Who will win the 2024 Vuelta a Espana? Pffsh. Who knows? Unlike the first two Grand Tours of the season, there’s little predictable about the upcoming trip round Spain.
Last year the team that was then Jumbo-Visma, and is now Visma-Lease a Bike, arrived at the Vuelta armed with the guy who had just won the Tour de France (Jonas Vingegaard) and the guy who had just won the Giro d’Italia (Primoz Roglic). They then watched as another of their riders, Sepp Kuss, pushed them into second and third place respectively.
Kuss won’t have the support of either of those riders this year. But then he didn’t really have it last year either. He will instead get (probably more) assistance from the likes of Wout van Aert and veteran Dutch climbers Steven Kruijswijk and Robert Gesink. Gangly Belgian youngster Cian Uijtdebroeks is in the team as well. He finished eighth last year and they seem to have very high hopes for him long-term.
If there’s an asterisk against Kuss, as reigning champion, it’s that he missed the Tour with Covid and is only just back racing. That return was at the Vuelta a Burgos, which he won – but it didn’t strike me as a field awash with quality, all of them giving it their all.
While Primoz Roglic isn’t in the Visma team, he is in the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe one – his departure in large part due to frustration with that battle for team leadership. Roglic won the Vuelta three times in a row from 2019-2021 but cracked a vertebrae in one of the crashes that forced him to abandon this year’s Tour de France. That doesn’t equate to great preparation for a three-week bike race.
Next on our list of most-likelys come Tadej Pogacar’s henchmen, João Almeida and Adam Yates (both UAE Team Emirates), who finished fourth and sixth at the Tour de France last month.
The Tour’s King of the Mountains, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) should be worth watching as well. He was visibly one of the strongest riders in the latter stages of that race and is good enough to have won the Giro d’Italia and finished on the podium in the other two Grand Tours. Much will depend on what he’s actually there to do: go for the overall, chase stages, or support someone else.
And that’s the big disclaimer with any number of potential contenders. The Vuelta can often be a bit of a ‘suck it and see’ race when it comes to racing form. With the big three who comprised this year’s Tour podium sitting this one out and the next best potentially compromised by recovery from injury, that seems to apply more than ever this year.
The race is sufficiently open that it’s hard to know where to draw the line when naming contenders. Daniel Martinez (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) finished second at the Giro. Enric Mas (Movistar) has finished second at the Vuelta on no fewer than three occasions. Mikel Landa (Soudal-QuickStep) ghosted his way to fifth at the Tour. Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R) will like the climbing after finishing fourth at the Giro. Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers) is back on home territory after a couple of top 10 finishes at the Tour. Alexandr Vlasov (Ineos Grenadiers) has been in good form this season, riding in support of others.
If Pogacar, Vingegaard or Remco Evenepoel were here, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned any of those guys. But they aren’t. So I did.
That’s the situation. The first week of racing will clarify things hugely. The Vuelta starts with a time trial tomorrow (Saturday) and then the first summit finish is on Stage 4 (Tuesday).
Sign up for the email to get my race recap (most likely just one, covering the whole race, I’m afraid).
Buy me a coffee or a Belgian beer if you like the writing here and want to support an independent website and – who knows – maybe even guilt me into writing a little more frequently. (Don’t count on it.)
Leave a Reply