The season’s final Grand Tour is here, with the 76th edition of La Vuelta a Espana. Mikel Landa leads the Bahrain Victorious’ lineup off the back of winning the overall at Vuelta Burgos.

Damiano Caruso races his second Grand Tour of the season following his successful Giro, finishing second in GC and taking that memorable win on Stage 20. After crashing out of the Tour, Jack Haig returns to racing and has been working hard to get ready for Vuelta.

Wout Poels is back at the Vuelta after a top ten finish last year and in good form, putting on an excellent fight for climber’s classification at this year’s Tour. While promising young talents Gino Mäder and Mark Padun look to add to their two WorldTour stage wins this season. Finally, Yuki Arashiro and Slovenian TT Champion Jan Tratnik round up the line, both racing their second Grand Tour after the Giro.

This year’s Vuelta covers 3,417.7 km over the 21 stages, featuring eight flat stages, four hilly stages, seven mountain stages and two time-trials.
The race starts in Burgos, opening with a 7km time-trial, and unlike the usual finish in Madrid, the race finishes in Santiago de Compostela with a 33.8km time-trial.

Aside from the time-trials the big GC battles will be on the seven mountain stages, especially Stages 17 and 18. Stage 17 is 185km long, with a summit finish on the special category, Lagos de Covadonga, 12.5km long with an average gradient of 6.9% with sections above 16%. The following day, riders will have to do it all again with another summit finish on Alto D’El Gaimoniteiru, considered one of Spain’s most challenging climbs, 14.6km long with an average gradient of 9.8%.

Sports Director Gorazd Štangelj: “We go into the race with Landa as our race leader after a promising result at Burgos. We want to come out of the race with a podium finish, but our ambition is to win the Vuelta and fight for it.

We also have a strong lineup where every rider is capable of winning a stage at this race. So while we will be protecting Mikel and support him during every stage, we will be opportunistic with stages that give our team opportunities to go for stage wins. We want to race aggressively and add to our tally of stage wins at Grand Tours this season. This group of riders are ready for an exciting three weeks of racing ahead.”