As much as I love my rugby and in particularly betting on it there comes a time every year where I feel I need to take a step back and allow myself to enjoy some of the other sports. 

My rugby betting has been on a bit of a bad run of late and while I will still be keeping an eye on games, I am going to scale back my betting significantly. Instead I am going to channel my betting funds in a different direction as one of my favourite events of the year the Giro d’Italia gets going this weekend.  The 3 week stage race through Italy provides plenty of betting opportunities and I find that with cycling betting my stakes are smaller, but my enjoyment is quite often higher.

My main focus in these cycling Grand Tours is the individual stages where I look at the stage winner betting as well as match bets which pits one cyclist against another.  There are few better feelings than punting a 66/1 shot and watching him hold on for the victory.  Placing a long term cycling bet comes with its risks as things like illness and accidents can often play havoc with your selections. 

Primoz Roglic who went so well in the Tour de France last year is the 15/10 favourite having shown his form in winning the Tour de Romandie last week.  Behind him in the betting is a past Giro winner, Tom Dumoulin and these men find themselves high up in the betting because there are a high number of individual time trials and they are both specialists in this field. 

There are also some very hard mountain stages particularly towards the second half of the race and behind them in the betting we have the likes of Simon Yates 28/10, Vincenzo Nibali 6/1 and Miguel Angel Lopez who is 11/1.  At this stage I am leaning towards Dumoulin who I think will have the edge over Roglic in the time trials and can hang with him in the mountains.  Rather than back him to win the race at 5/2, I am going to back the 15/10 that Dumoulin beats Roglic over the three weeks. I am taking a lesser price but I now only have one man to beat.

Enjoy the cycling and look out for my video previews on Goodforthegame.

Twitter: @BrentGraham

 
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 9th of May 2019.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a  free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register