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Published on Friday, 10 May 2019 10:30

Giro - Team Classification

Astana to rule the road? 

Team classification - a tricky market to work out - you need to try to find a team that will score three guys high up the results in every stage, as it's the aggregate time of the top three finishers every stage added together that decides this competition.

So you will have teams who will work for their leader and then fade away a long way to the top of a climb, thus maybe having rider 2 and 3 lose quite a bit, and you will have teams who will ride steady and consistent and try to place several guys in the top 20 so as to score highly in the team prize. Then you have the teams who will have riders go in breakaways, if a break can win with 3 or 4 minutes in hand, that can help greatly too. 

Last year Astana were the 6/4 favourites and looked pretty solid. As it turned out, they finished more than 24 minutes behind Sky who were 7/2 to take it. Mitchelton Scott were the 2/1 second favourites and they ended up in 8th place, over two and a half hours down on Sky!

Astana are the 5/4 favourites again this year, and it's easy to see why. They are absolutely flying again, they have MAL who will be top 6 on all the big stages, but also Pelle Bilbao and Ion Izagirre should be right up there on all the mountain stages. Jan Hirt and Davide Villella won't be far behind and are also candidates for breakaways, as is Mauele Boaro and Andrey Zeits. 

Movistar are second at 7/2, and like Astana they have their big GC leader in Mikel Landa, but also good supporting riders in Richard Carapaz and Andrey Amador. Carapaz is also capable of a top 10 on most stages and top 10 overall, so he'll be a big help to the team classification, while Luis Mas, Jasha Sutterlin, JJ Rojas and Hector Carretero are all capable of getting in big breaks that can make it all the way. 

Team Ineos - 9/2 3rd favourites, they could be absolutely anything in this race. We might see three or four of them at the forefront of all the big stages, or they might be all out the back door grovelling up the hills. TGH, Sosa and Sivakov are capable of big rides, but can they all do it for three weeks? Will there still be three of them competing at the end of the third week? That might be their downfall. They are a team full of youth and experience though, with Knees, Puccio and Henao also in the squad, and I wouldn't be surprised to see several of them on the attack almost every day. 

Bahrain Merida are 7/1, and they could be a good outside shot here. Nibali will go well on all the big stages, but Dom Pozzovivo, Damiano Caruso and Valerio Agnoli could also score well for them. It might be though that it's just Nib and Dom who are left at the front for the key stages and the others might be too far back to really help the cause. 

Mitchelton Scott are a much bigger 8/1 this year, but apart from Yates, who should be one of the top riders, they will be relying on Esteban Chaves and Mikel Nieve to pull out the stops on the mountains. But Nieve can be very flaky and will very often disappear on the mountains after doing a job, same with Chaves if he isn't really riding for a GC place. It was one of the reasons they finished 2 1/2 hours down last year. The rest of the team will not be helping their cause. 

Bora were a surprise 3rd place last year after great rides throughout by Konrad, Grosschartner and Formolo, I think they were something like 33/1 to win it. This year they have a similar lineup, with Majka and Formolo leading the line and in great shape. But that's about it really, the rest of the team is built around Ackermann, with Schwarzmann, McCarthy, Benedetti and Selig so it's hard to see where their 3rd man is going to come from each day. 

Jumbo Visma could be an e/w longshot if there was any e/w betting available, Roglic will do well, but Laurens de Plus, Antwan Tolhoek, Sepp Kuss and Koen Bouwman could be well up there in the mountain stages and some could even get in a break or two too that can help the cause. Bet365 are still win only at 25/1 but Skybet are offering e/w, albeit just 1/5 the odds at 22/1, but that might be worth a nibble. 

Other than that, can't really see any other team get involved, it looks like a battle between Astana and Movistar, and I just think Astana have more firepower across many more eventualities and are the bet at 11/8 with Skybet. 

Recommendation:

3pts win on Astana at 13/8 with Skybet

0.5pts e/w on Jumbo Visma at 22/1 with Skybet

Jumbo Visma to beat Sunweb - 2pts at evens

Will add a double of Ineos to beat Bora and Bahrain to beat Mitchelton if Bet365 get around to allowing doubles.