After the general classification heroics of Dan Martin on La Vuelta in recent days, especially yesterday when he dug very deep on the summit finish, he may get some time to recover today as the sprinters get a chance at victory.
And that means Ireland’s Sam Bennett will be on the hunt
for another stage win to add to his bunch sprint victory of stage 4.
Bennett is gradually climbing up the list of current active riders with most Grand Tour stage wins at eight in his career so far; three on La Vuelta, two at the Tour de France and three on the Giro.
He said before the start of today's stage that this Vuelta was the first time he'd done a Grand Tour so close to a previous one and he felt "a bit tired", but overall he felt good.
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"We'll see if we can go for another sprint today," he said, adding today's sprint was less technical and he expected more riders to be in contention.
"Hopefully we have another good go today. I just do my own sprint and hopefully see what happens at the end."
If he were to win today on stage 9 he would draw level on nine career stage wins with the likes of Tom Dumoulin (Jumbo Visma), Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal), Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma) and Elia Viviani (Cofidis).
That’s still a long way off Mark Cavendish’s staggering tally of Grand Tour wins; the Bahrain McLaren rider with 48, some 30 of those coming on the Tour de France down the years.
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After Cavendish, Andre Greipel has
22 Grand Tour stage wins while Peter Sagan and Alejandro Valverde have 17 each
and Vincenzo Nibali has 15.
Chris Froome has 14 Grand Tour
stage wins in his career so far while John Degenkolb has 12 and Philippe
Gilbert has 11.
Those tallies - of currently active pro riders - mean that if Bennett was to win today, only eight riders still racing would have more stage victories than him in Grand Tours.
Today’s stage is a much flatter
affair than the racing of recent days with the stage taking the Vuelta riders
some 157.7km from Castrillo del Val to Aguilar de Campoo.
On stage 4 last week Bennett’s Deceuninck-QuickStep
put in fantastic work at the front of the bunch in the finale.
And once the final lead-out men
had done their work, the Irish rider then finished it off to win from Jasper Philipsen (UAE-Team Emirates), Jakub
Mareczko (CCC Team)
and Pascal Ackermann (Bora-hansgrohe).
The latter, Ackermann, is perhaps the biggest threat and
after Bennett took the green jersey from Bora-hansgrohe’s Peter Sagan at the
Tour de France, the German team would love to get one over on the Irishman
today.
However, on current form Bennett looks by far the fastest
in the race and how the fast men have recovered from all of the recent climbing
on this Vuelta will become clear later today.
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