Astana taking Nibali, Aru, Landa and a strong team. Second chance for Tejay and BMC, Gilbert doing his usual worlds warm up too hopefully. Froome and Quintana both considering a ride. Slim pickings for the sprinters this year!

8)

Sounds like a potential corker.

Quintana’s in. Froome on the fence.

Feeling disappointed that it’s pretty much the same TdF contenders. 🙁 For me the Vuelta was an opportunity to see other riders as well as probably one high profile one. Totally different race I thought.

Edit: I don’t seem to be able to speak English today. 😳

Vuelta is always awesome, it#’s the last chance saloon for riders to make their season and so you always get good racing. I’m not sure I’d ride it if I was Froome but for Quintana, TJ and Nibbles they will, rightly, be all over it.

It is difficult to imagine anyone having a team as strong as Astana, but I wonder if Aru, Nibali and Landa will all play nice? It would be great to see a power struggle going on within the team during the race.
I agree it is nice to see other riders get a chance, but with the amount of talent going into the race without the pressure that comes with riding the tour it’s difficult to imagine that the race will not be great.
Brailsford has said that he thinks ending the season by riding the Veulta is the best way to finish the season for the GC guys, if that turns out to be right this could become the norm for the big GC riders.

Haven’t looked up the route yet – is it following the Giro/Vuelta pantomine Grand Tour format with silly climbs/stages – Angliru, etc?

^^ normally yes. They choose similar formats each year, I wonder if the routes starting South then heading North or the other way around this year.. Have to check.

Anywhoos’ it’s a similar format, hardest climbs to kill em’ all off, couple of sprint stages to keep the fat lads happy and local squads in a break for the advertising.

TBH, the Giro and Vuelta are my faves. For they have a much simpler vibe and much more local feel.

Aru will be on form and I’d be picking him FTW, Nibbs will pick off a couple of stages but if you want a pretty damn fine domestique, Nibbs is right there.

Stage 1 » Puerto Banús › Marbella (7.4k)

Stage 2 » Alhaurín de la Torre › Caminito del Rey (165k)

Stage 3 » Mijas › Málaga (164.6k)

Stage 4 » Estepona › Vejer de la Frontera (203k)

Stage 5 » Rota › Ronda (182k)

Stage 6 » Córdoba › Sierra de Cazorla (204k)

Stage 7 » Jódar › La Alpujarra (188.3k)

Stage 8 » Puebla de Don Fadrique › Murcia (188.6k)

Stage 9 » Torrevieja › Cumbre del Sol. Benitachell (168.3k)

Stage 10 » Valencia › Borja (152k)

Stage 11 » Andorra la Vella › Cortals d´Encamp (138k)

Stage 12 » Escaldes › Engordany. Andorra – Lleida (172.5k)

Stage 13 » Calatayud › Tarazona (168k)

Stage 14 » Vitoria › Alto Campoo. Fuente del Chivo (213k)

Stage 15 » Comillas › Sotres. Cabrales (175k)

Stage 16 » Luarca › Ermita de Alba. Quiros (184k)

Stage 17 » Burgos › Burgos (39k)

Stage 18 » Roa › Riaza (204k)

Stage 19 » Medina del Campo › Ávila (185k)

Stage 20 » San Lorenzo de El Escorial › Cercedilla (181k)

Stage 21 » Alcalá Alcalá de Henares › Madrid (93k)

Route details

Not sure what constitutes a pantomime GT, but theres no Angliru this year

9 summit finishes in the first 2 weeks, but none thereafter – though there are a couple of mountain stages. Final week starts off with a 39k TT which could favour Froome – though he tweeted at the Tour that he hadn’t been training for TTs this year at all.

Stage 2 apparently finishes on the Camino del Rey in El Chorro – that’ll make for an interesting bunch finish. Danny McAskill would be my pick!

Stage 2 apparently finishes on the Camino del Rey in El Chorro – that’ll make for an interesting bunch finish. Danny McAskill would be my pick!

Apparently it’s been sanitised, sadly. 😀

To be fair, some of those potholes were a bit big

Stage 11 looks more like an ECG…

Stage 20 hits some of my local climbs, and it’s a Saturday! Sounds like a plan 🙂

Froome’s up for it too now.

So then, was he really weakening toward the end of Le Tour or saving his legs…

Feeling disappointed that it’s pretty much the same TdF contenders. For me the Vuelta was an opportunity to see other riders as well as probably one high profile one.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who’s been quiet all season or totally unfancied came to the fore at the Vuelta. I mean, who’d heard of Juan Jose Cobo?

Cobo in 2011, well Sky really did give away that Vuelta. Would have been interesting to see what would have happened had they played it differently and let Froome win it. What impact might it have had on the events of 2012 for example.

Cobo in 2011, well Sky really did give away that Vuelta.

As others have said that’s what makes the Vuelta such compelling viewing, big names not on best form and the last chance saloon for others. Throw in tired DS dropping the ball at the end of a long season and it can be wide open.

Bring it on!

is it on itv4?

The big loser here seems to be Tinkoff (and to a lesser extent Contador)

After all the pre-season hype about GT triples and doubles, Contador flopped in France and will be absent in Spain when all his main rivals are present (remains to be seen if they are similarly “fatigued”)

Well they do have the Giro win, the Tour points jersey too. And a bunch of publicity from Contadors double efforts. He was never going to do the Vuelta regardless of how the Tour went (other than maybe an early abandonment). Hope Sagan is at the Vuelta and puts in a similar display to the Tour and goes for the points win again.

Not diminishing their achievements, just think that Tinkoff must be building up to a new twitter meltdown. He tried to entice the “big 4” to compete at all 3 GTs and they told him to get lost. Now at the Vuelta, they’re all there except Tinkoff’s matador.

It’s interesting that many thought that the Vuelta moving from Spring to late summer was a mistake at the time. Now it seems like the right move with the recent confirmation that a Giro campaign is seemingly incompatible with TdF victory.

Stage 11 looks more like an ECG

Heh

Going on the image alone stages 18 and 19 look very similar.

Stage 8 should be good…

Tinkoff should send a strong squad and ride for Rafal Majka, he’s a future talent and looks perfect as replacement for bertie, but needs exposure

Nibali could be the best placed of the big names, he looked undercooked at the tour but was riding back into form

The Giro needs to do something or the big names will stop riding it all together. Sponsors are becoming even more polarised around the Tour as it’s so iconic outside of the sports traditional support. So the big riders are focusing on the tour more than ever.

And Contador seems to have cemented that it’s impossible to win both. He wasn’t even close in the tour.

The Vuelta is gaining as riding it doesn’t impact your tour chances so there are few downsides, it may even help with a tour campaign next year if Brailsford is right.

So what can the Giro do to stay up there? Easier routes to entice the big names without destroying them for the tour? Appearance fees? (They’d have to be big to outweigh the sponsorship benefit of the tour). Move dates?

If I were RCS I’d change the date to start at the same time as the Vuelta. Sticking two fingers up at ASO in the process. Maybe a bit drastic but being after the tour seems to be the only way to get all the big names to attend.

Difficult to see what the Giro can do really to avoid being a “B team” race. They could maybe move it earlier in the year, but the weather can be bad enough as it is. Best thing would probably be to make it a two week race, less demanding and another week of recovery before the Tour, but that’ll never happen.

Vuelta with its slot in the calendar, it’s a bit hit or miss whether it attracts the big names. Usually a bit of a last minute thing. You don’t get many people building their season around the Vuelta, often a second chance race or a training block. Not sure the Giro would want that either, though if it was in that slot you would more likely get big names committing to ride both Tour and Giro with the tour as the main goal.

Is stage 8 aiming for some sort of fastest average speed?

Do we have a Fantasy League yet?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/stw-fantasy-vuelta-2015?replies=2#post-7117623

is it on itv4?

Yep, 10-11pm on Saturday, thereafter 7-8

Annoyingly early for me, the 10-11 slot would be perfect, but I guess they like to put Storage Wars out at prime time !

Well looks like they are now not going to count the first stage TTT to the individual classification due to safety concerns, but it will count towards team classification. GC teams to take it easy today I suspect!

Nibali disqualified

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/nibali-disqualified-from-vuelta-a-espaa-for-holding-onto-team-car/