Parrulo said:
there is such thing. is called the volta a portugal and its 4th most difficult stage race of the calender with 14 stages iirc
Used to be 14. Now we're down to 11, sadly. But 11 days in Portugal in the blistering heat of August, up the Alto da Torre against super-motivated national teams and climbers, should be a good guide to how you can cope at GT level. Then again, Tondó won it in 2007, and has blown up halfway through week 3 of both GTs he's raced in 2010. Then again, Cervélo is a very different environment from LA-MSS, and the pressure is different too. Tondó's had a long season and is coming back from a broken collarbone.
There's also the 12-day Vuelta al Tachíra in Venezuela, and the 15-day Vuelta a Colombia. But I don't think being mercilessly pounded by the elite Colombian climbers is necessarily the way to help a youngster develop.
jaylew said:
Yeah, you and I know that but maybe he doesn't. Besides, what are the chances of Columbia sending a team there?
Well, depends how easy they think the sprints are going to be. That's why they were in Turkey and Britain, right?
search said:
I think Uran is a different case, he was very active at the beginning of the stage and tried to go into the break. His main target seems to be to get a stage victory and after those efforts and not catching the break it was sure that he wouldn't win it anyway
Urán also is coming back from breaking his collarbone in his preparations for the Vuelta back at the start of August, and was involved in the crash on stage 14. It's possible that he simply cannot hang with the GC guys because of the pain or the lack of adequate preparation time - he'd certainly been looking comfortable prior to that.