Tomorrow some of the biggest names in cycling will embark on a three-week journey through Spain for the last major competition of the season: the Vuelta a España.
Reigning Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard, his Jumbo-Visma teammate and reigning Giro d’Italia champion and former Tour winner Geraint Thomas are just some of the stars who will take on the Vuelta.
As is almost always the case in this race, they will be battling it out on a course that presents some really grueling mountain challenges. It will be a great spectacle.
The route of the Vuelta
The 2023 Vuelta a España has one thing in common with this year’s Tour de France and that is that the organizers have wisely spread the GC challenges over the three weeks.
Tough climbs abound from shortly after the start until the final days of the race, which will make for an entertaining ride through Spain.
In fact, the first day will have implications for the general classification, as the riders will face a team time trial in Barcelona.
A hilly finish to stage 2 could favor the puncheurs, and then stage 3 will close with two first-category (altitude) climbs in Andorra. In other words, we should see the favorites start to come to the fore just three days after the start of the Vuelta.
After two more days for the fast riders, as the Vuelta moves south, another first category finish will come on stage 6.
This will be followed by another flatter stage before two gritty finishes on stages 8 and 9, before the first rest day. Immediately after that rest day will come a crucial day for the overall contenders: the only individual time trial of the race, a 25.8 km flat race in Valladolid.
Another uphill finish awaits on stage 11, and then there will be a bit of a breather with a sprint stage in Zaragoza on stage 12 before a brutal stage 13 that is up or down basically from start to finish.
The riders will immediately face a category 3 climb, then the special category Col d’Aubisque, then the category 1 Col de Spandelles, before finishing on the special category Col du Tourmalet, which climbs to a whopping 2,115 meters.
As usual, this is a Vuelta that will heavily favor the climbers, but the team time trial and individual time trial will have an impact.
Big favorites: Roglič, Vingegaard and Evenepoel.
A few days before the start of the race in Barcelona, it looks like a “big three” situation. Jumbo is the bookmakers’ top favorite, while Evenepoel will try to defend its Vuelta title against the black and yellow giant.
Let’s start with Jumbo-Visma, where the question “Vingegaard or Roglič?” will be one of the most intriguing storylines of this race. Vingegaard would certainly be a clear favorite if this were the Tour de France, his main goal for the season, but this is the Vuelta, and it’s Roglič who has made his ambitions public here all season long.
Vingegaard’s decision to join the fun, however, has come as more belated news, so it’s a real unknown as to whether he’s fit enough to win races and what his goals are.
We don’t really know what to expect from Vingegaard, who hasn’t raced since the Tour, while Roglič just won the Vuelta a Burgos last week. Given that they are riders with relatively similar abilities and that both will come out of the team time trial with the same time, it’s a question of whether a difference in form trumps Vingegaard’s natural advantage, and it could, given that Roglič really wants this win.
Outside of the overall contenders there are a handful of big names who will be looking for stages, with Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) as leading sprinters and Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) as the rider to watch in the flat TT.
In Spain, the lap will be free to watch on TV and the RTVE app, so don’t hesitate to download the app and watch it whenever you want, wherever you are.
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