So it is time for soul-crushingly bad Pimba music, time to see what ancient relics of a decade-old Vuelta breakaway you can dredge up to see performing like Pantani, time to see jerseys so ugly that Italian ProContinental teams wouldn't wear them, time to throw everything you ever thought logical and sensible and throw it in a trash can and then set that trash can on fire, it's time for 45º heat and stupid W/kg. Time to decamp to Portugal for a week and a half of carnage!
Of course, some of the appeal of the Volta has been somewhat dampened by the fact that we are seeing something more of August in July these days; you don't have to go to the Volta to see 90s wattages being put out anymore... but on the flip side, the Volta did give us its very own recreation of the Festina affair last year. It is following a few recent parcours trends - time trial mileage is reducing, and mountaintop finishes are increasing (and also the Unipuerto quota is increasing significantly too) - but the Volta is still in its own way a strange window in to cycling's past, of a provincial péloton who go hell for leather on home roads and ride at levels they never replicate elsewhere; there is a separate universe where everything we think is true is exposed as a lie, the whole corporatisation of cycling never happened, there is no World Tour, no ProTeams, just whoever the hell is brave enough to turn up and get ground into mincemeat by the locals. And the Volta a Portugal? It's the Tour de France of this universe.
For the first time in a while the race is covering all of the country including looping down to the south of the country despite the prologue being in Viseu; this results in a pretty heavily backloaded route which is going to mean most of the big action comes in week two. If you've ever watched Portuguese cycling though, you'll know that it bears some strong resemblance to Spanish cycling in that even the stages designated as flat come with some challenges, usually in the form of hilltop towns and awkward repechos that mean that a pure flat sprinter is disadvantaged compared to a more all-round type. Plus of course with the Portuguese péloton doing its thing, there could well be all manner of odd tactical moves going on especially if teams wish to preserve energy for the second week, given the massively OP nature of the Glassdrive-Q8 team, who have taken over as dominators since the downfall of W52 last season - in much the same fashion as Palmeiras Resort dominating from the ashes of LA-MSS and Liberty Seguros 15 years ago.
Stage 1 to Ourém will be a bumpy affair - no major climbs but there's very little real flat - but then it's transitional stuff, flat stages and rolling stages, until after the weekend. Then. however, the GC days come thick and fast. Stage 5 is the traditional Alto da Torre MTF; this year they're coming from the Covilha side via Penhas da Saúde and Piornos, but it's a pretty much completely Unipuerto stage.
The following day is a medium mountain stage which promises to be more interesting than those in the first week at least, using the multiple risers and climbs around Guarda that used to serve as the run-in after Torre when they briefly moved away from a summit finish there.
After that it's the Serra do Larouco/Montalegre stage which has become popular in the last decade or so; it's not the most interesting climb and gaps tend to be smallish but it serves its purpose. The stage isn't Unipuerto literally, but I'd say it's functionally Unipuerto in that it's unlikely we'll see action of much significance beforehand - even if this is the Volta.
Stage 8 is a transitional stage to Fafe which includes a relatively late - but low gradient - climb. Doesn't seem that they'll be using too much of the sterrato around here, if any, sadly. Then stage 9 is the queen stage, to the icon that is Senhora da Graça, with two preceding cat.1 climbs, one gradual and one steep. This should be where differences are made.
Finally, there is the ITT which follows recent habits by having a bit of a climb in it, although this is the low-gradient cobbled grinder up to the Santuário de Santa Luzia in Viana do Castelo, which being as it is low gradient and on cobbles means it is kind of less likely to direct things too much toward the climbers in and of itself. However, at only 18,2km you'd say this is still a race which very much favours the climber.
Which of course means that 76kg powerhouse "Melcior" Mauri Moreira is likely to take another win, of course. The Uruguayan Wout van Aert will surely arrive in Viseu as the favourite to take another Volta, being quite the dominator on the local scene, well liked within his team and a killer time triallist as well as a climber on a level seldom seen from riders his size... at least ones that aren't called "Wout van Aert". Probably the biggest threat to him will be from his own team, if the dithering of other teams allows somebody else to get up the road, leaving Moreira to play second fiddle behind in the same manner as we have seen from W52 when Rui Vinhas surprisingly won the race a few years ago and pre-race favourite Gustavo César Veloso was forced to clip his own wings in order to protect that lead, much to his open disgust. There are strong candidates for it too, with Frederico Figueiredo one of the best riders out there without a Volta win in the domestic bunch, having been on the podium twice and won the GPM last year; former RusVelo man Artëm Nych (finishing 2nd at the Trofeu Joaquim Agostinho) and James Whelan, the former EF Education man, being other candidates.
Of course the main opposition is likely to come from other Portuguese teams. There's often a surprise but the likely names are Luís Fernandes, who turned into a GC contender at the spry young age of 34, ready to hit prime Volta years, last year, who will co-lead Boavista with César Fonte; Antônio Carvalho, who was part of Glassdrive's squad last year and finished 3rd overall but has hit out on his own with Feirense to lead in his own right (plus young prospect Afonso Eulálio is in good form at the moment); veteran Spaniard Délio Fernández will lead the Tavira team, now sponsored by AP Hotels; Louletano have a no-longer-as-good-as-he-once-was Vicente García de Mateos and 40+ ex-doper TTer Carlos Oyarzún, but Jesús del Pino is proven in this kind of race and he did finish top 10 last year.
The estrangeiro teams surprisingly do
not include the NJSBI Victoria Sports team who I thought were a lock, the mixed Portuguese/Filipino venture which has André Cardoso and José João Mendes on it. This is especially odd as they just did the Spanish mini-season with races like Castilla y León, Circuito de Getxo and the Prueba Villafranca Ordizia. Not sure if maybe the money ran out, or they have bigger fish to fry on the Asia Tour perhaps.
It does, however, include all of the Spanish ProConti teams, who often use this as a consolation prize to those that don't make the Vuelta or split their team between those racing Burgos and those in Portugal. Short term pickups and stagiares can often be seen here too. Caja Rural send an odds-and-sols lineup, but this includes Yesid Pira who has a lot of talent but has struggled to adapt to Europe, stagiare Jaume Guardeño, and recent short-term pickup Gorka Sorarrain, who only took up cycling in 2020 at age 24, started racing last year and finished top 5 in the Spanish nationals in June riding for BAI-Sicasal after being told he was too old for most of the top amateur teams in his local region (the name will give away which region that is) to consider him. The others also have stagiares, although David Delgado at Burgos may be worth keeping an eye on as he's been one of the best in the Spanish amateur scene this season. Euskaltel appear to have sent a pretty full-strength lineup with even a near 40 year old veteran in Luís Ángel Mate who will fit right in. Txomin Juaristi made the top 10 here last season, and Mikel Iturria is another veteran of true Volta vintage.
As ever, for the non-Iberian non-ProTeam visitor teams, stagehunting is the most likely goal, although they often take at least a couple of stages in that fashion. Interesting to see who does so this year; it's not the strongest lineup but then it seldom is. Some interesting names though - Global 6 have Nicolas Sessler who was once in Movistar's feeder and finished top 20 in a hugely mountainous one day race a few years ago, but has drifted into obscurity since. Team Vorarlberg have some decent names - Colin Stüssi has good GC finishes at Slovénie and Austria so far this season and ex-Burgos man Óscar Cabedo has some decent climbing ability in smaller races too. Plus they also have Moran Vermeulen here to keep up the "brothers of cross-country skiers" quotient seeing as Efapel chose not to select Keegan Swirbul.
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