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Groves is now the frontrunner for the green jersey at the Vuelta a Espana, but only if the top climbers pay very little attention to building up their own points tallies in the remaining weeks of competition.
The former motocross rider has been motoring early at the 2023 Vuelta, taking two stage wins and also winning the only other bunch sprint for second on stage 2, won by solo breakaway rider Andreas Kron (Lotto Dstny).
He made the most of his first chance at the win on stage 4, overcoming Juan Sebastian Molano (UAE Team Emirates) on a dragging uphill finish in Tarragona to claim victory by a few lengths.
Groves then made it two stage wins in as many days, winning stage 5 into Burriana in a bunch sprint ahead of the unlikely sprinting rival of Filippo Ganna (INEOS Grenadiers). Dries Van Gestel (TotalEnergies) was third in a tighter finish than Groves’ stage 4 victory.
Race leader Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) provided the only action of the sleepy stage in the general classification standings, taking the intermediate bonus sprint to extend his overall advantage by six seconds, with Groves tagging along to collect more points in the green jersey standings to move himself further into the lead of the classification.
The pair shared a joke at the finish, Evenepoel pleased that he’d beaten Groves to the intermediate point, the Australian saying in response that he’d probably have won if it had been the finish line instead.
The Belgian may prove to be one of the Australian’s main rivals for the green points jersey, often referred to as the sprinters’ jersey. In the Vuelta, that convention is a little different, and climbers have gone through periods of dominating the classification, with the organisers' penchants for hard stage finishes and mountains playing into climbers’ hands.
You only have to go as far back as 2020 to find when winner of the overall race, Primoz Roglic, also claimed the green jersey. In 2021, more points were awarded for flatter stages, bringing it into line with the other Grand Tours in the trend of sprinters winning, with Fabio Jakobsen and Mads Pedersen winning comfortably in subsequent years as the balance of power swung back towards the fast men.
For a quick overview of the points, here’s the basic rundown: stages are categorised into groups of difficulty, with points assigned for the first 15 riders over the finish line on a different scale depending on the stage’s group. Riders' positions are also taken at the intermediate sprints, another way to accrue lots of points.
Points classification La Vuelta a Espana 2023:
Group 1 – 50 points, drops off steeply, 30 for 2nd, then 20 for 3rd, then less dramatic from there (Stages 4,7,19,21)
Group 2 and 3 – 30 points, drop off shallow (Stages 2,5,9,12,15,16)
Group 4 and 5 – 20 points, drop off very shallow (Stages 3,6,8,11,13,14,17,18,20)
Group 6 – 20 points, drop off shallow (Stages 1,10)
Intermediate sprints – 20 points drop off shallow – One per stage apart from time trials
Groves, on 122 points, already holds a 60-point advantage over Andrea Vendrame (AG2R-Citroen), with Evenepoel third on 45 points. In the following calculation, I’m counting the other sprinters out, they aren’t of the same consistency and class as Groves, or have his team support.
The path to victory for Groves is more tenuous than it appears at present. His part is to make sure he maximises the remaining group 1 stages (7, 19 and 21). He would probably want to score at least 90 points on those stages (1st, 3rd, 3rd for example). They’re very flat stages, but the peloton might be sufficiently sick of Groves’ winning ways to the point that they’re not to keen to help with pace-making, so it will be important to prevent large breakaways forming.
The Group 2 and 3 stages are a bit of a mixed bag, stages 9 and 16 - Groves has no chance to score points at the finish, whereas on 12 he’ll be the favourite. The problem will be that if Evenepoel or Roglic (as the better sprinters from the climbers) can get wins in those uphill, punchy finishes, they will start racking up a points total that can start to approach Groves'. It’s probably a swing of 20 or so points on these stages to a dominant climber, away from Groves.
The Group 4 and 5 stages are obviously trouble spots for a sprinter, even a good climbing sprinter like the Australian. All of these stages are hideously hard, and all of them have the intermediate sprints hidden after the penultimate climb of the stage, meaning that there are no chances for little jaunts up the road to amass points.
The good news is that the reduced points scale means it’s harder to build up a massive stack of points, but there are also eight more stages like this, nine if you include the time trial which will again likely feature Evenepoel and Roglic. It’s actually easy to get a 100-150 point swing to the climbers here, depending on how breakaways work out in taking away the top positions.
The way the intermediate sprints work out will actually be crucial if it turns out like suggested above, as a back-of-the-napkin calculation puts the Evenepoel/Roglic type either within 30 points or close to equal with Groves. They won’t be chasing intermediates, and the way the bonus seconds have been apportioned is that they’ll largely be on climbs for the harder stages than on the intermediate sprint points.
However, there are still a few times where the 6,4,2 spread of bonus seconds will be an enticing carrot, and we’ve already seen Evenepoel keen to chase any advantage he can in the fight for red. And this is the bit that we shouldn’t show Evenepoel, Roglic and co, that with the barest consideration for picking up points where available at intermediate sprints, they can take the jersey away from Groves. In those eight stages mentioned, they’d need to only score well in a few to put themselves above Groves in the points standings.
There’s not too much Alpecin-Deceuninck can do to stop that, if you really wanted to get creative and it’s coming down to the wire, maybe you stick a guy like Jason Osborne in the breakaway on a few key stages and say that your only job is to make sure the breakaway takes out the intermediate sprint and hopefully the stage. Maybe that’s 20 or 40 points less to Groves’ rivals in the final classification.
Smaller breakaways in the mountains are bad for Groves, more aggressive riding by the GC teams is bad for Groves.
The other side is maximising the points Groves takes on intermediates he can reach. The team had actually told Groves not to sprint for points on Stage 5 but he saw them being available pretty easily, so he tagged along with Evenepoel to take second without expending much energy. That was a bit mind-boggling from the team’s perspective as they clearly haven’t got anyone making sure that Groves maintains his jersey lead, or they don’t value it at all.
Thankfully, Groves does, talking about it being a special jersey with a lot of history for Australian riders. If he wants to write a new chapter into that book, he’s going to need to continue his winning ways, be smart, be cognisant of opportunities to gain points, and rely on a bit of apathy from his competitors in the mountains.
The way the stages are set up, it's a good chance that Groves finds himself out of green before the final couple of stages and has to fight his way back in on the road to Madrid.
It could be a nail-biting watch for Aussie fans.
