Andre Greipel Wins His Third Stage of the Vuelta a Espana

It wasn’t exactly a thrilling stage in today’s Vuelta a Espana (unless you count a nasty crash), mostly due to the lack of climbing. There was lots of flat road which meant that it was likely going to come down to another group sprint. And since Tyler Farrar was out, the field was seemingly wide open for Andre Greipel to win his third stage of the Vuelta.

“It’s a very important win for me, I very much wanted to get the victory today for a lot of reasons,” Greipel said afterwards. “It was a tricky finish with a lot of corners, but my team-mates kept me in front and I managed to stay out of trouble. We were lucky that only one rider was in the break and that made it a lot easier for us to control the race during the stage.”

Greipel wound up taking over the green jersey for points from overall general classification leader Alejandro Valverde who still remains in the golden jersey. With many of the other sprinters gone, Greipel seems poised to wind up in the green jersey at the end since there are only a couple of climbing stages remaining in the 2009 Vuelta. Especially given the way the course projects out tomorrow for stage 17.

Also, without bragging too much, SB Nation’s cycling site Podium Cafe totally called the winner of the stage today before it even started.