La Vuelta a Asturias starts today, the historic race that has traditionally been a 5 day race preceded by the Subida al Naranco one-day race has been struggling recently; first the Subida al Naranco was incorporated as a stage of the Vuelta, then it dropped to 3 days last year, now just 2 days this year.
The first stage looks interesting at least, being this:
However, as is often with these cases the profile is a bit misleading. Here's a more accurate one:
The first climb is the brutal East side of La Cobertoria, one of the steepest climbs in this part of Spain (!!!) with
much of the distance over 10%. A long circuit featuring the well-known climb of Tenebredo follows. Then there's the new climb of Cuchu Puercu, which is part of the connecting road between the Alto del Cordal and the Alto de la Cobertoria. The side they are climbing is the easiest of the 4 sides that the climb has, I'm afraid, first doing
the easy side of the Alto del Cordal then finishing it with
the last 5km of the most well-known route to Cuchu Puercu (which is still tragically unknown). Do bear in mind there's also the
very steep Brañalamosa side and the riders will be descending the beastly
Lena south side - 8km at 9,6%, matching up to the steepest Cobertoria side they ascended earlier!
Also worth remembering is that THAT side of Cuchu Puercu is capable of being linked by descending the side they climb today to Anglirú, giving us a tougher climb than Cordal to lead in to that notorious beast.
However, that is for another day, and after the descent there's still 27km remaining, where the riders will loop down to Mieres and back to Pola de Lena again, via the smaller climb of the Alto del Carabanzo. This is just 2,2km long but averages 9% and has a maximum of 19%, and cresting 6,2km from the finish I can see it causing gaps to open.
The defending champion will be in action today, but he won't be in Asturias as unfortunately he's having to ride in another race in Italy wearing a pink skinsuit. However, his team have still got a strong lineup, with Castroviejo, Gutiérrez, Jesús Herrada, Moreno, Argiro Ospina, Rubén Plaza, Enrique Sanz and most importantly Ángel Madrazo. This is likely to be the strongest team in the race, as Euskaltel's lineup consists mostly of their second-tier talents, with Mikel Landa being the man to watch for them. Caja Rural will inevitably animate the race, led by Amets Txurruka, with Omar Fraile, André Cardoso, Marcos García and co ably supporting in the goal of lunatic breakaways. Burgos are led by Moisés Dueñas, while Steve Bekaert, weirdly a Belgian on a Spanish continental team, has been in good form lately. There is also the Euskadi development team, which has had some success in this race in recent years, most notably the great solo win a couple of years ago for Victor Cabedo RIP.
Asturias typically has a notable Colombian presence and so it is again with 4-72 Colombia here, with Juan Pablo Villegas having their best results in Europe so far this year. Then there's the Portuguese. There has always been a pretty big Portuguese presence at this race, perhaps something to do with race organisation as the graphics produced by the Vuelta a Asturias are the same as the ones produced by the Volta a Portugal, as often the Portuguese teams appear here and there in the Spanish races, while at Asturias they storm the mountains en masse, with notable occasions as Brôco and Sousa contending the podium in 2011, Héctor Guerra and co in 2009 and of course the infamous LA-MSS race in 2008. The Portuguese péloton is a bit stronger this year than for the last 2, and 4 of their 6 teams are here. Louletano are led by Sérgio Ribeiro, who will probably like this new format of the Vuelta without the major MTF, OFM appear to be led by sprinter Samuel Caldeira (!?) however former Vuelta a España stage winner and Volta a Catalunya overall winner Gustavo César is one to watch. Daniel Silva leads Radio Popular, the latest incarnation of the Boavista team, while the LA-Antarte team are led by last year's Volta podium man Hugo Sabido, though I suspect the steep stuff is not ideal for him. The two missing teams are the ailing Carmim, and the strongest of the Portuguese teams, Efapel, who've been racing in Azerbaijan recently.
It will also be worth keeping an eye on Lokosphinx, for they typically have a presence at this race, Shalunov in particular being one to watch. Sergey Shilov has been good in this race in the past but this year's course does not look suited to him. Arkimedes Arguelyes might be more in the frame this time around. There's also Paraguay's Start-Trigon, a team featuring an intriguing blend of Paraguayans (do they really have the kind of terrain to prepare riders for Asturias?!), Argentinians and Colombians, but not that I know much about.
Finally, the numbers are completed by two national teams, one for Argentina and one for the host nation of course. A couple of the names in the Spanish national squad ought to be familiar; Higinio Fernández spent a couple of years with Caja Rural but has fallen back into the clutches of the amateurs, while I'll be interested in how Arkaitz Durán goes; the former Saunier Duval/Fuji/Footon/Geox man's team (Efapel-Glassdrive) may not have entered but he still has the chance to showcase what he can do; he had to drop to the amateurs last season, but showed every chance he got that he should never have let it come to that, obliterating the competition all year long, so it will be interesting to see how he shapes up against the pros again.
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