
A reckoning on Mont Ventoux
There will be plenty of cheering from the fans during Tuesday's Tour de France mountain stage. Picture:Mont Ventoux, the most feared mountain in cycling, is the destination of Stage 16 of the Tour de France on Tuesday.
The finishing stretch is so steep only a handful the very best climbers stand any chance of winning the stage – which means Tadej Pogacar is hot favourite again, this time at 1.44.
Pogacar has already won four stages of this year's Tour and looks invincible on any sort of uphill.
The only man to get anywhere near challenging the mighty Slovenian, Dane Jonas Vingegaard, is at 7.00 for the Win. Third on the board is Germany's youthful Florian Lipowitz at 21.00.
Outside of the stage win, plenty of other wagering options are available – on both the stage and overall results. Betway has made a number of matchups between pairs of competitors, for example, allowing a bet on one or the other to finish first.
Known at 'The Beast of Provence' or 'The Bald Mountain', the rocky colossus has delivered drama on the 18 times the Tour de France has ventured onto its slopes – most tragically in 1967 when British cyclist Tom Simpson collapsed and died as he strove to be the first to summit.
More recently, four-time Tour winner Chris Froome's bike punctured and he couldn't find a quick replacement so had to run part of the way up. In 2021, Wout van Aert established his legend by leading the way over the top before going on to win solo in Malaucène.
Pogacar looks home and hosed in the Tour overall, with a price of 1.04! But cycling is dangerous and unpredictable, with calamity always lurking.
Also, opposition teams will be furiously plotting against Pogacar and his UAE Team Emirates. Vingegaard's Visma Lease A Bike is a potent outfit with better climbing talent than UAE as the Tour enters the Alps in its final week.
If Pogacar or Vingegaard falter on Ventoux, any one of latter's climbing helpers – Matteo Jorgenson, Sepp Kuss or Simon Yates – could pounce. All three of those riders are at 51.00 for the stage and might be worth a tickle.
All Betway odds correct at publishing and subject to change.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Maverick
5 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Cycling's war on hidden motors at Tour de France goes undercover
Cycling authorities are not only policing against doping in the peloton, but also against 'mechanical doping'. The International Cycling Union (UCI) has intensified its fight against mechanical doping, employing intelligence-driven methods to combat increasingly sophisticated alleged cheating in professional cycling. Once, inspectors relied on random X-rays and magnetic scans to catch offenders. Now, the UCI is borrowing tactics from law enforcement – building confidential sources, mapping risk profiles and monitoring bike changes in real time – to stay ahead in what officials call a technological arms race. Mechanical doping – riders using concealed motors – first gained attention in 2010 and led to the six-year ban of Belgium's Femke Van den Driessche after a Bluetooth-controlled motor was discovered in her seat tube at a cyclo-cross event. Since then, the UCI has expanded its detection arsenal, now employing daily checks of up to 60 bikes during the Tour de France. All bikes have passed the checks since the Tour started in Lille on 5 July. 'We have the ability… to go further with our examinations, whether that's a partial dismantlement of the bike to look into certain components, act upon suspicions, act upon information that we have,' Nick Raudenski, the UCI head of the Fight Against Technological Fraud, told Reuters on Wednesday. Raudenski, a former criminal investigator with the US Department of Homeland Security, took over in May 2024 and immediately pushed for a new approach. 'Bike controls, it's something that I've always equated anytime that I've done speeches or done training. It's like throwing your hook out in the middle of a lake trying to catch fish,' he said. 'If you don't have a strategy, if you're not informed about how to catch fish, what time of day, what kind of fish, where you can catch fish.' Think like a fraudster Part of that strategy is to think like the cheats. 'My idea is to put myself in the shoes of a fraudster. How would I do this and how would I get away with it? And that's part of my background as a criminal investigator – to try to think about not what we know, but what we don't know,' he said. The challenge is relentless innovation. 'It's a bit of a technological arms race. Components are getting lighter, smaller. Easier to conceal, which is harder to detect,' Raudenski said. 'And so, trying to stay ahead of what's potentially possible is always a challenge.' For Raudenski, the mission is clear: keep fans believing in the sport. 'People still need to believe, at least from the technological fraud side, that they're not climbing a stage like yesterday, and people just immediately think, 'oh, well, they must be on a motor',' he said. 'Knowing that our processes are in place, that we're conducting the controls that we're doing, that there is that insurance that the enforcement controls that we have in place, that doesn't happen at this level.' Reuters/DM


The Citizen
10 hours ago
- The Citizen
The Currie Cup is back in the spotlight
Could Boland spring a surprise in the opening weekend? Trevor Nyakane celebrates with the rest of the Sharks team, who won the Currie Cup in 2024. Picture: Christiaan Kotze/Gallo Images The 2025 edition of the Currie Cup kicks off on Friday with a full round of fixtures and eight teams in action, all chasing glory in a few months' time. With several Springbok players out of action because of their involvement with the Rugby Championship, which gets underway in the middle of next month, and other United Rugby Championship players still resting, there is an opportunity for a number of up-and-coming players to make their mark over the next few weeks. Also, a number of players who featured for the Junior Springboks in their U20 Championship-winning campaign in Italy will get a chance to show what they can do at a higher level. Who's favoured to win this weekend? Of course there will also be an opportunity for punters to get in on the action and each week Betway will give fans a chance to bank some bucks. In the competition opener on Friday night, the Pumas are favourites at 1.16 to beat Griquas, who're at 5.50 to cause an early upset. On Saturday, the Lions are hot favourites at 1.20 to beat the Sharks, who're at 4.50 to win in Joburg, while Western Province are 1.50 to beat the Bulls in the Cape, with the visitors at 2.60 to win. In the final game of the first round, Boland, who're back in the top flight of the competition, are 3.40 underdogs, at home, to beat the Cheetahs, who're at 1.33 to win, according to Betway. It promises to be an entertaining first round of action. These Betway odds correct at time of publishing and subject to change.


The Citizen
11 hours ago
- The Citizen
R10m Pick 6 ends season with a bang
It's also a World Pool day at Greyville. A Pick 6 with a likely pool of R10-million tops the betting menu at Sunday's Gold Cup race meeting at Greyville. It is a last chance to play for outsize payouts for a while as the fixture is a climactic send-off of the 2025 season. It's not just the Pick 6 that will draw in punters. The Quartet on the World Pool Gold Cup itself – South Africa's most important marathon race – is predicted to top R2-million, thanks to TAB bunging in a R500,000 carryover. As the big-race sponsor indicates, the meeting is a Hong Kong World Pool event. This means all TAB betting (accessible through Betway) on the card will be comingled into gigantic pools hosted by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and open to punters in racing centres around the world. The World Pool bets are Win, Place, Exacta, Quinella and Swinger. These bets must be in multiples of R2 – for example, R8, R10, R12 and so on. In addition to the Gold Cup, Race 7 on the card, four Grade 1 contests and five other feature events make up the 10-race bill of fare. The R1.5-million HKJC Champions Cup over 1800m is the headline grabber as it sees Durban July champion The Real Prince taking on Equus Horse of the Year Dave The King, who won the race last year. These two charismatic stars were level-pegging at 1.36 for the Win on Wednesday afternoon. The Mercury Sprint sees some of the country's best speedsters vying for a R1-million purse. The ante-post favourite here is Tenango at 1.40, with Mia Moo, I Am Giant and Buffalo Storm Cody jointly on offer at 2.00. The Douglas Whyte Thekwini Stakes (Race 4) honours the famous Durbanite who ruled the Hong Kong jockey championship for more than a decade and who now runs a successful training yard in the racing-mad enclave. Interestingly, the hot-pot favourite here is an uncommon raider from the Eastern Cape, Alan Greef-trained Golden Palm (1.05) to be ridden by champion jockey Richard Fourie. The filly goes for a fourth win in a row, within five months, and offers a potential banker for punters to kick off their assault on the R10-million Pick 6.