Giro d’Italia Odds: 11/2 for Pogacar to win points jersey

Cycling’s Grand Tour season begins on Saturday when 176 riders line up in Venaria Reale for the opening stage of the 2024 Giro d’Italia, with two-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar taking to the il Bel Paese’s flagship contest for the first time.

The Slovenian leads a field including the likes of Geraint Thomas, who narrowly missed out to Primoz Roglic 12 months ago, and young Italian star Antonio Tiberi, who heads Bahrain-Victorious’ assault on the team title. The Giro d’Italia odds show Pogacar will take some beating.

Let’s get the headline news out there… Pogacar is the huge favourite. So big a favourite, in fact, that he’s 1/4 to win the Giro on his first attempt.

Get your money on it if you want, but I’m not tipping him for the GC here simply on the grounds of value. Yes, he should win it. If he stays on his bike, it ought to be a formality. So if 1/4 certs are your bag, you’re welcome.

The field has, of course, been shredded by that huge crash on the fourth stage of the Itzulia Basque Country in early April which left reigning Giro champion Roglic badly beaten up and back-to-back Tour de France king Jonas Vingegaard with a collapsed lung, fractured collarbone and scapula.

The 2022 Vuelta a Espana winner Remco Evenepoel was another big name accounted for in the pile-up, with the Belgian requiring surgery for a broken collarbone and shoulder blade which has affected his preparation for the Tour de France and Olympic Games.

But beyond the likely one-horse race in the GC standings there are plenty of stories to be told on the streets of Italy before the pink jersey finds its final resting place on somebody’s – probably Pogacar’s – shoulders in Rome on May 26.

Tadej Pogacar to win the Points Classification @ 11/2

Beyond the maglia rosa, Pogacar should be able to compete for other honours over the next three weeks. His excellence over climbs make him a King of the Mountains contender, with three back-to-back stages around the Alps and Dolomites in the final week set to test the climbing specialists.

The UAE Team Emirates, indeed, is the 5/2 favourite to earn the maglia azzurra as the KoM, but another jersey I have him down for is the maglia ciclamino as the points classification winner.

That’s because the last five times Pogacar has won a stage race, he has also come top of the points leaderboard. Not since the UAE Tour has he claimed the overall title without also bagging the secondary crown.

That might come as a surprise to some, but when you consider he has always been a contender for the white jersey to this point, we’re all so used to seeing him in either yellow (or its variant) or white that his dominance of the points competitions has been largely been forgotten about.

He’s 11/2 to continue that recent trend (that's a 15.4% implied probability), which seems like fantastic value to me considering there aren’t so many sprint stages that he will be out of contention by the time the more taxing days of the race arrive.

Thymen Arensman to win the Young Rider Classification @ 7/2

Italy’s local hope Tiberi might be the bright young star catching the eye ahead of the Grande Partenza, but I like the look of the Ineos Grenadiers’ Thymen Arensman to outperform the other under-25s in the field.

The Dutchman has done a lot of the hard yards on the World Tour in recent years, and while he doesn’t have a bunch of stage wins to his name, he has been there or thereabouts on plenty of occasions.

He was second only to Joao Almeida – now 25 and therefore no longer in this category – in the race for the maglia bianca 12 months ago, with five top-10 finishes helping to boost his chances. And as recently as this March he placed third in the youth ranks of the Tirreno-Adriatico after picking up time over the mountains on stages five and six of the one-week event.

And if he can perform on the climbs in the north-east of Italy in stages 15, 16 and 17, he should be well in the running to be dressed in white through the streets of Rome.

You can read all our latest Cycling Betting Tips here.