Strong climber Polanc a live hope at 66-1 in open-looking stage

Stage 12: Motril to Antequera
Starts 12.15pm Thursday, Live on Eurosport from 2pm

After the big action on Wednesday’s summit finish, which saw Chris Froome stretch his lead to 1min 19sec with Vincenzo Nibali moving up to second ahead of Esteban Chaves, this is likely to be a day for a breakaway rider to claim stage victory.

Whoever wins will still need to be a good climber, with the 1st category Puerta del Leon to be crested after 101km and the 2nd category Puerto del Torcal after 142km, followed by a 17.5km drop to the finish.

The route is similar to stage 10, which produced Matteo Trentin’s second stage win of this year’s race, and the Italian is among the leading fancies again at 16-1. The 6-1 favourite is Julian Alaphilippe, the stage eight winner, and another previous scorer Alexey Lutsenko (stage five) is 28-1.

The leading home hopes according to the betting are Luis Leon Sanchez (11-1) and Jose Joaquin Rojas (22-1), but a longer-priced Spaniard to consider is 33-1 shot Omar Fraile, who won a similar stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia.

At double those odds is another 2017 Giro stage winner in Jan Polanc, who has shown up well at the Vuelta with fifth place on stage six and then second behind Alaphilippe two days later. This strong climber is worth a shot in an open-looking stage.

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J Polanc
0.5pt ew 66-1 general