Screw Twitter: Thoughts on Wiggins and Froome

When it comes to supporting cyclists or cycling teams, I’ve never been particularly motivated by patriotism. Exciting riding styles, strong teams or the ability to dethrone a rider I dislike have always been the major factors in choosing who I support. Except it now turns out that my lack of patriotism has merely been down to the lack of a strong British/Kenyan-British contender.

Like every cycling fan, the performances of Wiggins and Froome over the last three weeks had me gripped. Froome’s attack on Pena Cabarga made me shout myself hoarse. As hope faded over the final week that either man could retake the jersey from JJ Cobo I engaged in ever more convoluted and far-fetched imaginings as I tried to figure out where the Sky pair could get another 13 seconds with fewer and fewer climbs available. In my head, Sky one-twos put Cobo under pressure even on the flat. I knew it would never happen, but my newfound need for a patriotic win saw the borders of sporting credibility stretched like an old sweater.

(Incidentally, I’d like to see “stretching the sweater of credibility” become a counterpoint to “unpacking the suitcase of courage”, as in: “Landis is really unpacking the suitcase of courage here, Phil.” “Actually Paul, I think he’s finished unpacking and started stretching the sweater of credibility.”)

Of course, I was far from the only one to become obsessed with the Sky duo, it seemed like every British cycling fan was paying close attention. Unfortunately it seemed like at least half of them were in the same camp as Twitter’s FestinaGirl, who said of Froome: “shame Sky didn’t appreciate his right to wear the Red Jersey when he had it” among many other pointed comments about Sky’s decision to throw all their weight behind Wiggins even when Froome was in 2nd position overall. The question occurred time and again on cycling related forums: where would Froome be if he didn’t have to work for Wiggins?

My answer to that is that he’d probably have been somewhere in the top twenty.

How Teamwork Works
Don’t get me wrong, over the whole three weeks Froome was the stronger of the two Sky men, and by the end of the race was riding in a delightfully aggressive fashion, but it was Wiggins who rode like a team leader, and Wiggins who rode like a race favourite. It was Wiggins riding in the front two and marking the favourites on Sierra Nevada. It was Wiggins deciding who to leave and who to chase. When the Sky pair chased down Dan Martin and defending champion Vincenzo Nibali on La Covatilla it was Wiggins who assumed leadership of the group, moving to the front and sustaining a pace that burned off Rodriguez, Scarponi and Nieve, and made sure that Nibali couldn’t escape a second time.

Did Chris Froome help his team leader do all this? Of course, but thats what mountain domestiques do. They drag their leader up to the front group on the mountains. Once they’re there, however, it’s the leader who rides with his head up, bossing the field, setting the pace and attacking the weak. That’s what Wiggins did.

Froome’s reputation before this Vuelta was that of a strong climber with limited tactical nous, a penchant for crazy attacks, and a bad habit of positioning himself at the back of the bunch. If he’d ridden his own race, as half the internet seemed to have wished, he’d have flared brightly and then been left to slip down the rankings long before the race reached the Angliru.

Riding Wiggins into the lead is what taught Froome to ride at the front. Sticking with his savvy leader in the mountains is what taught him self-control. He added his own tremendously exciting attacking style to that, tear-arseing out of the bunch in pursuit of bonus seconds or gaps, but the Froome who finished the Vuelta in second place was not a podium rider who’d been held back all race, he was a domestique who’d been remade over the course of it.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what he does next, but for those of you who’d rather he’d bucked the team hierarchy, ridden selfishly and battled his own teammates, may I suggest you watch the Italian team at the Worlds next week?

How steep?!?

So, we said that the mountains would be too much for him. No, the really long mountains. No, sorry, the really long mountains with lots of changes in gradient. Not only have they not been too much for Bradley Wiggins, but his head-up, commanding riding at the front, marshalled by Chris Froome has been too much for many of his rivals.

Seriously, look at the list of riders that Wiggins has dropped at one point or another in this race: Vincenzo Nibali, Joaquim Rodriguez, Michele Scarponi, Mikel Nieve. Not bad for a chap we thought would defend in the mountains.

Of course, tomorrow we’ve got a really long mountain with lots of changes in gradient and some horrifically steep sections. By rights, that should be too much for Wiggins, but by this point he’s confounded expectations often enough that it wouldn’t be a terrible surprise if he holds it together on the Angliru.
Even after the Angliru there’s still stage 17's summit finish on Pena Cabarga, a climb too short for massive time losses, but steep enough for gaps to be created easily - a good day tomorrow could lay the foundations for a deciding attack on Wednesday. Nevertheless, Wiggins is in the strongest spot now.

Of his expected challengers tomorrow, any attempt by Mollema to get away would lead to an Anglo-Dutch replay of last year's slo-mo Mosquera/Nibali chase. TGBM has the strength to maintain a gap, but not the acceleration to make the gap especially dangerous.

Cobo could have something left in the tank, but it would be almost the reverse of the Mollema situation - he could easily open a sizeable gap, but potentially not maintain it - much like today, where he was chopped back to 15 seconds by the finish.

I can't bring myself to count Nibali out entirely either. 1:25 is a big deficit for a guy with so little acceleration, but he's finished second and third on the Mt Zoncolan in the last two years. When it comes to really long climbs with batshit gradients, Nibali has proven that he can hang in there even as the faster guys fade. The Angliru might yet play to his consistency.

Nevertheless, Wiggins has to defend the time he’s already got, while everyone else has to overcome sizeable caveats (and sizeable mountains) to seize the time they need. I don’t want to tempt fate, but things have never looked this good before...

Vuelta 2011: Thoughts After The Rest Day

Ten stages in and the 2011 has been a cracker so far. We’ve had incidents and action on a course that has shaken up the riders' expectations of a grand tour by hitting them with a summit finish after only four days, and shaken up viewer expectations of a Vuelta by swapping the usual motorways and cement factories for broad, arid vistas, cosmopolitan towns and heaving beachfronts. And motorways.

All that has added up to a win for the fans, and the winners and losers within the race are equally clear.

The Losers

Igor Anton’s unexpectedly poor performance the moment the route first went uphill saw him drop out of contention even before a poor time trial left him nearly nine minutes back. Michele Scarponi’s collapse hasn’t been as clear to the eye as Anton’s, but his failure to be right at the sharp end of the race put him in a position where Wiggins’ great day on La Covatilla and Scarponi’s own underperformance in the following day’s TT sees him at 4:22.

Joaquin Rodriguez was expected to lose big time in the TT, and he did. He wasn’t really expected to blow quite as much on La Covatilla, but his cushion in the red jersey was such that his status as a loser at 3:23 doesn’t look quite as serious as that of Denis Menchov and Janez Brajkovic in thirteenth and ninth place respectively. Those aren’t bad standings, but very little of the remaining route suits either man, so it looks likely that they’ll start a rankings slide from here.

The Winners

The big winners so far are Wiggins and Nibali. In any grand tour you can put together a list of ten or fifteen riders that should be contenders for the overall, but of that list you know that deep down there are really only four or five that actually are genuine contenders. Of the group that benefit from more than just polite inclusion, only Wiggins and Nibali remain in the top ten, at 20 and 31 seconds back, respectively. Thus far, Wiggins has looked the stronger by a whisker - with one ill-fated exception on La Covatilla, Nibali has defended or even briefly faded on the climbs, while Wiggins has taken charge, riding sensibly at the front and occasionally setting the pace. That balance will undoubtedly shift as the race continues through seven more mountain stages - despite Bradley’s massive improvement on the steep bits, they’re still Nibali’s natural arena.

Of the other top tenners, the most notable is Chris Froome, who has shown incredible strength in the service of Wiggins in the mountains, and unexpected power in the TT to take the red jersey. He leads Fuglsang by 12 seconds and Wiggins by 20, but he’s young and his experience of leading a stage race is limited to winning the 2006 Tour of Mauritius. He’ll fade down the standings over the next 11 stages, but his name will stick in the mind and we’ll all be watching out for him next year.

Bauke Mollema, or “The Great Bauke Mollema” as some parts of the internet know him, is in the position Froome will find himself in next year: in the past, he's been the star of the future, in the present, he's fulfilling that potential. He looks robust and ready to grind away at the race until a top 5 or (whisper it) podium place is his.

Fuglsang is the surprise, at least to me. Leopard Trek have been touting his stage racing potential, but the scarf-modelling true racers have always talked a better fight than they’ve actually fought. To me, Fuglsang’s previous good placings have always spoken of an ability to get good placings, rather than potential to get great ones. I’d always put him in the Oscar Perreiro bracket: a rock-solid, respectable rider, but one who’d need both a lucky breakaway and a lucky break to make any further progress. Yet there he is, in second and looking comfortable, if not exactly powerful.

Predictions

Ten stages down, eleven to go. Seven of which are mountains. Seven. Including the Angliru. When you look at it that way, anything could happen. Hell, even Anton could make a comeback! In all likelihood, however, I think we’ll see Nibali grinding skyward, never having good days, but never having bad ones either, until he finishes in red by a narrow margin.

While the likes of Scarponi, Anton and Rodriguez have fallen backwards, the remaining territory suits them all sufficiently that I expect them to regain positions in the top ten at the expense of Brajkovic, Monfort and Zubeldia. Rodriguez in particular will do well on Pena Cabarga, and might fancy his chances today as well-it’s not really a steep enough climb for him, but it is at least a short one.

Finally...

ITV4 have done a cracking job of pulling together Vuelta coverage at the last minute, overcoming dodgy Spanish feeds and acoustically iffy surroundings to bring us enjoyable and occasionally rather moving coverage: Cervantes and Cavendish was the sort of cultured combination that makes me love cycling. Nevertheless, the last minute addition of the Vuelta to the schedules means that they have a pre-existing commitment to motor racing that they have to honour this Sunday. Worse still, Eurosport are dropping their Vuelta coverage on the same day in favour of tennis. That’s Sunday. The day the race goes up the Angliru. The queen stage of the race. Moop. All is not lost, however, as ITV will be streaming the race live online, so you’ll be able to watch it here: http://www.itv.com/itv4. Phew.

Instant Gratification.

When I said this morning that Chris Froome's riding had marked him out as a future leader, I meant further in the future than this. Well done Chris.

Of the two Sky men, I'm still backing Bradley. He's got more experience of being at the sharp end of a grand tour, and that's vital if you want to hold your position rather than fade down the stretch. Nevertheless, two consecutive days of powerful riding in two different disciplines, finishing the TT above Fabian Cancellara and Bradley Wiggins and second only to Tony Martin, bodes very well for Froome.

Now I’m A Believer...

I had a mini-La Plagne moment yesterday, except instead of yelling “It looks like Stephen Roche. It is! It is Stephen Roche!”, I opted instead for something cruder but more concise: “F*cking hell, it’s Wiggo.” TeamSky’s marketing department can have that for a slogan, if they like.

It was one of those lovely moments in cycling when both the action and the camera placement were perfect: Nibali has surged ahead, overtaken the fading Nico Roche and is grinding towards the summit with Dan Martin for company, Moto 1 has pulled ahead so the camera can look into the faces of this select pairing of riders, and there, in the background, is Wiggins leading the charge, steadily and calmly closing the gap on the defending champion, neither asking for nor needing the help of the GC men who’d stayed with him. The chase pace he’d sustained had already seen off race leader Rodriguez and hot contender Michele Scarponi, and strong climbers like Mikel Nieve.

Not content with merely catching the defending champion, Wiggins took to the front of the group, put his head down and did his utmost to keep the pace high. It wasn’t so much an attack as a softening-up process, one that would put enough pain in the legs to see that the group would splinter when Dan Martin made his final dash for the line.

Martin won the stage, Bauke Mollema took the race lead and Chris Froome’s robust chasing marked him out as a future team leader, but the day really belonged to Wiggins.

His transformation into potential Grand Tour winner supposedly occurred during the 2009 Tour De France, when he had his most credible performance ever in the mountains, but even then I had doubts. His newfound mountain goat reputation sprang from the fact that he wouldn’t lose contact with the big names until the final Ks of the climb. Admittedly, that’s a better performance than 90% of the peloton can manage, but while getting dropped late might not damage your time as much as getting burned off early, calling him a GC contender simply for losing time less dramatically than everyone else seemed a little premature. After all, this isn’t the nineties and we don’t get 80-90k of Individual Time Trialling in Grand Tours anymore. Wiggins is at his best against the clock, and the ability to limit your losses in the mountains is no help if you don’t have the TT kilometres available to inflict losses on your rivals.

Yesterday changed all that. Wiggins didn’t just limit his losses in the mountains, he inflicted losses on serious rivals. Furthermore, he chased and caught a grand tour winner and instantly assumed the leadership role in the group, taking the front and setting the pace with no deference to Nibali’s status.

There’s a lot of internet hand-wringing today which suggests that he may have gone too deep and burned reserves that would have been more efficiently used today in a TT which more naturally fits Wiggins’ skills, but I doubt that a rider as canny as Wiggo, riding in a team as scientific as Sky, would have made a blunder like that. More importantly, much of the early effort was made by Chris Froome, and even his later efforts didn’t leave Wiggins looking like he’d gone too deep. He looked like a man who’d ridden well within himself.

Today we have a flat Time Trial without any real tricky bits and it seems likely to be won by Tony Martin or Fabian Cancellara. That’s pretty much a given - if Martin and Cancellara are there, the only question is whether the course has the technical sections that give Cancellara an even greater edge. Today doesn’t look too twisty, so I’m favouring Martin. The important thing, however, is what Wiggins will make of it. I’m expecting him to be the highest placed of the GC men, slightly ahead of Brajkovic and Kessiakof, significantly ahead of Nibali, and whole minutes ahead of Rodriguez, Scarponi and Anton.

With seven mountain stages to come, including the Alto del Angliru on stage 15, this is still a race that favours natural climbers rather than a converted track rider with a dedicated WeightWatchers plan like Wiggins. Even so, I’m now a believer. In my Vuelta preview, I suggested that top ten was the best Bradley could hope for. That prediction was based on a Bradley Wiggins who wouldn’t fall off the mountains until the final yards, but the Bradley Wiggins who might not fall off the mountains at all is a different prospect. He can take enough time today, and defend it effectively enough in upcoming days, that a podium place is a strong possibility. A mod like Wiggins would probably have misgivings about being the subject of a post named after a Monkees' song, so he’ll really hate a Bon Jovi reference. Nevertheless: keep the faith.

Put not your trust in Euskaltel riders.

In 2003 Iban Mayo tore up Alpe D’Huez so fast on his way to a stage win and eventual sixth place overall that in the space of the 39 minutes and six seconds it took him to climb the alp he became the repository for all of Europe’s cycling hopes and, more importantly, all of mine.

At that time, all the riders who seemed capable of defeating Lance Armstrong were either busy having nose jobs, enjoying a heady cocktail of black forest gateaux, muesli and amphetamines or were riders yet to fully mature and sadly destined to smash themselves to bits or dope their pets rather than put up a fight. Consequently, Iban Mayo became our totem, our hope for ending the reign of that glowering, graceless Texan. And what did he do? He retired halfway through his next two Tours, suffered from 'the kissing disease', and eventually tested positive for EPO.

What does this waffle have to do with today’s Vuelta, I hear you ask? Technically nothing, but I am a blogger, and therefore have staked my paper-thin self-esteem on the idea that my wandering thoughts can be just as relevant as the cold hard facts supplied by proper journalists. My feeling in this case is that Euskaltel have let me down again.

After Mayo I went cold on the orange clad squad, who’d been a loose favourite of mine ever since the days when lowly second division teams like Benfica (the cycling team not the football club), Brescialat and the like were profiled in the pages of Cycle Sport magazine. After Mayo, I could never warm to the flaming carrots, and barely noticed the Olympic win and Tour performances of Sammy Sanchez.

Then along came Igor Anton. He looked strong in the 2010 Vuelta, winning two stages and having a forty odd second advantage in the red jersey until he was knocked down like fire damaged Nikes in a Croydon sports shop by a bit of two-by-four in the road. He came good again earlier this year at the Giro d’Italia, winning on the Mt Zoncolan, one of the most sadistic climbs in cycling. Given that he then began resting and preparing for the 2011 Vuelta, which also contains a fairly sadistic climb in the form of the Alto del Angliru, things looked good for him, and I embraced the Euskaltel boys once again and picked Anton to win the Vuelta. Perhaps I’m just a jinx?

He looked a little iffy on yesterday’s climbs, but I thought nothing of it. I assumed that their lack of importance in the overall scheme of things meant he probably wasn’t giving them his best.

Today, however, you couldn’t kid yourself. The early climbs were clearly as tough as yesterday’s as was obvious from Stijn Devolder’s wobbling and weaving that had me momentarily convinced I was watching the previous stage’s highlights. But Devolder is a squad rider for whom lightning has struck twice. Surely the serious climbers like Anton would be ok?

Then came Sierra Nevada. Not that steep, but really, really long. And there’s Igor Anton, sitting at the back of the bunch. Still at the back. Still. Those little gaps between riders that open and close naturally on the corners? They’re not closing naturally for Anton. He’s clawing them closed. He might as well be sinking his fingernails into the tarmac and scrabbling up the hill without the bike.

Eventually he dropped off entirely which was a shame, but not half as bad as what happened next. Three teammates came back to pace him up the rest of the climb, and for some time the foursome were seen working as a slow moving unit, occasionally wafting past the odd lone rider falling from the pack, but before long it became embarrassingly apparent that Anton couldn’t keep up with his teammates either, and they returned to the pack, leaving Igor to labour on alone, eventually coming in 1:38 down on the bunch and 2:44 down on the new red jersey, Sylvain Chavanel. More importantly, he’s 1:51 down on race favourite Vincenzo Nibali.

Of course he’s got three flat days to recover before the next mountains. There’s even the chance he might be riding himself into form for the nastier climbs ahead, but these aren’t the bad old days when massive deficits could be overturned by pulling a few ‘cold ones’ from the fridge. You’d have to say Anton’s chances for the overall are gone.

When it comes to humiliating days in the mountains I’m reminded of poor Ivan Basso’s long and televised diarrhoea attack in the snowy Gavia pass in 2005, where he lost over forty minutes and the Maglia Rosa. He did at least manage to secure a face-saving stage win a few days later, and that’s now what I’m hoping Anton will do.

In the parts of the race that still mattered both Vincenzo Nibali and Bradley Wiggins looked extremely comfortable, almost nonchalant, as they occupied the vital spots at the front of the group and led up the Sierra Nevada. While attacks from Chris Anker Sorenson and Daniel Moreno were able to sweep past the breakaway remnants, they never managed to get their gap beyond 14 seconds. That Moreno was far and away the quicker man was obvious from the start, and it must have been all he could manage not to start his victory celebrations around 3K out when it became obvious that Sorenson couldn’t grind him off his back wheel.

Finally, there’s Cav. I’ve always thought that three Grand Tours in a year is a big ask even if you are only hunting stage wins. Add to that the temperature of nearly 34 degrees in the shade and it’s no wonder Cav climbed off. Given that he was sharing a room with Matt Goss, who retired with stomach troubles yesterday, no one would be particularly surprised if it turns out that the Manx Missile has got a touch of Basso Belly. The question now is, how does he prepare for the Worlds? The GP Ouest France is one possibility, as is the Tour of Britain, but having been booked onto La Vuelta, he’ll need to ask the organiser’s permission to start a different race for fear of a fine and fifteen day ban. This is widely considered nothing more than a polite formality, so we should see Cavendish in action somewhere cooler and flatter before too long.

Those old familiar feelings...

Is anyone else starting this Vuelta with a slight feeling of deja vu? TTT on stage one, followed by a flat stage that everyone assumes will end in a bunch gallop. The sprinters teams keep the breaks under control, make the catch in the last 30k and wind up the pace ready for a sprint, only for the ‘slight rise’ mentioned in the roadbook to wipe the pace off so suddenly it looked like the entire bunch suffered simultaneous chain-suck and the race for the line degenerates into half a dozen brave, individual dashes. Didn’t see that coming.

On a side note, the winner of those individual dashes for the line was Sky’s C J Sutton, on the same day that his team-mate Edvald Boassen-Hagen won the Vattenfall Cyclassic. All this not 24 hours after I said hoped Sky’s luck would change for the better. Just in case lady luck is still on the line can I also say that I hope Ivan Basso finds the fountain of youth, that Bjarne Riis will announce that he in fact rode the 1996 Tour on nothing more than M&Ms and Top Deck Shandy, and that Bradley Wiggins can take three times as much time on stage 10 as I suspect he’ll lose on stage 15.

Anyway, on to stage 3...

Vuelta a Espana 2011: Stage 1

Did the Vuelta’s team presentation start with the launch of a hundred black cats into a mirror factory? Three riders slipped their chains coming off the start ramp, Nick Nuyens crashed into a ditch, Geox were utterly unable to hide their age, and Sky combined a crash with poor communication to put in an utterly awful TTT performance.

Before the start my prediction was for an HTC, Sky, Garmin one-two-three. The presence of Grabsch and Martin in a well drilled team explained HTC’s predicted top spot, while the generally practiced TTT performances of the other two had me thinking that even with their squads packed out with climbers they’d function cohesively and efficiently. Just so we’re clear, my other outstanding prediction at the moment is that Butlin’s will be opening a Kabul camp by summer 2012.

While not all the teams might think so, it hasn’t been a bad start to the Vuelta. A stain on Marco Pantani’s memory has been wiped away now that we’ve finally got a Grand Tour theme tune worse than the one il Pirata 'sang' for the Giro in 96. Better yet, the painful need to choose between Eurosport and ITV4 has been settled by ITV’s decision not to bother with anything resembling a commentary and instead just have the race pictures provide a pretty backdrop to Ned and Matt’s polite chatting, which may be knowledgeable but is also completely lacking in any sort of urgency. Even if you like that sort of thing, the terrible acoustics of the studio would have ruined it for you. I’m taking donations now, if I can raise the £5 ITV apparently lacks, I’ll buy them some egg-boxes.

ITV’s sound was perfectly complemented by the Spanish cameras, which at one point rendered Quickstep’s kit a fetching shade of green. I was hoping the same thing had happened when Andalucia Caja Granada rolled off the ramp, but no, they actually are riding in a kit that’s indistinguishable from Liquigas at any distance greater than three feet. That’s not likely to be as problematic as it sounds, because after stage four no one from Andalucia will be within three feet of anyone from Liquigas anyway.

The racing itself was exciting and had the odd unexpected twist. No one is surprised by bad luck striking Radioshack anymore, but when Brajkovic’s slipped chain was copied by Saxobank and Lampre riders as well, I started to wonder if there was a lump or bump on the start ramp jarring them loose. A more technically minded friend suggested that the riders anticipatory back-pedalling before the start might be misaligning their chains.

In any case, a few dropped chains were nothing compared to the bad luck Sky appear to be having. They went from being “treated like dogs” at the team presentation to crashing off screen at one of the early roundabouts and losing four riders shortly before Xabier Zandio finished his turn at the front and dropped off, apparently unaware that he was now the all-important fifth man. Can I recommend the Rosetta Stone Conversational Spanish kit?

Sky eventually rolled in 42 seconds behind Leopard Trek, with the creaking knees of Menchov and Sastre bringing Geox in a second behind at 43. Now if the other challenging teams such as Igor Anton’s Euskaltel or Joaquim Rodriguez’s Katusha had come in with those 40+ deficit seconds I’d have said no problem: there’s a lot of climbing and only one time trial to come. For Menchov and Wiggins though...there’s a lot of climbing and only one time trial to come.

Fingers crossed they can come back from this, as they really do deserve better luck.

Almost unnoticed amidst the crashes and mechanicals, Fabian Cancellara's pulling prowess gave Leopard-Trek the stage and Jacob Fuglsang the first Red Jersey of 2011 with a 16:30 that went largely unremarked upon until it became obvious that HTC and Liquigas weren't going to overhaul it after all. Well done Spartacus.

1. Leopard-Trek / 16:30

2. Liquigas-Cannondale / 16:34

3. HTC-HighRoad / 16:39

4. Astana / 16:40

5. Movistar Team / 16:44

6. Quick Step / 16:45

7. Skil-Shimano / 16:48

8. Omega Pharma-Lotto / 16:48

9. Garmin-Cervélo / 16:55

10. Katusha Team /16:55

11. BMC / 16:57

12. Euskaltel-Euskadi / 16:58

13. Saxo Bank-Sungard / 16:58

Vuelta a Espana 2011 Preview: Route & Riders

In my admittedly unfashionable opinion, last year’s Vuelta a Espana was the best of 2010’s grand tours. While it lacked the controversy of the Tour’s chaingate and the enormous breakaways and redemptive victory served up by the Giro, it more than compensated for it with on the road action.

While its bigger brothers left us debating the absence of Contador’s sportsmanship and Vinokourov’s tactical savvy, the 2010 Vuelta was all about Philip Gilbert blasting up a Malagan precipice, Igor Anton’s two stage wins and devastating crash, and the battles on Lagos De Covadonga and the newly discovered Bola Del Mundo.

Vincenzo Nibali pulled out an intelligent win in a hard fought race over an interesting course, a combination that made you wonder if the Vuelta had finally stepped out of the shadow of its French and Italian counterparts. Of course, the Vuelta has had false dawns before-wins by Jalabert in 1995, Zulle in 1996 and Ullrich in 1999 had you thinking that the race had become prized by the men who usually give it their all in July rather than September -but this time we reckon the sun is set to shine for a good long time. This year’s route is just as interesting as last years, there are some exciting contenders and hey, we get live daily coverage on ITV 4, so the riders have the added incentive to ride hard and avoid being the butt of Gary Imlach’s withering jabs.

The Route

As is traditional these days, there’s stacks of climbing, minimal time trialling and a few stages that look more like a Spring Classic than a GT stage. As is equally common these days, at least one of the mountain stages is somewhat blunted by disposing of all its climbs before it's half done, and another will probably be left to the chancers while the GC men keep their powder dry for the monster that follows it. Nevertheless, there are plenty of pivotal looking stages.

Stage 1: Benidorm Team Time Trial.

Like a holidaymaker in Pataya, the opening time trial is a bit twisted and likely to be exposed along the beaches, but for all its technicalities, the 13.5K opener is too short for anyone to lose really serious time. Except for Euskaltel, of course. They’ll somehow manage to lose a shedload.

Stage 4: Baza-Sierra Nevada.

A summit finish on an Hors Categorie climb on stage four means that that the sprinters will be fighting elimination before they’ve even finished tightening their cleats, while the GC men will have to show their cards early.

Stage 10: Salamanca TT.

47 kilometres against the clock with nothing that resembles a climb and very little in the way of twists and turns, there’s a chance here for strong time triallists like Menchov and Wiggins to wipe away losses and build a cushion. It will need to be a bloody big cushion though, given what’s still in store...

Stage 11: Verin-Montana Manzaneda.

Two 3rd Cats and a 2nd Cat will weaken the rider's legs before the new climb of Montana Manzaneda. It takes nearly 30K to climb just under 1800 metres-this isn’t brutally steep, but it's loooong and draggy and likely to live as long in the riders legs as their memory.

Stage 15: Aviles-Angliru.

For a comparatively new climb, the Angliru dominates the Vuelta. Since its first appearance in 1999, Alto Del Angliru is the first name people look for each year when the route is announced.

The opening 6k are merely tough, but the final 6 are evil. The average gradient never drops below 12%, wavers frequently between 13 and 17%, and peaks briefly at 23%! Even the best climbers can be reduced to a crawl on the Angliru, and it tends to be attritional rather than tactical. The pace will drop, even team cars will struggle, and if there’s rain there will be all sorts of wheel slipping, bike weaving agony. Igor Anton proved he can handle the most sadistic climbs back in May, and I reckon he’ll use the Angliru to stamp his name on this year’s Vuelta. If he hasn’t fallen off by then.

The Riders

Vincenzo Nibali

The defending champion oft-touted next-big-thing-in-stage-races, Nibali’s a good but not explosive climber, a middling but not disastrous Time Trialist, and an exhilarating descender. You can shake him off in the mountains but he doesn’t fall too far behind, and his refusal to lose more than a few seconds sees him in good stead when everyone else is taking a minute one day and losing 45 seconds the next. His steady pursuit of Ezequiel Mosquera up Bola Del Mundo last year was the same sort of gutsy defensive riding that we’re all praising Cadel Evans for, having marked his rivals for three weeks. The only trouble is, Evans has nearly a decade on Nibali. What looks canny on an older man looks a little dull on Nibali, and I doubt that conservative tactics will see him in red a second time. I reckon he’ll be one step down this year, in second.

Igor Anton

He can climb with the best of them, and his victory on the Mt Zoncolan in this year’s Giro proves that he can climb on the worst of them. With the rider’s facing up to an ascent of the preposterously vicious Alto De Angliru, Igor Anton’s experience of winning on cycling’s sado-climbs will see him in good stead. On the other hand, he falls off a lot. Really a lot. He’s already crashed out of two Vuelta’s, and spent most of one Tour repeatedly picking gravel out of his legs. I reckon he’ll finish the Vuelta in first, or in hospital.

Michele Scarponi

He’s had a great set of results in stage races this year, so it’s a little unfair that when I think of Michele Scarponi I don’t think of him standing on the second step of the Giro’s podium, I think of him giving away the farm by tearing after Contador’s very first attack on Mt Etna and being utterly unable to sustain the chase. In that, he’s no different from anyone else in cycling, but where everyone else rode conservatively and kept the mystery alive, Scarponi had made it clear that the top step was beyond him. Of course, there is no Contador at this Vuelta, but there’s not likely to be much fear of Scarponi either. I reckon he’s looking at third.

Joaquim Rodriguez

Joaquim Rodriguez is just about the only rider whose uphill accelerations are scarier than Alberto Contador’s. Sadly for Rodriguez, he doesn’t have Alberto’s ability to repeat the trick time and time again. I reckon he can get away from anyone else in this Vuelta, but when he does so he won’t build big enough time gaps to trouble the podium.

Bradley Wiggins

How long can you maintain your best form? Four weeks, maybe five? And that’s assuming you can keep busy - something that hasn’t been possible for Wiggins, despite being back on the bike within a week of his collarbone surgery. The Wiggins we saw in the Dauphine might have had a shot at the podium, but two months and one fracture later, we’re guessing that Top Ten is the best he can hope for, and if he manages that we’ll be proper proud of him.