The last chance for specialists in grand tours
This Saturday begins La Vuelta ciclista a España, the last season opportunity for specialists in grand tours to take their way.
The current champion Simon Yates has fallen from a startlist where the most prominent riders are the Movistar Richard Carapaz (1000), Nairo Quintana (1200) and Alejandro Valverde (1200), the Jumbo-Visma Primoz Roglic (1200) and Steven Kruijswijk (1000), the Astana Miguel Ángel López (1200) and Ion Izagirre (1200), and the Bora-Hansgrohe Rafal Majka (1000) and Felix Grossschartner (1000).
It also the entire Education First goes hard, with Sergio Higuita (600), Rigoberto Uran (800), Hugh John Carthy (800) and Tejay Van Garderen (800), and Team UAE has one of the great revelations of the season, the young Tadej Pogačar (800), together with Fabio Aru (400). Team Ineos leads Tao Geohegan Hart (400) and David De La Cruz (600) for the General Classification, while other teams are going to play it all to partial victories. This is the case of teams such as Lotto Soudal, which features an eight with the incombustible Thomas de Gendt (1000) as the main asset, as well as the CCC Team, the Team Dimension Data, the Bahrain Mérida, the Groupama FDJ or the invited Spanish teams of the Euskadi-Murias, Burgos BH and Caja Rural-Seguros RGA that will seek presence in the breakaways.
For the sprint arrivals, the main names to consider are Sam Bennet (1200), Fernando Gaviria (1000), Fabio Jakobsen (1000), Maximillian Walscheid (800) and John Degenkolb (800), although will also try Phil Bauhaus (800), Edvald Boason Hagen (800), Clement Venturini (600), Luka Megzec (600) and Marc Sarreau (400), among others.