Stage 5: Xàtiva - La Vall d'Uixò, 202km
GPM:
Alto de Montmayor (cat.2) 33,5km @ 2,3%
Puerto de Almedijar (cat.2) 6,6km @ 6,2%
Puerto de Eslida (cat.3) 5,0km @ 6,0%
Still in Comunidad Valenciana, the péloton now has a transitional stage heading northwards into the Provincia de Castellón. The stage start is a short transfer - just a few kilometres - north from Cocentaina to Xàtiva. Originating in a Roman-era settlement by the name of Saetabis, the city has a long history including the birth of two popes and importance in the field of paper manufacture after the technology was introduced to them via the Moors. During the Wars of the Spanish Succession the city was ransacked and destroyed by Felipe V's men, with the monarch instructing the city to be renamed San Felipe. Its most famous landmark is the Castillo de Xàtiva, which lies on the ancient Via Augusta which runs from the Pyrenees down the coast to other ancient ports, Cartagena and Cadíz. It has featured a couple of times in the Vuelta in recent memory, firstly in 2004 when it was the départ for a week 1 mountain stage to the Alto de Aitana, won by Leonardo Piepoli, and then in 2009 when it hosted the start AND finish of a week 1 stage, a fairly tepid affair in that conservatively raced edition to counteract the logistical problem of the rest day coming after stage 4, as basically the entirety of the rest of week 1 took place in Comunidad Valenciana and saw the maillot oro being traded between sprinters until Cancellara took it back in the ITT. Borut Božič won the stage for surprise wildcard entry Vacansoleil, however Daniele Bennati couldn't manage to acquire the bonus seconds he needed to take the leader's jersey off of André Greipel.
Early on we pass through another city which has hosted plenty of bike racing recently, though mainly only the regional tour - Alzira. The city was the départ for the 2009 stage to Aitana that came two days after the Xàtiva stage (the Valencia ITT on stage 7 sandwiching them). Cadel Evans got a day in the maillot oro before losing it on the bonus seconds the following day in Xorret del Catí, trying to headbutt Robert Gesink in the process after the Australian had not recognized a narrowing in the road, and then accusing David de la Fuente of sitting up to allow Valverde to pass him simply for the purpose of putting El Imbatido in the lead of the race. Following the subsequent inelegant neutral service wheel change on Sierra Nevada, Evans went into sulk mode and didn't even try to depose Valverde from then on; this was the last hurrah of the old excuse-making, race-losing Evans before he got on with the business of going out there and grabbing the bull by the horns, and started putting together the palmarès that his performance level deserved.
The first half of the stage is very flat as we head through the terrain inland of the coastal cities, mainly to avoid disruption in the city of Valencia itself; since we're not stopping there, it would be farcical to block off the centre of a major city like that. Instead we trace the inland roads, stopping by Cheste at the site of the Circuit de Valencia, a motor racing venue not to be confused with the short-lived "street circuit" around the bay that hosted Formula 1 for a brief period in the early 2000s as the sport attempted to capitalise on the Fernando Alonso effect and which hosted the ITT in that 2009 Vuelta (and also in one of my previous Vueltas hosted a sprint); also known as the Circuito Ricardo Tormo after a legendary former champion who died in 1998, this circuit is around three quarters of an hour inland from Valencia itself and is a permanent racing facility which hosts Spain's main motorsport love (and indeed why the Formula 1 authorities felt the need to capitalise on Alonso, because Spain has never truly been a well-tapped market for the sport), motorbike racing. Spain hosts no fewer than four rounds of the current MotoGP calendar, at Jeréz, Montmeló, Motorland Aragón and here at Cheste, and supplies 9 of the 27 riders currently plying their trade in the most illustrious series in the sport; while the European Le Mans Series (precursor to the World Endurance Championship) has also raced here, it is predominantly known for motorcycle racing.
Motor racing circuits have been a fairly common stop-off for bike racing over the years, owing to their ability to provide fairly safe sprinting situations and minimise disruption, as they always have ample space for the trappings of races. I've used them a fair amount, but here the Circuito Ricardo Tormo hosts a meta volante only.
Instead we continue along our northward trajectory towards Llíria, which hosted a transitional stage in the 2017 Vuelta to Cuenca, won by Matej Mohoric. This is a similar type of stage to that, something of a Worlds tune-up as it's not an uphill finish and sprinters could make it but it's a test of durability with some tricky enough climbing to challenge. However, none of it is especially steep; climbs in the Comunidad de Valencia region and the Sistema Ibérico inland from here in Castilla-La Mancha and southern Aragón tend to fall into three categories:
- long but uncomplicated, low gradients, such as the Alto del Pino and Javalambre
- medium mountains of varying kinds, like Tudons, Torremanzanas and Carrasqueta
- a little shorter than medium length but severe, like Cumbre del Sol, Xorret del Catí or Más de la Costa.
Climbs that are either of high enough gradients at sustained enough length to challenge, such as Aitana, are few, but besides, we aren't looking at that kind of stage here, so it's not a problem that we take on the lengthy but not especially challenging (other than by distance) Alt de Montmayor. It's a pretty area, around the Puntal de Navarrete, relatively unspoiled as there are few sizable urban areas nearby, and at decent enough altitude close enough to the coast to be lush and verdant thanks to rainfall; it has only been seen once in the Vuelta, in 2004, when José Miguel Elías took the climb from the breakaway. I expect the same outcome (not Elías, but the breakaway) here, given the climb is, although long, not super selective and over 60km from the line.
The descent is a bit more complex but takes us down to Segorbe for the second intermediate sprint before the last climbs that will test the endurance of the sprinters. We're not far from the Alt del Garbí, but that's been done recently and also the stage isn't supposed to totally kill off the sprinters, more be an ideal Worlds prep with plenty of opportunity for stagehunters as well as not being too hard for the more durable sprinters. The second of these climbs has been used in the Vuelta a few times, but the first, the Port d'Almedixer if you're Catalanophone and the Puerto de Almedíjar otherwise, is brand new to the national tour, although it has been used in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana a few times. It's a reasonable cat.2 climb with a number of ramps of 9%, but none of those monster gradients that so often characterise the Vuelta; most of the 9-10% gradient sections are near the top though, which falls just over 30km from the line. Here we're moving through the Sierra de Espadán, one of the less known natural parks in the area, and relatively untapped by racing so it gives us some interesting imagery for the helicams as I would expect this to be where stagehunting breakaways fall apart.
The Puerto de Almedíjar does have some cycling connection, however. But not a pleasant one; it was on a descent of this pass (in the opposite direction to that which the péloton is riding in this projectef stage, so on the side that we are climbing) that in September 2012, the young Euskaltel-Euskadi rider Victor Cabedo, one of very few riders in the pre-2013 era to don the iconic orange but not be from the Basque country, was hit by a car on a training ride and sent flying into a ravine, dying from his injuries at the age of just 23. There are pictures of the fire service recovering the body from the valley, but nobody needs to see those. It was a cruel blow to end a difficult season for the marchers in orange; Cabedo had come to the team via racing for the Seguros Bilbao amateur team and regularly commuting from Comunidad Valenciana to participate in the esteemed Basque-Navarrese amateur scene as well as maintaining his relationship with Dorleta Zorrilla, a young Basque prospect on the women's side of the sport who rode for the long-standing Bizkaia-Durango team but retired from racing in the wake of her partner's death. Joining Orbea, the feeder team for Euskaltel, he impressed with a 5th place in the Klasika Primavera and a top 10 in the tricky national championship road race in Castellón de la Plana, capped with a solo victory in the Vuelta a Asturias which capped his season and secured him a neo-pro contract with the Basques, seen as one of the most promising young riders they had and a potential stagehunter or man for medium mountain races; he had a fairly quiet first pro season, riding the Giro and serving an apprenticeship doing some northern races like the Eneco and the Tour of Britain, the latter of which he crashed out of on September 10th; one week later he went out for a ride back home in Onda, and never returned. There is now a short stage race in the region of Onda and Segorbe dedicated to the young rider, the Trófeo Victor Cabedo, featuring climbs like the Alto de Vistabella and Salto del Caballo, while Victor's younger brother Óscar turned professional this season with Burgos-BH.
The descent into Eslida is very technical featuring a number of twists and turns, often very close to one another, so it's a very good opportunity to get out of sight and out of mind for a fugitive, depending on how keen the sprinters' and GC leaders' teams are to chase at this stage of the race. I see this stage as akin to the 2011 stage Pablo Lastras won, in Totana, or while the stage is somewhat harder, a similar kind of expectation for the outcome as the classic Córdoba stages with San Jerónimo or the Murcía stages with Cresta del Gallo. After descending into Eslida, the last climb of the day is the Port d'Eslida, which was in fact featured as recently as 2017, as an early climb in the Sagunt stage, and amounts to the last 5km of this profile - mostly consistent at 6,5% but easing off slightly toward the top, which comes around 20km from the finish. It was first introduced to the Vuelta in 1971, when Txomin Perurena won the climb, before being among the many summits taken by Eddy Merckx in his foray into Spain in 1973. It has only featured twice since, however, in 1987 and 2017, where it wasn't in the position to be decisive, so riders likely won't have too much experience dealing with the run-in under racing conditions. For the most part this opens up with some genuine descending which gradually gets easier, though there is a brief kick up again as we hit the Puerto del Marianet 9km from the line - though the climb from this side really isn't much of a challenge - it's the last 2km of this so a kilometre at 3,5% followed by another at 4% - hardly Xorret del Catí.
However, part of this run-in may be familiar to a few riders, having been on the route of the 2011 Spanish national championships in the time trial, of which 5 of the top 10 are still active riders at a high enough level to potentially enter the Vuelta (though do bear in mind this is my 10th Vuelta so in the parallel universe these races inhabit, we're some way from that) - Lluís Mas in 9th, Gorka Izagirre in 6th, Jesús Herrada in 4th, Jonathan Castroviejo in 2nd and eventual winner Luís León Sánchez. The aforementioned Victor Cabedo, riding on his local roads, was 10th. Alejandro Marque was 5th and is still active but is unlikely to reach a level where riding the Vuelta is a possibility given that he had that controversial AAF that led to a premature termination of his Movistar contract (possibly unfairly, as it appeared Movistar publicised the firing just in time to free up the funds to sign the much more well-known Igor Antón), he's only ever raced on Portuguese continental teams and he's now 36 years old.
I've used La Vall d'Uixó in my Vueltas before, but only as a stage start; it featured in my "best medium mountain Vuelta ever!" 5th edition, featuring brutal sawtoothed medium mountains in stages to Bilbao, Oviedo, A Pontenova and San Lorenzo de El Escorial, while the most difficult mountaintop finish was indeed in the stage beginning in Vall d'Uixó - Valdelinares. As a result here the cameras can perhaps pick up a bit more of the city's charm; sitting at the foot of the Sierra de Espadán it lies between the coastal beaches of Castellón province and the mountains, and with nearly 35.000 inhabitants is one of the largest urban areas of the province. Like other cities such as Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria or Amorebieta-Etxano in the Basque country, La Vall d'Uixó has two confluent city centres as two adjacent towns merged into it; unlike them, however, those names do not survive on. Its most famous cycling son is Eduardo Castelló, who won the national championships and the Vuelta a Asturias in 1971, but is perhaps best known for winning a dramatic Vuelta stage in 1968 where Felice Gimondi took the race lead off of fan favourite José Pérez-Francés, escaping on the descent of the Puerto de Orduña, and taking advantage of Ferrys' lack of numbers once the notoriously temperamental Catalan had dropped his teammates on the climb while contesting the climb with the Italian.
The city is also well-known for cave paintings and one of the most spectacular cave networks in Europe, including the largest subterranean navigable river in the continent; we pass the Cueva de Sant Josep on the way into the town for the run-in so this will look pretty scenic; the town is in the process of trying to establish itself as a tourist destination so this will be an ideal way to show some of the sights with the mountains, the caves, the Roman aqueduct remains and of course the views down to the Mediterranean - the scenery of the last 40-50km here should be nice but also relatively unknown to much of the international audience of the race.
If the péloton is active and wants to contest this one in the bunch (with not too many chances for sprinters yet, a few may want to pick this one up for the points competition), this stage is likely to go to the likes of Michael Matthews, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Nacer Bouhanni, Matteo Trentin and so on - not so much Peter Sagan, but only because he has stayed away from the Vuelta after his run-in with a race motorbike in the 2015 edition. If he were to turn up, he'd instantly be one of the favourites for a stage like this. Spain's tendency to produce durable sprinters given the lack of real flat stages in the national calendar means there may be some home interest depending on who makes it into the race - Lobato if he gets back to the top level, Carlos Barbero, Eduard Prades for example now that the Spaniards have multiple wildcard teams now.
GPM:
Alto de Montmayor (cat.2) 33,5km @ 2,3%
Puerto de Almedijar (cat.2) 6,6km @ 6,2%
Puerto de Eslida (cat.3) 5,0km @ 6,0%
Still in Comunidad Valenciana, the péloton now has a transitional stage heading northwards into the Provincia de Castellón. The stage start is a short transfer - just a few kilometres - north from Cocentaina to Xàtiva. Originating in a Roman-era settlement by the name of Saetabis, the city has a long history including the birth of two popes and importance in the field of paper manufacture after the technology was introduced to them via the Moors. During the Wars of the Spanish Succession the city was ransacked and destroyed by Felipe V's men, with the monarch instructing the city to be renamed San Felipe. Its most famous landmark is the Castillo de Xàtiva, which lies on the ancient Via Augusta which runs from the Pyrenees down the coast to other ancient ports, Cartagena and Cadíz. It has featured a couple of times in the Vuelta in recent memory, firstly in 2004 when it was the départ for a week 1 mountain stage to the Alto de Aitana, won by Leonardo Piepoli, and then in 2009 when it hosted the start AND finish of a week 1 stage, a fairly tepid affair in that conservatively raced edition to counteract the logistical problem of the rest day coming after stage 4, as basically the entirety of the rest of week 1 took place in Comunidad Valenciana and saw the maillot oro being traded between sprinters until Cancellara took it back in the ITT. Borut Božič won the stage for surprise wildcard entry Vacansoleil, however Daniele Bennati couldn't manage to acquire the bonus seconds he needed to take the leader's jersey off of André Greipel.
Early on we pass through another city which has hosted plenty of bike racing recently, though mainly only the regional tour - Alzira. The city was the départ for the 2009 stage to Aitana that came two days after the Xàtiva stage (the Valencia ITT on stage 7 sandwiching them). Cadel Evans got a day in the maillot oro before losing it on the bonus seconds the following day in Xorret del Catí, trying to headbutt Robert Gesink in the process after the Australian had not recognized a narrowing in the road, and then accusing David de la Fuente of sitting up to allow Valverde to pass him simply for the purpose of putting El Imbatido in the lead of the race. Following the subsequent inelegant neutral service wheel change on Sierra Nevada, Evans went into sulk mode and didn't even try to depose Valverde from then on; this was the last hurrah of the old excuse-making, race-losing Evans before he got on with the business of going out there and grabbing the bull by the horns, and started putting together the palmarès that his performance level deserved.
The first half of the stage is very flat as we head through the terrain inland of the coastal cities, mainly to avoid disruption in the city of Valencia itself; since we're not stopping there, it would be farcical to block off the centre of a major city like that. Instead we trace the inland roads, stopping by Cheste at the site of the Circuit de Valencia, a motor racing venue not to be confused with the short-lived "street circuit" around the bay that hosted Formula 1 for a brief period in the early 2000s as the sport attempted to capitalise on the Fernando Alonso effect and which hosted the ITT in that 2009 Vuelta (and also in one of my previous Vueltas hosted a sprint); also known as the Circuito Ricardo Tormo after a legendary former champion who died in 1998, this circuit is around three quarters of an hour inland from Valencia itself and is a permanent racing facility which hosts Spain's main motorsport love (and indeed why the Formula 1 authorities felt the need to capitalise on Alonso, because Spain has never truly been a well-tapped market for the sport), motorbike racing. Spain hosts no fewer than four rounds of the current MotoGP calendar, at Jeréz, Montmeló, Motorland Aragón and here at Cheste, and supplies 9 of the 27 riders currently plying their trade in the most illustrious series in the sport; while the European Le Mans Series (precursor to the World Endurance Championship) has also raced here, it is predominantly known for motorcycle racing.
Motor racing circuits have been a fairly common stop-off for bike racing over the years, owing to their ability to provide fairly safe sprinting situations and minimise disruption, as they always have ample space for the trappings of races. I've used them a fair amount, but here the Circuito Ricardo Tormo hosts a meta volante only.
Instead we continue along our northward trajectory towards Llíria, which hosted a transitional stage in the 2017 Vuelta to Cuenca, won by Matej Mohoric. This is a similar type of stage to that, something of a Worlds tune-up as it's not an uphill finish and sprinters could make it but it's a test of durability with some tricky enough climbing to challenge. However, none of it is especially steep; climbs in the Comunidad de Valencia region and the Sistema Ibérico inland from here in Castilla-La Mancha and southern Aragón tend to fall into three categories:
- long but uncomplicated, low gradients, such as the Alto del Pino and Javalambre
- medium mountains of varying kinds, like Tudons, Torremanzanas and Carrasqueta
- a little shorter than medium length but severe, like Cumbre del Sol, Xorret del Catí or Más de la Costa.
Climbs that are either of high enough gradients at sustained enough length to challenge, such as Aitana, are few, but besides, we aren't looking at that kind of stage here, so it's not a problem that we take on the lengthy but not especially challenging (other than by distance) Alt de Montmayor. It's a pretty area, around the Puntal de Navarrete, relatively unspoiled as there are few sizable urban areas nearby, and at decent enough altitude close enough to the coast to be lush and verdant thanks to rainfall; it has only been seen once in the Vuelta, in 2004, when José Miguel Elías took the climb from the breakaway. I expect the same outcome (not Elías, but the breakaway) here, given the climb is, although long, not super selective and over 60km from the line.
The descent is a bit more complex but takes us down to Segorbe for the second intermediate sprint before the last climbs that will test the endurance of the sprinters. We're not far from the Alt del Garbí, but that's been done recently and also the stage isn't supposed to totally kill off the sprinters, more be an ideal Worlds prep with plenty of opportunity for stagehunters as well as not being too hard for the more durable sprinters. The second of these climbs has been used in the Vuelta a few times, but the first, the Port d'Almedixer if you're Catalanophone and the Puerto de Almedíjar otherwise, is brand new to the national tour, although it has been used in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana a few times. It's a reasonable cat.2 climb with a number of ramps of 9%, but none of those monster gradients that so often characterise the Vuelta; most of the 9-10% gradient sections are near the top though, which falls just over 30km from the line. Here we're moving through the Sierra de Espadán, one of the less known natural parks in the area, and relatively untapped by racing so it gives us some interesting imagery for the helicams as I would expect this to be where stagehunting breakaways fall apart.
The Puerto de Almedíjar does have some cycling connection, however. But not a pleasant one; it was on a descent of this pass (in the opposite direction to that which the péloton is riding in this projectef stage, so on the side that we are climbing) that in September 2012, the young Euskaltel-Euskadi rider Victor Cabedo, one of very few riders in the pre-2013 era to don the iconic orange but not be from the Basque country, was hit by a car on a training ride and sent flying into a ravine, dying from his injuries at the age of just 23. There are pictures of the fire service recovering the body from the valley, but nobody needs to see those. It was a cruel blow to end a difficult season for the marchers in orange; Cabedo had come to the team via racing for the Seguros Bilbao amateur team and regularly commuting from Comunidad Valenciana to participate in the esteemed Basque-Navarrese amateur scene as well as maintaining his relationship with Dorleta Zorrilla, a young Basque prospect on the women's side of the sport who rode for the long-standing Bizkaia-Durango team but retired from racing in the wake of her partner's death. Joining Orbea, the feeder team for Euskaltel, he impressed with a 5th place in the Klasika Primavera and a top 10 in the tricky national championship road race in Castellón de la Plana, capped with a solo victory in the Vuelta a Asturias which capped his season and secured him a neo-pro contract with the Basques, seen as one of the most promising young riders they had and a potential stagehunter or man for medium mountain races; he had a fairly quiet first pro season, riding the Giro and serving an apprenticeship doing some northern races like the Eneco and the Tour of Britain, the latter of which he crashed out of on September 10th; one week later he went out for a ride back home in Onda, and never returned. There is now a short stage race in the region of Onda and Segorbe dedicated to the young rider, the Trófeo Victor Cabedo, featuring climbs like the Alto de Vistabella and Salto del Caballo, while Victor's younger brother Óscar turned professional this season with Burgos-BH.
The descent into Eslida is very technical featuring a number of twists and turns, often very close to one another, so it's a very good opportunity to get out of sight and out of mind for a fugitive, depending on how keen the sprinters' and GC leaders' teams are to chase at this stage of the race. I see this stage as akin to the 2011 stage Pablo Lastras won, in Totana, or while the stage is somewhat harder, a similar kind of expectation for the outcome as the classic Córdoba stages with San Jerónimo or the Murcía stages with Cresta del Gallo. After descending into Eslida, the last climb of the day is the Port d'Eslida, which was in fact featured as recently as 2017, as an early climb in the Sagunt stage, and amounts to the last 5km of this profile - mostly consistent at 6,5% but easing off slightly toward the top, which comes around 20km from the finish. It was first introduced to the Vuelta in 1971, when Txomin Perurena won the climb, before being among the many summits taken by Eddy Merckx in his foray into Spain in 1973. It has only featured twice since, however, in 1987 and 2017, where it wasn't in the position to be decisive, so riders likely won't have too much experience dealing with the run-in under racing conditions. For the most part this opens up with some genuine descending which gradually gets easier, though there is a brief kick up again as we hit the Puerto del Marianet 9km from the line - though the climb from this side really isn't much of a challenge - it's the last 2km of this so a kilometre at 3,5% followed by another at 4% - hardly Xorret del Catí.
However, part of this run-in may be familiar to a few riders, having been on the route of the 2011 Spanish national championships in the time trial, of which 5 of the top 10 are still active riders at a high enough level to potentially enter the Vuelta (though do bear in mind this is my 10th Vuelta so in the parallel universe these races inhabit, we're some way from that) - Lluís Mas in 9th, Gorka Izagirre in 6th, Jesús Herrada in 4th, Jonathan Castroviejo in 2nd and eventual winner Luís León Sánchez. The aforementioned Victor Cabedo, riding on his local roads, was 10th. Alejandro Marque was 5th and is still active but is unlikely to reach a level where riding the Vuelta is a possibility given that he had that controversial AAF that led to a premature termination of his Movistar contract (possibly unfairly, as it appeared Movistar publicised the firing just in time to free up the funds to sign the much more well-known Igor Antón), he's only ever raced on Portuguese continental teams and he's now 36 years old.
I've used La Vall d'Uixó in my Vueltas before, but only as a stage start; it featured in my "best medium mountain Vuelta ever!" 5th edition, featuring brutal sawtoothed medium mountains in stages to Bilbao, Oviedo, A Pontenova and San Lorenzo de El Escorial, while the most difficult mountaintop finish was indeed in the stage beginning in Vall d'Uixó - Valdelinares. As a result here the cameras can perhaps pick up a bit more of the city's charm; sitting at the foot of the Sierra de Espadán it lies between the coastal beaches of Castellón province and the mountains, and with nearly 35.000 inhabitants is one of the largest urban areas of the province. Like other cities such as Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria or Amorebieta-Etxano in the Basque country, La Vall d'Uixó has two confluent city centres as two adjacent towns merged into it; unlike them, however, those names do not survive on. Its most famous cycling son is Eduardo Castelló, who won the national championships and the Vuelta a Asturias in 1971, but is perhaps best known for winning a dramatic Vuelta stage in 1968 where Felice Gimondi took the race lead off of fan favourite José Pérez-Francés, escaping on the descent of the Puerto de Orduña, and taking advantage of Ferrys' lack of numbers once the notoriously temperamental Catalan had dropped his teammates on the climb while contesting the climb with the Italian.
The city is also well-known for cave paintings and one of the most spectacular cave networks in Europe, including the largest subterranean navigable river in the continent; we pass the Cueva de Sant Josep on the way into the town for the run-in so this will look pretty scenic; the town is in the process of trying to establish itself as a tourist destination so this will be an ideal way to show some of the sights with the mountains, the caves, the Roman aqueduct remains and of course the views down to the Mediterranean - the scenery of the last 40-50km here should be nice but also relatively unknown to much of the international audience of the race.
If the péloton is active and wants to contest this one in the bunch (with not too many chances for sprinters yet, a few may want to pick this one up for the points competition), this stage is likely to go to the likes of Michael Matthews, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Nacer Bouhanni, Matteo Trentin and so on - not so much Peter Sagan, but only because he has stayed away from the Vuelta after his run-in with a race motorbike in the 2015 edition. If he were to turn up, he'd instantly be one of the favourites for a stage like this. Spain's tendency to produce durable sprinters given the lack of real flat stages in the national calendar means there may be some home interest depending on who makes it into the race - Lobato if he gets back to the top level, Carlos Barbero, Eduard Prades for example now that the Spaniards have multiple wildcard teams now.