Stage 17 of Tour de France 2022 takes place on Wednesday 20th July, there are three Category 1 climbs on a short route concluding in a summit finish.
STAGE 16 RECAP
Stage 16 was an excellent hors d’oeuvre to the big mountain stages that lie ahead and it saw one of the greatest upsets of the season with Hugo Houle attacking from the breakaway (seemingly to set the stage up for Michael Woods), only to make it over the final steep climb and down the other side to claim the victory. It was an emotional win as he had not won in his career before despite being in his early 30’s and he dedicated the victory to his brother who was killed in a hit and run 10 years ago.
Madouas put in an excellent performance to finish 2nd with Woods competing a great day for the Israel-Premier Tech team finishing 3rd.
Pogacar tried to attack Vingegaard on the penultimate climb, but Vingegaard was up to each challenge and the favourites rode into together with the only real loser on the day Bardet who lost time while Vlasov got into the break off and rode himself back into the Top 8.
JERSEY UPDATE
Vingegaard has now shortened again in the betting to 1/3 with Pogacar 5/2, Geraint Thomas is 16/1 and you can 50/1 and better the balance.
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The King of the Mountains classification still looks interesting and Simon Geschke has now firmed to a 2/1 favourite after taking points yesterday. Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard are joint second favourites at 7/2 and you can get 17/1 and better the balance.
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STAGE 17 BETTING – Click here to bet
Tadej Pogacar 7/2
Jonas Vingegaard 4/1
Thibaut Pinot 12/1
Michael Woods 12/1
Tom Pidcock 12/1
16/1 and better the balance
STAGE 17 ROUTE AND PREDICTIONS
Stage 17 is short at a 129.7 kilometres, but it is absolutely brutal with three Cat 1 and a Cat 2 climb. The stage gets off to a flattish start and we should see plenty of activity as the riders try and get into the break. Once again the break must stand a chance as both UAE and Jumbo-Visma are a bit short on resources to chase, but the short nature of this stage means they could yet come back together if the attacks amongst the contenders starts early.
It will also be interesting to see how Ineos approach the stage, they have ridden very conservatively to date, although that could be explained by the fact that Thomas and Yates clearly don’t have the legs of the two leaders.
There is very little flat once you start climbing in this stage and that makes long range attacks feasible and the final climb is 8 kilometres at 7.8% with a very steep final kilometre and we should get big gaps between the favourites.
I suspect that this stage will go to a General Classification rider, but also think that Vingegaard and Pogacar may mark each other out of the stage and I am going to go for Adam Yates to take advantage of this and break clear to ride away for the stage win at 33/1.
SELECTION: Yates win at 33/1
Note: All prices correct at the time of writing but are subject to change
