La Vuelta Stage 16 Predictions: 11/2 and 10/1 picks on mountainous moving day

The final furlong of La Vuelta 2025 begins on Tuesday as the riders return from the second rest day to take on Stage 16 over 167.9km between Poio and Mos-Castro de Herville (live on TNT Sports 3 from 13:30 BST, highlights at 22:00).

There will be over 3500 metres of climbing to negotiate on this one, and with Jonas Vingegaard looking to hold onto the red jersey we may well see attacks from those challenging on GC. My La Vuelta Stage 16 are below, and it won’t be those in red-jersey contention that I’ll be considering.

La Vuelta Betting Odds

As can so often be the case in La Vuelta, there is plenty of climbing to be done on Tuesday.

After Sunday’s Stage 15 saw the biggest breakaway lead of the year opened up, it’s tempting to back another escape here, but the GC hopefuls need to find a hole in Vingegaard’s make-up sooner or later if he is to be deposed.

This could be a day to attempt it, with four categorised climbs to deal with. They start just shy of the half-way mark with the Cat 3 Alto de San Antonino, an 8.9km hike at 4.1%.

Next up comes the toughest assault of the day, an 11.4km climb at an average 5.4% up the Alto da Groba, a Cat 1 obstacle which has three separate steeper ramp sections that could help to break up the pack.

It’s the up the Cat 2 Alto de Prado at 8.9% for 3.2km, which includes areas of 10.1% and 14.3%, before they approach the Castro de Herville stage finale.

The final 8.3km ramp of the stage goes upwards at an average of 5.2% on the Cat 2 effort, but this is a peculiar climb which undulates quite notably in the opening half of the mountain.

There’s then another five kilometres of climbing up to the finish line.

Vingegaard is the 11/2 favourite for the stage, with Juan Ayuso 6/1 to record a third stage win in his final Grand Tour with UAE Team Emirates.

Britain’s Tom Pidcock is a 13/2 chance, and King of the Mountains classification leader Jay Vine is 10/1.

Cycling Odds

Jonas Vingegaard @ 11/2

To some degree, there is no rush for Jonas Vingegaard. Just as Primoz Roglic waited until Stage 20 to eventually overtake Ben O’Connor and claim the red jersey in last year’s event, the Dane could leave it late to make the move that will see him finally put this race to bed.

But Jonas knows as well as anyone that to take too many chances with just a 48-second lead on GC might not be advisable. And the Visma-Lease a Bike team leader doesn’t like to leave things to chance.

He won’t go so early that he does more harm than good, but at this point in the three-week contest he will be looking for the first sign of fatigue in his rivals before launching an attack in an effort to put an extra time buffer between himself and the rest.

So I’m looking at him to make an extra effort into the final climb and seeing what response the likes of Joao Almeida, Jai Hindley and Tom Pidcock have.

It might not be the toughest of sections, but then neither was the Cat 2 finish on Stage 2 at Limone Piemonte and yet Vingegaard went and picked up the victory there. He’s an opportunist, is Jonas, and it might just knock for him on Tuesday.

The 11/2 price carries an implied 15.4% probability, but that is doing the 28-year-old down.

Jay Vine E/W @ 10/1

Jay Vine’s fingerprints have been all over this Vuelta a Espana. Four times he has gone long on breakaways, and he has recorded two wins. On Sunday he added an eighth-place finish after a 162km escape.

This hasn’t been a tour of extensive breakaways in the grand scheme of things, but when there has been a long assault, Vine has been key to it.

The Australian now has a healthy lead in the KOM standings, 22 points ahead of Vingegaard having claimed 61 to date, and with even one more day out in front of the pack he might well all-but clinch the polka dot jersey for the second year in succession.

So if there is an escape which sticks, I’m banking on Vine being front and centre in it. He’s no threat to the GC, being over an hour behind, so if he has riders of a similar overall position alongside him, he might just be allowed to go ahead and challenge for a third stage victory.