's kind of i feel like the spanish organizers it's a little like laissez-faire you're like oh sorry you got stopped and you're like well i just lose all that time now and like they kind of pulled this guy off the road and then the guy was back on the road yeah yeah feels quite different from the tour to fronts in terms of crowd well i mean yeah there's obviously yeah it's different but um yeah i i you know normally the rules because they did say before that going forward, they would treat these protests the same way as if the peloton would be held up by a railway, by train, which means, you know, you stop the break and then you stop the peloton for the same amount of time. Here, I kind of felt straight away said that there's no way they're

going to keep, they're going to stop the peloton, you know, one kilometer into the Angliroo. That's, you know, it, it did matter. It didn't matter. That's true. And it wouldn't have mattered, but still, you know, it's another, another, yeah, interpretation of a situation where, you know, if you apply the rules, you would have to have stopped the peloton too. Yeah. I mean, I guess it would have screwed up UA's whole thing because that's when they were rolling on the front. Yeah. It sat weird with me where I'm like, well, they just lose that time and it's not credited back at all. like it just makes it feel like I kind of felt like our colleague Lance Armstrong you know he's often quite negative about how well some of these races are organized and I was like this feels like a joke like what are we what are we doing here like you got to keep the course clean

number number one rule of the race but it could get I was I was surprised to see that it took so much effort and manpower because it didn't look that there was a lot of people there It took a lot of policemen, and they had to be really, I mean, kind of violent to get the guy off the road. That's kind of scary, you know, going forward, if there's more people, how are they going to handle this, you know? Yeah, it doesn't seem like they have a great plan at least so far other than pressure Israel Premier's to leave, which could happen. we'll see what happens. I know, I know pressure is growing, but let's take a quick ad break, and then we will preview tomorrow. All right, Yohan, stage 14 tomorrow, this is a really hard stage, right after a really hard stage. But unlike today, it's very short, 136 kilometers,

two, there's three categorized climbs, but the first one is a cat three. I mean, I wouldn't want to go right at cat three right now, but hard, but they'll cruise over it. The second to last climb, Cat 1, 10K long at almost 10% average. That's very difficult. Going into a final climb that's 17K long at 6% average, doesn't sound that hard, right? Well, that's kind of fake because it's really a climb in two parts. The first, let's say 10K is rolling, like a power climb. The second, the last 7K is almost 9% average.

So, or 8.5% average. That's very steep. I think it will be very hard for breakaway to stay away. I think it's going to be G.C. Day. All this is the odds and then we'll talk about who's going to win. This is on Fanduel in the U.S. just because it's easy for me to look at this and the prices tend to be good. Jonas Vindigard plus 150, Juala Mata plus 500, Wandausa plus 600, Javon, plus 1,100,

Tom Piccock, plus 2,000, Mark Salair, plus 2,200, Jai Handley, plus 2200, Santiago, Bucrago, plus 3,300, it goes on and on. And if you want to bet, go to nxtdbets.com slash bet outcomes, and it will show you where you can bet where you live and the best prices and sign-up bonuses. Johan, how do you think this is going to play out, breakaway or GC and who's going to win? Yeah, I think, I think GC, short stage, 4,000 meters of elevation and only 136 kilometers. Yeah. And they start climbing. I mean, it's a third cat, but they start climbing at around 60K.

So that means that the break will need to have a decent amount of time in the first 60K. So I think GC, especially also with UAE now, with their motivation through the roof, they will also want to keep this together, I think. Because tomorrow could be a day where Almeida potentially could take some time on Jonas. But I'm going to go for Jonas Wingergaard at 150. He is still the specialist in stage races, three-week stage races, and he's solid. Whereas Almeida has been known in the past to have ups and downs a bit, not saying it's going to happen here, but I'm going to play it safe and go for Jonas Wingergaard

to win the stage at 150. Yeah, but Yonis Vindigart is like a bond. It's like buying a bond and like a steady company. And then Jalameda is like a penny stock that you've got a tip on. Almeida, he was plus 700 and he won today. So I'm going to go back to the well. I have them at 6 plus 650. I got him at.

I'm going Jalabata. I actually think this could be a more interesting stage than today. Because for all the talk of how steep the final climb was today, the gaps were not as big as stage nine. There was talk of Matt's Pedersen potentially winning on stage. stage nine. So I think these kind of higher speed climbs, and this is still is steep, but yeah, I do think this is super important for G.C. The climb we're going to see on stage 14. And I think Juala Lameda wins at plus 650. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's also, it's a hard,

super hard climb, alto the Fara Pona. I call it, Alto de Farrapona, Largos de Somied, though. I don't exactly know which one of the two. But, I mean, I'm, yeah. De Vuelta has been there in recent years. I don't remember who won there now, but... Maybe like Lopez? Like Miguel Ango Lopez? I could be, could be, I don't remember now. Now, Lopez won on a climb called a Gammonitayru, which is also an incredible, incredible steep climb in that area of Spain.

I'm going, my second choice, Spencer, is going to be some, I mean, just in, case there is a breakaway and somebody stays up front, Javier Romo. On Unibati, he's plus 2,000. I don't know if he have him anywhere better. But, you know, he was equally strong than Ayuso, I think, on yesterday's climb. Movistar, obviously, is desperate for a stage when it won't be Castrillo anymore. Pablo Castillo, because today for an unknown reason to me, he had to abandon the race. But the Romo looks really strong.

And if he's in a break, he definitely has the condition to stay away and win the stage. So he's my wild card for tomorrow. It's actually plus 3,500 on Fandual in the US. Okay. Interesting that it's that different. I might bet on them just because of the head. Yeah, we were talking about this before the show. Like breakaway sounds good, but you have to be so strong to stay away from the Peloton on this day.

But he stayed with Juso. What was that yesterday? So he's clearly very good on the climbs, powerful rider, a lot of talent. I like it. I'm going to go with the OG that you're going Juan Yuso light. I'm going Juan Yuso heavy. I'm just going to want to use so at plus 600. It makes no sense whatsoever.

He should not be in the breakaway tomorrow. But as we saw today, I don't think he cares that much about what the team says. I think he's going in the break, and I think he could win because he's so strong. Yeah. Well, Matin said from now on forward we're working for Almeida, but I don't know if I also got that memo. That's a completely reasonable thing to say as well. That makes complete sense, and that's what they should do. I would be surprised if Solair's up there with them.

I got to say, this is one of the weirdest things of ever. seen from a team they've won half the stages yeah they look like they are all on a different program they have a writer who might win the overall and like it all feels like it could fall apart at any second so it is a delightful situation to watch at least from the outside is it stage is a stage win 79 today it must have been right because yesterday was 78 so it's 79 now there's six away from the record yeah yeah maybe they'll send them up there to get that stage win. But this is a super, this will be a test, actually.

Like, it's a super important G.C. day. They should not be in the breakaway unless it's someone like Oliviera that they're just trying to get up the road. But if Iuso is up there, like, buckle up because this is not going to settle down for the rest of the race. Yeah, for sure. Anything else, Johan, before we take off? No, I think we've covered everything, Spencer.

all right thank you and we will be back tomorrow to talk about how this plays out okay thanks all right bye