La Vuelta Stage 19 Predictions: Two picks for moving day in GC battle

Stage 19 of the 2024 Vuelta a Espana should be moving day in the race for the red jersey as Ben O’Connor, Primoz Roglic and Enric Mas make their moves for the GC title. If the team of the moment – Equipo Kern Pharma – let them, that is (live on Eurosport 1 from 13:30 BST, highlights at 20:00).

The 173.5km between Logrono and the Cat 1 mountain-top at Alto de Moncalvillo will be a decisive spell of this year’s race as O’Connor’s five-second advantage is put to the test. My La Vuelta Stage 19 predictions do not favour the Australian.

La Vuelta Betting Odds

Roglic is the stage favourite as well as the clear 1/8 fav to win the red jersey in Madrid on Sunday. He’s 7/2 to cross the line first at the top of the Moncalvillo, with Mas 5/1 to outdo him and throw the GC battle into doubt ahead of Saturday’s Queen Stage.

There appears to be decent value beyond them. Richard Carapaz, who’s always involved on the high mountains, is 8/1 to bring it home for EF Education-Easypost, while Scunthorpe’s Max Poole is 12/1.

You can get 16/1 with Betfred for Eddie Dunbar and Jay Vine, with Pablo Castrillo 20/1 to pull off yet another astonishing win for Kern Pharma.

Cycling Odds

Unless something out of the ordinary happens, this will be the day O’Connor loses the red jersey after more than two weeks in the lead. That said, this has been a race full of the less than ordinary.

Thursday’s win for Urko Berrade was a third in the space of a week for invitee term Kern Pharma following two successes for Castrillo, and with Pau Miquel has turned in some valiant efforts to win on the sprint days, finishing third, fourth twice and coming home third again on Thursday only to be relegated to ninth for supposedly deviating off his line in the dying metres.

But it should be the GC guys taking the spotlight on Friday, with the mountain-top finish going some way to deciding the destination of the red jersey 48 hours hence.

The parcours? It has two big lumps. The first comes after 60km of almost constant climbing. It peaks at the 94.3km mark with the Puerto de Pradilla, which is officially a 5.2km spike but the start of it is barely noticeable given the gradual elevation which precedes it from 35km in.

The other big ramp comes in the final 8.6km at the Alto de Moncalvillo, with over 700m of vertical gain up to the finish line with slopes of up to 16% in a brutal final 5km in particular.

Primoz Roglic @ 7/2 

While this hasn’t been the constant success for me that the Tour de France was, there have been a couple of good wins and a lot of near-misses.

Never more so really than on Thursday, when the 33/1 pick over Oier Lazkano on an each-way bet almost landed, the Spaniard finishing fifth after breaking away with 40 others early on.

On Friday we go for the kill, which is just what I’m expecting of Primoz. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have come here for nothing less than a Roglic win, and they have played their hand almost perfectly to this point.

Since miscalculating on stage six and letting Ben O’Connor build a big GC lead, they have chipped away and chipped away to the extent that Roglic now sits within five seconds with a mountain-top finish, a Queen Stage and an individual time-trial to come.

He doesn’t necessarily need to win any of the three to get the job done, but I can well believe that the Slovenian sees Friday as the right time to put a marker down.

Richard Carapaz E/W @ 8/1

I don’t think the bookies will be too far wrong with their theoretical 1-2-3 of Roglic, Mas and Carapaz, but for value I’m tempted by the Ecuadorian.

He’s 8/1 (an implied 11.1% chance) as opposed to Mas’ 5/1 (16.7%) but I think there’s nothing more than a cigarette paper between them. If anything, if the three likely lads are up near the front at the end, Carapaz is the one Roglic can most afford to go free and claim a few extra seconds.

Mas has spent 99 per cent of this race hugging Roglic’s back wheel, so shouldn’t be too far off. But there’s something about Richard, and that extra value wins my backing.

You can read all our latest Cycling Betting Tips here.