Hard to predict this one. Tough day, but lots of flattish roads between the mountains, so expect it hard for an attacker to stay away. Maybe another massive breakaway day?

“disraceful” - I think your typo is strangely appropriate. In the end, this is a race, and riding as fast as you can is exactly the normal way to race.

The teammate aspect and birthday aspect are pretty overblown. If the team have told them to race and not to wait for each other, then they should do exactly that. And the scheduling fluke of having a big stage on your birthday - is that really relevant?!

If Kuss manages to win it will be because he was strong enough, not because riders who could have beaten him decided not to try. Surely that is more worthy of respect than the strongest riders deciding to give him a gift.

“he will always be just a domestique” - I mean that is true, and has been for a while. He is clearly not as good as Roglic and Vingegaard. If he wants team leadership then he would have to go elsewhere.

That said, the ‘best’ rider doesn’t always win Grand Tours and he may well still win this race. It would certainly be the best story. If he doesn’t win, it will be because he wasn’t as strong as the winner. That may be a bit harsh, but very hard to argue that it is ‘undeserved’.

I don’t get this take.

“Putting yourself ahead of the team” might be a bad thing. But in this case Primoz and Jonas aren’t putting the team’s win in jeopardy.

Maybe Jumbo Visma decide that three different winners is fun, maybe they decide that Jonas needs a better palmares, maybe having Kuss win will motivate him in future, maybe they decide to simply see who is strongest on the road, maybe they play rock paper scissors. Ultimately, between the three riders and the team management they’ll make a decision. And frankly any are fine. Internal team politics doesn’t seem like something to get worked up about.

PREDICTION: Big fight for the breakaway, maybe 20+ riders get away. Gregoire and Kron again get narrowly beated by a better climber - maybe Bardet.

I think he’s lost enough time already to not be marked, but surely he won’t have the legs to win even if he got into the break.

POST RACE EDIT: Well this was a bad call!

Hmm, a decent prediction for the day, but I think I now predict that this overall prediction is wrong.

Kuss must now be favourite to win overall. Hard to see Roglic or Vingegaard attacking to take it off him, and he looks stronger than anyone else. (As well as having a tidy advantage.)

Still plenty of racing to go, and it is far from a certainty, bpt it seems the most likely scenario.

You know it’s been a hard stage when 26th place is over 22 minutes down!

I’m so looking forward to today. Hard to see anything but a pure GC shakeup, possibly with GC-rider attacks on one of the two early climbs.

I’m not sure who it will be, but I predict the winner today wins the Vuelta.

Something different today (stage 5) at least!

Yeah, I’ve not watched much of it, but doesn’t seem to have been particularly interesting.

Hopefully the weekend stages will have some good racing.

Four wins out of four for Kooij so far, looking good to wrap up the remaining two sprint stages as well.

Can anyone challenge van Aert over the weekend?

Good to see Kron and Gregoire up there again, but a well deserved win from Herrada.

I’m going to go Ganna for the win.

The race is beautifully poised going into the time-trial. Evenepoel, Roglic, Vingegaard and Ayuso are very close together and should all put in strong time trials. Kuss, Soler Martinez will probably drop a couple of minutes to join them.

There are no bonus seconds on offer, so that makes the decision easier.

Other than that, your assessment seems pretty accurate.

We don’t really have rules yet as far as I know. I think that keeping spoilers out of thread titles seems sensible, but I think otherwise better to have good comments than worry too much about spoilers.

PREDICTION: Another sizable breakaway to take the win. Roglic to take time on all his rivals.

Great to see a surprise winner!

Good win for Kuss, and lovely to see Lenny Martinez get the Red Jersey. With a 2:30 lead over the big favourites, I could see him keeping it quite late in the race. It certainly sets him up really well for a good overall result.

Evenepoel held it together well after being dropped and is still marginally ahead of Vingegaard and Roglic. I was surprised by how split up the GC contenders were, basically in ones and twos.

INEOS look out of contention for now, Thomas and Arensman both shipping time.