Roar Guru
The Vuelta a Espana rollls on, with the Stage 5 parcours nominally for the sprinters, a 171.3-kilometre trek from Viveiro to Lugo. Join The Roar for live updates and commentary from 11pm (AEST).
The first third of the stage sees the peloton ride along the Galician coast eastwards towards the town of Ribadeo, before the race turns inland and heads southwards towards the town of Lugo.
There is minimal risk of the race being blown apart by crosswinds during the ride from Viveiro to Ribadeo, based on current weather forecasts for the region.
As the race heads inland, the terrain becomes lumpy, featuring a Category 3 climb. Officially beginning at the 107-kilometre mark, the ascent of the Puerto de Marco de Álvare (11.8km at 3.6%) will likely lie too far from the finish to truly influence the result.
After cresting the summit of the Puerto de Marco de Álvare, the peloton have just 51.3 kilometres left, with a potential soft tailwind slightly assisting the pace of the race into the finish in Lugo.
The sprinters and their lead-out trains will have to carefully measure their effort in the final five kilometres, with a primarily uphill drag to the finish – assuming a plucky breakaway does not surprise the chasing peloton. A short reprieve awaits with just two kilometres to go, as the terrain flattens, before the gradient softly rises again in the final kilometre, for a finale that could deceptively sap the legs if someone goes hard too early.
Etixx – Quick-Step should be confident of securing a second stage victory, after Gianni Meersman comfortably took out the second stage, with the profile actually suiting Meersman better than Stage 2.
Hoping to foil Etixx – Quick-Step will be the riders such as Kristian Sbaragli, Magnus Cort Nielsen, Jonas Van Genechten, Fabio Felline or Niccolo Bonifazio, Jose Joaquim Rojas and Nikias Arndt. So far Etixx – Quick-Step have proven themselves to have the strongest sprint train but a lot can change over the space of two stages and a different finale.
My dark horse and pick for today’s fifth stage is young Danish rider Magnus Cort Nielsen from Orica-BikeExchange, who finished strongly on Stage 2, despite a messy build-up to the sprint hampering his lead-in.