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  • Cycling Weekly

    PREVIEW VUELTA A ESPAÑA

    Aug 18, 2022 12 minutes

    If ycling’s Grand Tours were nights out, the Giro d’Italia would be a nice simple meal and drinks in a trendy bar; the Tour de France would be a civilised dinner at a posh restaurant with your in-laws; and the Vuelta a España would be one of those nights where you bump into 10 different friends that you hadn’t seen in ages, drink too much at a tapas bar, get kicked out of two nightclubs, narrowly avoid a fight, and eventually watch the sun rise from a train station – because you missed the last train.

    All of which is to say that Spain’s Grand Tour is the messiest and most unpredictable of the three and we wouldn’t want it any other way. The 2022 edition looks to be no different, with riders returning from injury (Primož Roglič), young whippersnappers eager to make an impression (Ethan Hayter, Jake Stewart) and well-prepared big guns (Richard Carapaz) all colliding.

    What’s more, this year’s route eschews convention by placing many of the hardest stages in the middle of the race and letting fatigue and circumstance play the lead role in the final week’s racing. Let’s just see what happens.

    Best get your glad rags on because September is set to be one hell of a ride.

    FRIDAY 19 AUGUST

    1 UTRECHT TO UTRECHT | 23.3KM | TEA M TI M E TR IAL

    Two Covid-riddled years later than planned, the Vuelta comes to Utrecht, which becomes the first ever city to host foreign stages of all three Grand Tours. And for fans of synchronised teamwork, it’s going to be a beautiful one, as it’s a team time trial stage, the first to feature in any Grand Tour since 2019.

    Rohan Dennis broke the record for the fastest ever Tour de France time trial when Utrecht hosted the 2015 Grand Départ, and the pan-flat, not especially technical route today will make for a similarly quick course. GC teams that have packed their rosters with climbers could be at a significant disadvantage, and could find this stage costly – at almost twice the

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