Tour De France - Sebastian Lang v Leif Hoste

Tour de France 2008 - Stage 4

The 4th stage of the Tour De France is the first of the individual time trials. The stage itself is fairly short as ITT's go at 29.5kms and its pancake flat. http://www.betshoot.com/admin/tips.php

It is a stage where the specialist time trialers will come to the fore and we can expect a win for Switzerlands Fabian Cancellara but he is such short odds its really not worth backing him.

Instead i turn my eye once again to head to head betting. Gone seem to be the days of the total mismatch H2H's much to my dismay and i have found very little of what i would call outstanding value this evening.

Oddly enough i spent a little of this afternoon watching Sebastian Langs heart rate, cadency, power and speed courtesy of an online tracker. Rivetting stuff which only really revealed he has a slightly higher heart rate than Grabsch. However Lang is very much a man i like to support in time trials as he has often been under-rated in time trials as he is a very consistent performer. Lang has finished 8th, 5th and 5th in the last 3 world championship time trials which underlines how good he is in this format.

He is listed as an outsider by Nordic Bet & Pinnacle to beat Leif Hoste. I have to warn you Hoste is a perfectly decent time trialist even tho he does not boast anything like the ITT results over his career as Lang does and he almost exclusivly reserves his best form for races in his native Belgium where he is always worth supporting.

They rode against each other in the 2006 World Championships, Lang finishing 5th, Hoste 7th with just 23 seconds between them. Hoste put in 2 decent time trials in the 2007 TdF and theres really not much between them.

There are a few reasons that i do want to make this selection tho. Firstly there is not a single bookmaker who quotes Hoste at shorter odds to win the stage than Lang. This is basically because Hoste is highly likely to finish 8th-12th, Lang is in my opinion likely to be 5th-10th. The second reason is Lang is priced at 2.07 which is a bit better than his coin flip odds anyway.

Certainly not a bet to go mad on, personally i make Lang a 1.80 chance so theres not a huge amount of value here but just about enough to warrant a small to middle staked bet.



Pick : Lang to beat Hoste
Odds : 2.07
Stake : 6 / 10
Bookmaker : Pinnacle
Match Result : 19th vs 63rd
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