VUELTA A ESPAÑA
What sets the Vuelta apart from the two more venerable (and bigger) grand tours, the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, is also what makes it a great race. As the third, and smallest, of the three grand tours, and taking place as it does at the back end of the season, the Vuelta is rarely a target for riders as they embark on their season. All of the grand tour specialists target either the Giro and the Tour, and it’s worth structuring a winter’s training and spring’s racing around one of these targets (or even both, to follow a trend starting last year). The Vuelta is too late in the year to spend a whole season training for.
But that is what makes it such an open and exciting race, and the organisation seems not to mind at all. It’s a realistic target after the Giro – modern training wisdom has it that there’s enough time to rest, recuperate and build again after the Italian race to peak again for the Vuelta. More and more riders are targeting the Giro-Vuelta double, because it’s not as complicated as a Giro-Tour double. And for riders who have ridden the Tour, there’s just enough time to treat it as either a bonus, a rematch, or a chance to rescue a poor season. Gone are the days of the early 2000s, when it seemed the peloton was mostly a Spanish one – now the best riders in the world are targeting the Vuelta, without seemingly increasing the pressure on them to do well that there is earlier in the season.
The organisers are also under less pressure to shape the race in any traditional way. Though there are a lot of summit finishes these days, the climbing tends to be concentrated around these, and the mighty multi- pass days in the high mountains that we see in the Giro and Tour are less common at the Vuelta. That’s not to say the race is any easier, however – this being Spain, there is still a lot of climbing, and the organisers have made a good mix of old and new ascents for 2019, including some horribly steep uphill finishes, and there’s even a stretch of gravel on stage 9. The Vuelta’s re-established love affair with the Basque Country also continues, with a mid-race visit to Bilbao, along with an incursion into the French Pyrenees for the stage-10 time trial between Jurançon and Pau. The weather is also a factor, with temperatures often straying into the 40s.
With such a varied route and a late position in the season, the Vuelta is the hardest race of all to make predictions for, but that is what makes it such a special race.