La Vuelta Stage 16 Predictions: 9/2 Roglic and 12/1 Mas set for another battle

After the final rest day of La Vuelta a Espana 2024, the last week of racing begins with another almighty ascent. Tuesday’s 181.3km Stage 16 between Luanco and Lagos de Covadonga includes a huge high-category mountain-top finish which is seeing its fifth inclusion in the race in the last 10 years (live on Eurosport 1 from 11:30 BST, highlights at 20:00).

My La Vuelta Stage 16 predictions will take into account Primoz Roglic’s brilliant previous climb up the Covadonga in 2021, when he outstripped Egan Bernal in the last 7.6km to take a stranglehold on the GC on his way to a third straight title.

La Vuelta Betting Odds

Roglic is the 9/2 favourite to repeat his 2021 victory over a very similar course with the exact same finish. Britain’s Max Poole is next at 10/1, with Stage 11 winner Eddie Dunbar 12/1.

UAE Team Emirates’ Jay Vine is also 12/1, as is Enric Mas of Movistar. Felix Gall and Pablo Castrillo, the talk of the cycling world after his two race wins in the last four stages for invitee team Kern Pharma, are both 16/1.

Cycling Odds

The last 85km of Tuesday’s parcours basically takes in the run-in to Stage 17 of the Vuelta three years ago, save for the loss of one of the two visits up the Collada Llomena which featured last time.

Here, the first Cat 1 climb comes to its peak 77km in at the Mirador del Fito. This is a 7.1km lift at an average gradient of 7.9% but which includes 12% ramps midway up and a steep patch once more in its final kilometre.

There’s then a steady incline for 21km which leads to the foot of the Collada Llomena, another category-one proposition of 7.6km in length at an average 9.3%. There are three separate steeper sections, with the middle one of those taking in 14% patches.

After that it’s a long descent, with a total of almost 35km of downhill, before the 12.5km stage-ending climb up the Lagos de Covadonga. It’s an average of 6.9% but there are a couple of drops in there to soften that number, with a long 3km-plus section at the midway point which will take riders up at a 16% gradient.

The number of difficult climbing tasks ahead surely make this stage a prospect for climbers and GC contenders only, with the sprint teams simply needing to get through to the end ahead of Wednesday’s flat finish into Santander.

Primoz Roglic @ 9/2

The Slovenian has not been a great source of stage success during this Vuelta, with most of his triumphs coming in shaking off Ben O’Connor with short, punchy attacks off the front of chasing groups rather than in hunting victories.

He does have a couple of wins under his belt though, into Pico Villuercas and then Cazorla, and on Tuesday he may feel like he has a point to prove to race organisers after he was handed a 20-second penalty for drafting behind his team car on Sunday.

That came after he’d dropped off the back of his group to switch bikes for a model with a single chainlink setup ahead of the torturous 24% gradients on the Cuitu Negru.

So I think he’ll be redoubling his efforts to make more time on O’Connor, and perhaps even go all out to make this his red-jersey day just as he did on the same climb three years ago.

He has happy memories on this terrain and has also been known to come back from rest days to great effect in his previous Vuelta successes to date.

This could be where number four becomes his for the losing.

Enric Mas E/W @ 12/1

The Spaniard did appear to have shaken off Roglic at one point on the Cuitu Negru on Sunday, but the pair ended up recording the same time, 1:04 behind the triumphant Castrillo.

Mas is the type to have a real go on mountain-top finishes though, and he could have another dig on the Covadonga.

He was sixth up the same mountain in 2021, being part of the chase group which successfully tracked down Bernal after the Colombian had been dropped by Roglic.

And while he doesn’t have a huge number of stage wins to his name, it is his stickability on days such as this which makes him such a GC threat.

I fancy the look of him at 12/1 and a 7.7% implied probability to at least place. First, second or third will get you a quarter the odds on the place half of your each-way flutter.

You can read all our latest Cycling Betting Tips here.