Vuelta a España Preview

A look at the contenders and pretenders for the 2024 Vuelta a España. As ever there’s a mix of riders with stories of rehab, redemption and revenge. There’s even someone who is targetting this race.

Without Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard the Vuelta is the most open and accessible grand tour of the season and possibly beyond. Who is up for it?

Route summary
One for the climbers? The Vuelta feels vertical every year but it really stands out this time with over 60,000m of vertical gain. For comparison the Giro had 44km and the Tour 52km. There are two flat time trials, 12km to start and 25km on the last day.

There are nine “summit” finishes of varying difficulty, ranging from accessible big-ring finishes to ski stations, and the infamous Cuitu Negru. Plus there are two days which end after a descent so half the stages are mountain stages of some kind. This leaves little for the sprinters, three to four sprint stages look likely but they’re hilly and with few sprinters and their teams, the breakaway has a better chance.

There are time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds at the finish line each day and some stages have intermediate sprints denoted with a (B) for 6-4-2 seconds.

The Contenders

A team packed with leaders causing a drama? That was last year but UAE come with a top-heavy team where the opening time trial can count for plenty as it’ll set an initial hierarchy. João Almeida is the local pick given the Portuguese start but can he become a grand tour winner who can strike out on his own on a mountain stage? He’s just turned 26 and seems to have started as a punchy rider with limits in the high mountains to become a top climber who has lost a bit of that kick but he’ll need to combine both to take stage wins and time bonuses.

Adam Yates seems very reliable these days, both in terms of performance and personality as he can climb with the very best and also seems settled at UAE, he’s not after a contract and leadership on another team.

UAE have riders who could lead other teams. Brandon McNulty is an outsider but probably likely to find too much climbing and too many leaders ahead of him; likewise Pavel Sivakov. Jay Vine though is interesting as a wildcard for the team to play. And there’s Isaac del Toro who starts a grand tour in his first season and while he’s been tipped for the top he’s arguably beaten expectations so far so one to look for. All together they make for a tough team for rival squads to match but keep an eye on the internal competition too as this is a rare chance without Pogačar.

What a difference a year makes. A year ago Visma-Lease A Bike looked on top of the world, 69 wins and winning all three grand tours, including all three podium places in the Vuelta. Yet behind the scenes they were trying to salvage sponsorship and since then replicating results at the highest level has proved impossible, in part thanks to a plenty of “unluck”. Still Sep Kuss is now back to form and health with a win in the Vuelta a Burgos and there are no leadership quarrels. He won’t get the same space to attack this year but can count on leadership from the start with solid support on the team, including Wout van Aert and he’s experienced at leadership now too.

Apprentice Cian Uijtdebroeks will prove a tongue-twister for Spanish media and returns to the Vuelta where he was top-10 last year will look to improve on that after season that’s arguably been more discreet than his winter transfer saga but that’s fine, he’s still just 21. He’s one of several contenders who’d love to take the white jersey as the best young rider along the way. There should be a good contest for this.

Is Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) here to win or just to bank a grand tour in the legs? Of course there’s room in-between for stage wins. He’s a surprise late entry after his Tour de France crash left him with sustained back injuries and rehab. A three time winner, he’s seemed made for the race with his ability to pick off summit finishes and their time bonuses, and thrive in the time trials. But his 35th birthday is approaching and he’d be the second oldest Vuelta winner. Triumph is within reach but far from the certainty, all year he’s not been the winning machine we’ve been used to.

Aleksandr Vlasov has been a loyal helper so far this season but does he get to play his own cards? Dani Martinez was second in the Giro, of course far behind Pogačar but better than the rest and his consistency is valuable but . Florian Lipowitz was revelation in Romandie, can he show more of the same here?

Enric Mas leads Movistar. As ever he’s reliable in the Vuelta, three second placed finishes but how to win? He’ll rely on regularidad and hope to finish on the podium for a result that Movistar would surely sign for today. Previous winner Nairo Quintana starts but even a stage looks elusive, but Giro stage winner Pelayo Sanchez can surprise.

Mattias Skjelmose has made the Vuelta his target for the season which is remarkable. “Rider targets big race” isn’t normally a headline but it does tell us something about the Vuelta which often sees riders taking to the start because of accident or injury. Lively on the climbs, surprisingly quick in the time trials but form unknown, the 23 year old leads a very solid Lidl-Trek team with Tao Geoghegan Hart and Giulio Ciccone as other cards to play.

Thymen Arensman  leads Ineos but he’d surely want a course with more time trials. A year ago Carlos Rodriguez (pictured) was on the up and a project to become a Tour de France podium contender; now having finish seventh he’s in the shadows which shows how fickle our impressions can be; here is a chance to be back in the limelight in his home race. As ever we’ll see how the team races, the allure of multiple options but the habit of playing it safe.

Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost) is back to winning ways but is this stage hunting or GC? It’s said he’s more comfortable with the former even if his team might prefer the latter; they certainly hired him as a Tour contender. He’s at his best when the race comes down to a test of stamina so some stages suit more than others and form unknown after the Tour.

There’s a long list of wider contenders who are harder to see winning but can hope for a strong result overall. Mikel Landa (T Rex-Quickstep, the temporary new name for the squad) was back to climbing with the best in the Tour and finds a route to suit, team mate William Junior Lecerf could be interesting for some climbs too. Ben O’Connor and Felix Gall (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) are talented but we’ll see with O’Connor for the motivation as he’s changing teams while Gall must be keener for a result after injury in the summer hampered his Tour prep, and Valentin Paret-Peintre and Victor Lafay give the team more options for a stage win on the climbs. Bahrain bring some strong riders but how to win as Antonio Tiberi, Jack Haig and Damiano Caruso are all steady riders but unlikely to just ride away on a climb.

Max Poole (DSM Firmenich-Post NL) returns to the Vuelta as a form pick having finished second in Burgos, he’s an elegant rider in search of a result. Is David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) a grand tour contender, well he was eighth here in the autumnal 2020 edition, now he’s on a salvage mission for his season. A similar rider but younger and more carefree is Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto-Dstny) and while may not be making the headlines but the UAE Tour winner is handy on short climbs and probably faces the dilemma of high GC or stage wins as doing both would be a big result and as ever the racing will inform his decisions. Jayco’s Eddie Dunbar, Filippo Zana and Chris Harper are here for stage wins. Similarly IPT come with George Bennett, Michael Woods and Matthew Riccitello for stages more than GC.

–
Roglič, Almeida
Yates
Kuss, Carlos Rodriguez, Carapaz
Skjelmose, Mas, Landa, Arensman, Vine, Del Toro

TV: RTVE and EITB for locals and VPN users, Eurosport/Max/HBO/Discovery+ Peacock or whatever it is called in your country for subscribers in Europe and beyond.

US viewers can find it on Peacock, typically it is on the same channel you watch the Tour de France, eg SBS in Australia, J-Sports in Japan but not ITV in Britain.

Stages typically finish around 5.20pm CEST each day.

106 thoughts on “Vuelta a España Preview”

  1. Thanks, been looking forward to this. It feels like a very hard one to predict this year, and should be fun to watch how it shakes out.

  2. Hola. Thanks for the read. I think Yates will finish ahead of Almeida. I see del Toro more as a team player (this tour) and will “only” help them, he will not go for GC, unless something happen to them.
    For sentimental reasons, I hope Roglic wins it. But I really hope we have finally have a back and forth lead with multiple leader changes and constant attacks.

    • “For sentimental reasons, I hope Roglic wins it”
      Me, too!
      Among the plausible GC contenders, Roglic had the fastest time in today’s very short TT, although razor thin to Almeida (+2 sec).
      Roglic’s form may not be great and his TdF crash injuries seemed very harsh — broken vertebrae, IIRC.

      • He only has himself to blame as he has not improved his riding skills after so many years in the sport. His TdF crash was largely his fault: the rider next to him avoided it, as did other riders, whereas Rog just ploughed into the guy on the ground.

        • The rider next to him avoided it by braking and turning and thereby taking the only exit route Roglic had.
          In a bunch it will make a world of difference where you are riding. The rider who doesn´t crash may quite simply be luckier than the one who crashes.

          That said, Roglic could possibly have avoided it, if his instincts had worked better. In other words, it wasn´t his riding skills that let him down, it was his relatively slow reaction speed when something unexpected happened. Riders who have spent countless hours in a peloton since their early teens simply read the situation better and react faster.

          PS I see now that I´m here reading riding skills as bike handling skills, whereas you probably included all of the above.

          • Some riders crash consistently more than others – and often when you see those crashes, they are to blame.
            There’s a reason Roglic crashes so often.

          • Another way to look at it is to compare his reactions to Pog’s reaction to the road furniture he barely missed (don’t remember the stage). At the time I remember thinking that a little moment like that could have derailed his Tour, but he came out of it with nary a scratch. And it looked like he was going down for sure. Doesn’t seem like Roglic misses many of those.

          • Do you really think I haven´t looked? Do you really think that I somehow managed to miss something you observed? 🙂

            I´m afraid I have to ask you whether you just actually read what I wrote before jumping at someone who had dared to disagree with you? .-)

            Why do you think Roglic wasn´t slowing? Here it was probably partly due to not being able (due to his position) to see what the Uno-X riders and the rider on his left saw, but mainly due to his poor instincts, his lack of what shall we call it…situational awareness?

            Some other rider could´ve anticipated the move made by the Uno-X rider he “steamed into”, but not Roglic.

            The point I was perhaps too keen to make was that it isn´t his bike handling skills or his ability to keep the rubber side down that are at fault. Not here and not in many other of his infamous crashes.

            It was silly and quite unforgivable of me to think your “riding skills” = bike handling skills, but I thought I had made that clear in my PS.

          • “Some riders crash consistently more than others – and often when you see those crashes, they are to blame.
            There’s a reason Roglic crashes so often.”

            Did you really think anyone here didn´t already agree that is the general truth and that it applies to Roglic? 🙂

            It was just that I thought we could see the reason in a more accurate and nuanced way.

            But – as the tired old saying goes – we can agree to disagree if syou find that absolutely necessary.

          • Wednesday, you said:
            ‘The rider next to him avoided it by braking and turning and thereby taking the only exit route Roglic had.’
            Therefore, I presented the video that showed that that is not what happened.
            Everything else you write is about yourself.

          • Please show me how there wasn´t a space in front of Roglic that did not disappear when it was taken by the Uno-X rider who moved right. If he had merely slowed down, that is where Roglic would have been instead of “steaming into” the Uno-X rider.

            He would still have made the mistake of not braking as quickly as some or most other riders would have done in his position, but chances are he wouldn´t have crashed, at least not as badly.

            PS If that is how you read my comments, it makes, I must say, extremely difficult to judge which one of us should be the winner of the Pompous Ass of the Week Contest this week.

  3. Two questions, Vuelta Route management, 60k vert, at the end of the season? (if anyone needed an excuse for some enhancement, this may be it) and INRNG, are you doing postcards for this tour?

  4. May I ask if the race gets broadcast in full on Spanish TV or do even they only get part of most stages like the rest of us do? I’ve been assuming it iss the latter but am not actually certain.

    • It’s mixed, some stages live from the start but only a few: Stages 1, 10, 15, 16, 20 and 21.

      I was going to do a suggestion of the “unmissable” stages and of course some stand out but what’s often good about the Vuelta is you can tune in for the finish each day and get action, rather than some stages offering little and others offering non-stop sport.

      • Thank you for the confirmation. I’ll be watching as much as is available anyway. I just find it odd that the Giro seems to be considered the least prestigious of the 3 grand tours when for me as a TV viewer it’s the Vuelta that is the least of the 3 because that’s the only one that doesn’t have full coverage for all stages.

        • Who needs to watch hours on bright highways until the final climb at 3 to go? Some parts of Spain and the course are just boring as it can be.
          If everything would be televised, everyone is complaining about how boring the course is, like it always happens at Giro & Tour since they air whole stages,

          • I’m happy to have full stages on in the background, half-listening for the boring bits & able to switch to full concentration if anything important starts happening. After all you never know when something unexpected & critical to the race might happen. Think of the dissatisfaction there was when Pogacar had already crashed out of Liege before the TV coverage started & the way it was negatively compared to other monuments having full coverage.

          • I’m afraid I can’t give specific references but I have got the impression over the last few years, probably primarily from cycling Twitter, that it is a relatively widely held opinion. As I already said, I disagree.

          • @Dawnstar

            Cycling Twitter -___- now mainly a bunch of wattage wonkers (sorry but the alliteration was too strong a temptation).

            Money isn’t everything but in very general terms the TDF moves some 100-150M, the Giro some 40-50M, the Vuelta some… 5M.

        • The Giro is still obviously well above the Vuelta under essentially any meaningful metric (i.e. barring those which are focus/form blind).
          The three most relevant events of the sport are still (alas, in a sense) TDF, Giro, Worlds in this order with Roubaix a distant fourth.
          Note my insistence on the adverb «still», as the Giro was/has been on a downward slope 2020-2023, but OTOH it had been strongly on the up during the previous 15 years. The Vuelta has had its strong up and down, too.

  5. It seems to be a case of the walking wounded this year. Almeida has been consistent YTD so this could be his chance. Hard to see Roglic having the necessary condition.

    • I’m kind of hoping Almeida will win. He’s always had the guts and the grit but just not quite the climbing ability against the best of the best.

        • …although yesterday they didn’t bother, with just an apology for the change to the advertised schedule.
          Eurosport didn’t cover themselves in glory either. On my TV service at least their schedule said powerboat racing all day, whereas they were actually broadcasting the Vuelta live. And their late-evening highlights show reached the end of its allocated hour with about 16km to go, not very helpful.
          I hope the UK broadcasters will get their act together in the coming days.

  7. Thanks for the preview.
    Skjelmose is an interesting pick – definitely a podium chance, especially if Roglic suffers.
    Thomas De Gendt’s last GT so expect a breakaway or two from him.
    Otherwise a whole bunch of guys who could on a good day do well but over 3 weeks is a another thing.
    Be interesting to see though how things play out without a Vingegaard or Pogacar in the line up.

  8. Team objectives by my estimate:
    Winning, anything less is unsatisfactory: UAE, Redbull-Bora
    Winning, satisfied with podium: Visma-LAB, Movistar
    Podium: Decathlon-AG2R, Ineos
    Top 5: Lidl-Trek, T-Rex Quickstep, EF Education
    Top 10: Arkea, Bahrain, Cofidis, Intermarché, DSM, IPT, Astana, Groupama, Lotto-Dstny
    Stage hunting only: Alpecin-Deceuninck, Jayco-AlUla, Equipo Kern Pharma, Euskaltel-Euskadi

    • High bar there for Decathlon, think they’d sign for a stage this morning, and if there’s a top-10 as well they’d buy the pen and paper.

      I’d put Arkéa, Intermarché, IPT and Cofidis in the stage hunters. Arkéa’s Cristian Rodriguez (one of three Rodriguezes) is good and can score points but top-15 style, with Arkéa, Kern and Euskaltel dreaming of a stage but probably satisfied with other things like points and visibility.

      But this measurement against expectation is a good thing, I keep finding myself returning to some form of this to guage how teams are doing as it’s tough to compare, say, €8 million Intermarché who are under financial controls (and licence jeopardy) not to spend more with the likes of Ineos and UAE who seem to have a semi-open credit line of €50 million or more.

  9. An interesting test for Poole though a shorter race might have been better given his youth and lack of recent racing kms.

    Jumbo-LAB and Kuss are my pick for the GC and don’t have UAE’s problem of ego and internal competition. The selection is balanced and 100% behind K.

    • Is there actualy any solid indication of UAE’s problems of ego and internal competition? (Apart from Ayuso’s ambitions, of course.) I imagine their riders are well paid and therefore quite motivated to do their job – as was the case of peak Team Sky?

      (The likes of Leo Konig speaked about gladly forfeiting personal ambitions for the opportunity to kind of financialy securing themselves – and I suppose it’d make sense for many riders to do so.)

      • The buying of loyalty is an under-mentioned concept, works for others too. Take Kwiatkowski who could probably still win a lot more elsewhere but doesn’t need to and is well paid for doing what he does.

        As for UAE, there are no public statements or spicy interviews, just talk to share and things like body language. And to return to the pay, some riders are well paid but they could still move elsewhere for a significant pay rise, Almeida is probably in this category and even more so if he can get a result here.

  10. The heyday of Froome, Contador, Valverde and Purito Rodriguez doing the Vuelta every year feels a long time ago now.
    Roglic is probably favourite but he seems to have gone over the crest of his hill so to speak and I’m not completely convinced by him. There could be a surprise winner. The UAE team looks incredibly top heavy, even without Pogacar.

  11. This looks like a super competitive group of riders with at least half a dozen riders capable of the win (Kuss, Yates, Roglic, Almeida, Carapaz, Skjelmose) and another 6-8 who could finish on the podium (Rodriguez, Martinez, Tiberi, O’Connor, Mas, Landa, Arensman, Gaudu….) Bring it on!

  12. This is the least predictable GT we’ve seen in the past couple of years, which is refreshing. Roglic would appear to be the big favorite but seems to be on the cusp of falling out of the top tier. I personally don’t have confidence in UAE unless they go all in for one leader, and both Almeida and Yates are prone to moments of major weakness. Kuss in top form would be favored to win on the steep terrain, but we don’t really know if he has that form, and he has never been a strong time triallist. Landa is really intriguing to me because he’s been flying under the radar, but has been very strong. I’m also curious to see Riccitello, Del Toro, and Tiberi possibly taking a step up. So many interesting storylines!

      • You’re so right! I don’t want to rehash the TdF debate, but as amazing as some of the performances were the drama was not always there. I’m really hoping for a more unpredictable fight, even if the combatants are generally more suited to the undercard.

        • Even speaking of GC only, we had great drama for two weeks, then less so for the last one (even if there was a more than decent fight for the 2nd place). Business as usual at the TDF (and the Giro, lately) is two weeks (and maybe a further half) of no drama at all and one or two late stages when actual relative strengths are revealed, also killing any further drama most of the time.

          • @The Other Craig
            One man’s meat is another man’s poison, I guess. I love the Giro be it only to watch the landscape or how do roads I rode look from a heli shot, and yet I really really struggled to watch 2023.

  13. In the UK daily highlights will be on Quest (Freeview channel 12) at 19:00, apart from today’s which are at 23:00. I assume it will be Discovery+/Eurosport commentators and hosts as I think Quest is free-to-air Discovery offshoot.

    • Also on Eurosport although last night (Sunday) it was scheduled to be on at 7.30pm and instead there was cycling from China. I then went to Discovery+ and watched the last hour.

  14. I’m excited for the start in Portugal. Used to live in Cascais where stage 2 starts. I’ve often wished they’d run a bike race through the cobbles of Sintra. Also, I don’t remember Cascais as being awfully windy, but that ride north is close to the Atlantic coast. I don’t know the word in Portuguese for echelons, but there’s hope, I suppose….

    • The Portuguese word for a (cycling) echelon is leque. I do not expect to see any tomorrow, as the forecast is for moderate wind and the terrain is a bit hilly. The area is quite picturesque.

      • I rode around the Cascais area on holiday one year. Enjoyed it plenty and there are some good routes from the roads past Guincho beach. It was quite windy some days as I recall.

  15. Any thoughts on the other competitions? Wout seems like a good bet for green. How is the KOM structured? Is it likely going to the GC winner? Who do you think is a leading contender for white?

    I’ll be rooting for Kuss to back up his win with a podium but there are too many contenders with unknown form, including him.

    • There’s no extra points for the final climb and only Cuitu Negru has extra points over cat 1. There’s also no HC other than Cuitu Negru (the Vuelta tends to be sparing in the use of HC only classifying climbs like Angliru, Cuitu Negru or Bola del Mundo at that level). It depends on how it is raced of course but 3 of the last 4 years the KoM has gone to a GC guys who had a awful day or a GC guy in other races who went to the Vuelta as a stage hunter. It’s either been an 11th-15th place finisher I stead of one of the real contenders or a true breakaway guy for the last 7 years.

  16. Shocked at th difference in vertical gain between the GTs. Is there any benefit on taking roulers to the vuelta. Surely just take climbers and ardenns types.

  17. Unrelated, and not….
    Shout out to Mr. Inrng in THE OUTER LINE’s Newsletter:
    “As veteran commentator The Inner Ring observed, “a doomed move going up the road feels almost essential” and “the illusion of suspense beats the lack of it.” ”
    Well done!

    • Commentator is too weak a word. Inrng often speaks of the psychogeography of cycling; well, after a decade of reading this blog I realise that my ‘mental map’ of the sport has slowly but surely been redrawn through exposure to inrng’s masterful analysis.

  18. Seems like UAE’s leadership debate is settled, no? What happened with del Toro today? Was he put to work? Or did he just not have the legs?

    • I can’t understand why Adam Yates didn’t sit up having done his work for Pog in every single stage of the TdF. That way, he could have been more fresh for this race, and maybe even won it. He’s already come 3rd and 4th in the Tour, so why ride so hard for 6th?
      Almeida must be very pleased.

  19. Am I correct in thinking that the same TV company now films the TdF and the Giro?

    If so, who does the Vuelta? And why is it so catastrophically bad?
    As in the last year or two, GPM sprints are – for no reason – filmed from the back, so you often don’t see who wins.
    Today, at the intermediate sprint, they cut to another picture as the riders crossed the line.
    And the overhead shot at the end seemed to have been shot from the moon it was so far away.

    • Really awful and they seem able to grow worse with every passing season, which is now bordering incredible. As I noted above, however, the race has got a slim turnover compared to Giro or TDF and that’s got a big impact on TV filming. Which is still far from being a valid justification as I saw races in Italy with a way better work done with less money.

    • It seems – but I may be imagining this – to happen more often than it did, say, 10 years ago. I have a suspicion that it is indicative of our increasingly egotistical society.
      (People have said he’s inexperienced: he’s experienced enough to be riding a grand tour, ergo he’s experienced enough not to do something as stupid as this – you’re riding uphill, and thus will lose momentum quickly, and the other guy is right there.)

      • It could be that it´s just because I´m in the mood to be a contrarian – or maybe I´m simply a fanboy who cannot see things as they are – but to me it seemed that Roglic would have won in any case.

        Van Eetvelt merely raised his hands, he did stop pedalling and lose momentum. Could a bike throw have helped? I´m not sure.

        PS To his defense it should be said that he had the inner curve and experience tells us our opponent will have a longer distance to cover 🙂

  21. Stages 1 and 4 have really shaped this Vuelta already, maybe a bit more than the organizers hoped. Some serious riders are already way down on time, which I’m hoping will lead to more aggressive racing. Not sure how many opportunities there will be in the next few stages, but I don’t expect Bora and UAE to control everything.

  22. Before this race, I said to a friend that this is going to be another Vuelta where Roglic wins by doing short sprints at the end of a variety of mountains.
    I suspect it’ll be a very dull race.
    Getting rid of sprint bonuses would help with this. (It would also mean you don’t have the highly unsatisfactory situation whereby a rider wins a grand tour even though he’s done the course slower than the rider who comes 2nd, which I think was the case in the 2020 Vuelta.)

    • Yes, Roglic won 48 bonus seconds whereas Carapaz won only 16 and since their final time gap was 24 seconds…

      Whether it was *highly* unsatisfactory is very much a matter or opinion and I don´t think we should forget that had there been no bonus seconds awarded at all, the race or some stages of it could have had ever so slightly different results.

      For instance, Roglic could have beaten Carapaz with 59 instead of 49 seconds on stage 13. But then again he could have tried too much and the gap would´ve been smaller…

    • Wouldn’t say so, probably I’d even go as far as defending quite the opposite (but we really need more testing stages to say anything meaningful) – what’s sure is that there’s a *very* a different level among competitors.

      For example, in the Vuelta’s ITT he’s lost more secs/km to the likes of McNulty and Vacek than he had lost to Pogacar at the TDF, where OTOH he also beat Vingegaard on the sort of slightly hilly terrain where the latter is also able to throw in some monstre performance.
      In that same Vuelta stage he could beat Almeida by a very narrow margin (total 3″, at 0.25″/km) whereas in the French ITT, where the Portuguese was allowed to go full gas, Rogla was 19″ faster, i.e. 0,75″/km.

      Hard to compare other efforts when we don’t know if an athlete had a bad day etc., but at the TDF Roglic put in a couple of excellente performances both towards Valloire and Le Lioran, clearly in the league of the superhuman three, well ahead of Almeida, Landa and Gall, to name other three athletes – a decent sample – whom we can use as a benchmark in this case, as they really performed well both yesterday and on those two TDF stages (whereas, say, Mas was clearly underperforming in that first half of the Tour, just as Ciccone, Carlos Rodríguez or Adam Yates were underperforming yesterday).

      Nothing surprising as Roglic’s recovery wasn’t the easiest one and he couldn’t prepare for the Vuelta at the very best. The real question is if he’ll be able to keep consistent throughout the three weeks, something which was often a weak point of him even under better circumstances. OTOH, he’s the sort of rider who usually can overcome adversity and time loss, keeping himself close enough to take full advantage of any occasion, or defending the jersey to very last handful of seconds… unless he loses crucial time on the last decisive ITT, of course 😉

    • I am inclined to agree with Christian. Even with his back problem he looked fresher at the end of stage 4 than he did at the Tour where he always looked drained. Perhaps he is one cold climate person who likes the hot weather.

        • I just had a look at a map and see that the Alps are to the north and northwest of the country … so it is a bit milder than I imagined. Nevertheless they don’t see above 10 deg C for 4 months of the year.

          • ‘they don’t see above 10 deg C for 4 months of the year’ – so, warmer than most the countries north of Slovenia, which is a lot of countries.

      • Ever rode with a bunch of athletes who’re a step above you? Or with some friends who’re a step below you? When do you look more drained, but when are the real watts poured?

        • He didn’t look on top of thi g’s in the Dauphine either. Someone was making comments about him losing too much weight … perhaps he has found the right weight.
          In any event it is only impressions.

          • In the Dauphiné he clearly wasn’t in top shape, but that was actually good news (even more so as he was coming from an accident even then).
            A performance close to your very top at the Dauphiné isn’t normally the best path to the TDF, at least according to the most common reactions of human physiology.
            Throughout history, you’ve got a quite reduced number of athletes who were able to shine at the Dauphiné and subsequently at the TDF – normally, teams with some peculiar prep.
            And in the rest of cases when it happens, quite often it’s about modest competition.

          • Pre-crash, Roglic was looking like he was going to face quite a battle for 3rd.
            But that’s his level – especially at this age. He can win a Giro against a very old Thomas, and he’ll probably win this Vuelta, largely against domestiques tired from the TdF.

          • @J Evans
            Of course that’s his level, and in the best case. But perhaps the point is *that*, (well) above, is *their* level… just ask the rest.

  24. Well, this could be interesting!

    O’Connor looked like a little boy crossing the line. I hope he doesn’t lose by 2 seconds and regret slow-pedaling over the line….

    • With a few small differences 🙂

      1. Decathlon has zero GC riders among the chasers, not two.
      2. O’Connor has five minutes, not three.
      3. O´Connor is O´Connor of 2024, not Kuss of 2023.
      4. There are more GC teams with a keen interest to close the gap.

      • As much as I like Ben O’Connor, I’m not convinced that stage 6 fundamentally changes the race. If Bora and UAE race against each other like they would have anyway, O’Connor will lose time and eventually fall behind. AG2R don’t have a team to dictate the pace of a race the way Bora and UAE do, especially not in the high mountains. It might come down to the final TT, but I still think it will be either Roglič or Almeida in the end.

        • Why is any team going to work to pull o Connor back just so roglic can sit on their wheels and grab bonus seconds and hence the overall at the end?

          • Last year the other teams had realistically only a third place in the GC to aim for, but now they can go for the win.

            That gives them a big enough incitement to cancel out the Roglic effect. Besides, there is every reason to consider this year´s Roglic as weaker than last year´s.

  26. By the way, my theory about Hansen being an Aussie and as such not being heat-sensitive whereas 10° feel cold to him grows stronger and stronger as the peloton faces average 35-36°C for hours with peaks at 38-39°C for the third stage out of 7… to no worry for the CPA (Disclaimer, I’m not reading Twiitter/X)

    Or is it just that the Vuelta is ASO owned as the Flèche, or simply… not – the – Giro?

    Very. Mysterious.

    • 37 deg C is the average maximum for Cordoba at this time of year. If it is included in the route it is to be expected. What does the wet bulb say?

      • You can also expect 5° and light rain on the Alps…

        (Besides, in this case what was notable was the number of hours with sustained high temperatures rather than max)

        Personally, I say both conditions can be races. But…

        • I do wonder myself why they race through the hottest part of the day. During hot weather at my location the temperature typically reaches maximum at about 1 or 2 pm and then just sits there till about 5 or 6 pm … that is more or less when they race.

  27. Climate change is the elephant in the room no one seems to want to deal with. Inevitably, races are going to have move on the calendar, start times will have to change etc. The most obvious change that could happen immediately would be to have the Giro and Vuelta swap places in the calendar. In any case, neither Hansen nor the UCI seem to be willing to deal with the very real threat that climate change poses to riders’ health.

  28. Oh no. Not the old diversion of ‘climate change’. Don’t give Hanson any more ideas to disrupt races than he already has. The climate has changed for 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so. I did field work in Andalucía in summer months 50 odd years ago, and the current temperatures are pretty similar to that of those times.

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