Team Picnic PostNL coach Phil West:
“We’ve had a really good build up towards the Vuelta after spending some time at altitude in Kühtai – thanks to our partner Vaya – to prepare for the upcoming three weeks of racing. We are disappointed to lose Max [Poole] from our line-up as he’s been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus, but with a good group here we’re looking forward to getting things underway in Torino this weekend.
As we reach Spain we’ve got a team time trial, which we have nice memories of having won the opening stage in Barcelona a few years ago, but coming on stage five it will bring a new dimension. In general, it’s a parcours that’s based a lot in the northern half of Spain, where we can expect quite a lot of tricky stages, punchy climbs and technical routes. We have some opportunities in the sprints in the opening part of the race where we will look to go for them with Casper as our finisher.
The climbing then comes thick and fast after that, where we will hunt for our chances from the breakaways but also go for day results from the peloton too, if the stage plays out like that with guys such as Kevin, Chris and the rest of our climbing group.
In a Grand Tour, every day can be a new challenge but also an opportunity. Not everything always goes exactly as you expect so it’s important for us as a group to stay resilient, work together and adapt to the situation in the race. We will head into each day with the obvious but simple goal of trying to get the maximum out of each stage and the three weeks. After a successful Tour de France, the morale in the group is high and everyone here is motivated to continue that and make this Vuelta a good one – as we have done in the past.”