The battles for pink and yellow have come and gone, but Grand Tour season still has one final act to play this season as the peloton lines-up for the Vuelta a España. Battling over steep mountains, full-gas sprint stages, challenging hilly days and races against the clock, we’re sure to be in for an exciting three weeks of action.
Beginning overseas, or in this case over-land, a sprint stage from Torino gets the race underway while the puncheurs and climbers will like the look of stage two and the summit finish. From there the race makes its way towards France by the end of stage four and a long transfer back to Spain for a TTT the following day. Back-to-back mountain days sees the race hits its fourth country with a start in Andorra, followed by a sprint stage into Zaragoza and a summit finish to round out week one.
A tricky climb gets the following week underway before a punchy day out with Basque fans ends in Bilbao and the same finish climb that was used in the Tour de France in 2023. A trip to the famously steep L’Angliru awaits on stage 13, with challenging stages littered throughout week two.
The final week sees a deceptively tough hilly day followed up by another summit finish, before the long 27-kilometre individual time trial. The sprinters who make it to the final weekend can rejoice as stage 19 and 21 look set for fast finishes. While the GC battle could still be decided on the brutally steep final ramps of the Puerto de Navacerrada on stage 20.
Heading into the race after strong showings at the previous two Grand Tours, Team Picnic PostNL have their sights set on being competitive throughout the race and hunting for stage results throughout the three weeks.
Team Picnic PostNL coach Phil West said: “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.”
Originally on the line-up for the race, Max Poole unfortunately has been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus. You can read up on Max here.
Line-up:
Patrick Eddy
Chris Hamilton
Bjorn Koerdt
Gijs Leemreize
Juan Martinez
Timo Roosen
Casper van Uden
Kevin Vermaerke