Where does this year’s Vuelta a España begin? It starts on Saturday, so it shouldn’t be too oblique a question. It’s not a Spanish city, like Bilbao, Barcelona or Burgos, it’s not even a city on the Iberian peninsula, like it was last year, with Lisbon. No, it’s Turin, in Italy.
If you knew that already, then congratulations. If you didn’t, don’t feel too disheartened – the fact surprises me every time I remember it. It’s the sixth time the Vuelta has started overseas, but the third time in four years (after Utrecht in 2022 and Lisbon in 2024, who could forget), as the race tries to make a mark for itself. There is the Grand Départ in Turin, but then three more stages in Italy, and even France, before the race enters Spain itself, and then there is a further excursion to Andorra across stages six and seven. This is the Tour of Spain, remember.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
The race of novelty and extremes doesn’t end there. There is a 20km team time trial on stage five, only the second WorldTour TTT this year, and the first in a Grand Tour since the Vuelta in 2023. No other Grand Tour has had a TTT since 2019.
There are 12 stages out of 21 with over 3,000 metres of climbing, something which the Tour de France has only done once this century, and the Giro d’Italia hasn’t at all. As a result, it is an unrelenting race, with a summit finish on the second day, with nine more to follow. Nine!
This is the Vuelta trying to stand out, to be something different, to offer a different product to that of the Giro and the Tour, to cut through to a slumbering cycling audience in late August. After the Classics, the Giro, the Tour, and now the Tour de France Femmes too, there is a bit of a lull, which the Vuelta is unfortunate to find itself in, before the World Championships ties up the season at the end of September. This might sound reductive, and there are other races through the year, but this is how many cycling fans, especially casual ones, see the calendar.
This is why the Spanish Grand Tour has to try new things, why despite being in its 80th edition this year, it has the feeling of being unsettled. It seems unthinkable to change anything fundamental about the Tour or the Giro, while the Vuelta seems less impervious to fluctuations, and is more likely to be creative. Who could forget that just last year, a stage started from within a supermarket in Jerez.
The race’s imaginative approach should be lauded; cycling as a sport is far too conservative, too reactionary, as normal. However, I am left with a feeling of confusion over what the Vuelta is. It’s a Grand Tour, but with less prestige than either the Tour and the Giro, hence some teams not sending certain star riders. Its position in the calendar makes it a final opportunity for many to save their season, or for some to have another go after the Tour, as Jonas Vingegaard is doing. It’s sometimes treated as the intro Grand Tour for younger riders, with the lower pressure, but this year the tough course will be a brutal introduction to three-week racing.
There is such a thing as too much change, too. There might be five bunch sprints at this year’s race, but depending on how the stages are raced, there could be as few as two. It is not a Grand Tour for sprinters, proved by the absence of most of the top fast men; Mads Pedersen, Ethan Vernon and Bryan Coquard are not the A-list sprinters you’d expect at the UAE Tour the Tour de France; Pedersen is one of the best riders in the world, but he’s not a pure sprinter.
Taking the bunch sprints out might make for a more compelling race, with fewer sleepy transition days, but it’s these stages that make the full-on days even more exciting. Perhaps a shorter race is the answer, but if it is to be 21 stages, then there needs to be a bit of everything. If it was two weeks – gasp – relentless climbing might work as a concept. As it is, it seems to be wildly swinging one way, and the start list feels to be full of a certain kind of rider; it feels more like Itzulia Basque Country than the usual mix of a Grand Tour.
The Vuelta will still be fantastic entertainment and full of storylines. The absence of Tadej Pogačar might be a blow for the race organisers, but it might mean a more open fight for the red jersey, unless Vingegaard dominates, which isn’t impossible. Perhaps I should be less of a curmudgeon and just learn to love it. I just feel sorry for any of the riders who aren’t pure climbers.
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