La Vuelta 2016

Daroxtar

Route announced at the weekend. Starting in Santiago De Compostela and spending the majority of the time in Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country.
No Angliru, no repeat of the savagery in Andorra last year. Big climbs this time are La Camperona, Lagos de Covadonga, a first trip up the Col du Aubisque and stage 17- last 4 km at 13% with ramps up to 21%
29km ITT.
More details here http://www.lavuelta.com/la-vuelta/2016/us/stage-13.html

I know it's 8 months away but what's your thoughts? Tom Dimoulin going to hang on this time? Bertie to bow out in style?

Pawlie

Landa to win :-)

D9Male

I really don't like the route. There are way too many hilltop and mountain top finishes. Basically the action on every stage is almost guaranteed to be condensed into the last 30 minutes. And not enough time trial kilometres to give enough intrigue on whether some of the rouleurs can triumph over the grimpeurs.

Stage 13 is a pretty good stage that could see some action from far out. But stages like stage 8, 11 and many others make me want to cry. Fine if there are one or two stages like this ______________/ but we have 6 or 7 like that...some downhill finishes instead and another flat ITT could really make the cycling great. Epic stages in the Vuelta like Cercedilla last year and Fuenta De a few years ago were so good because they had different designs, allowing for an epic race. How can anybody hope to do anything on the Lagos de Covadonga stage apart from the last 5km? It would be suicide.

As to who is going to win, who knows? Most years it is very difficult to know who is going to target the Vuelta until after Le Tour. The Olympics being on such a climbers' course this year means that it is likely that some favourites will have other targets in the second half of the year.

The course looks perfectly suited to Chaves.

MPFGLB

Pawlie wrote: »

Landa to win :-)

Its not a Landa course ...plus he is not top at end of season ever

Its a course for J-Rod & Valverde as usual...The Vuelta people do it every year ...They so want Purito to win a Grand Tour

But he has serious competition on this course with Chaves and others like Dan Martin (course suits him)

Tom Dumolin is leading at the Giro this year and his form on a second Tour may not be as good as last year when he only rode a little of the Tour before crashing out

Pawlie

MPFGLB wrote: »

Its not a Landa course ...plus he is not top at end of season ever

Its a course for J-Rod & Valverde as usual...The Vuelta people do it every year ...They so want Purito to win a Grand Tour

But he has serious competition on this course with Chaves and others like Dan Martin (course suits him)

Tom Dumolin is leading at the Giro this year and his form on a second Tour may not be as good as last year when he only rode a little of the Tour before crashing out

Landa will be alot fresher than the above mentioned as he wont be doing the tdf, he is from the basque and has shown all to see how good he can climb, I reckon the course will suit him,
dont think Dan will have a strong enough team around him :-(

Daroxtar

D9Male wrote: »

I really don't like the route. There are way too many hilltop and mountain top finishes. Basically the action on every stage is almost guaranteed to be condensed into the last 30 minutes. And not enough time trial kilometres to give enough intrigue on whether some of the rouleurs can triumph over the grimpeurs.

Stage 13 is a pretty good stage that could see some action from far out. But stages like stage 8, 11 and many others make me want to cry. Fine if there are one or two stages like this ______________/ but we have 6 or 7 like that...some downhill finishes instead and another flat ITT could really make the cycling great. Epic stages in the Vuelta like Cercedilla last year and Fuenta De a few years ago were so good because they had different designs, allowing for an epic race. How can anybody hope to do anything on the Lagos de Covadonga stage apart from the last 5km? It would be suicide.

Do you mean Camperona? Covadonga looks OK, it's got the cat1 climb before the main one, somewhat similar to Collado de Hoz coming before Fuente Dé, albeit that Covadonga is a much tougher climb than Fuente Dé.

Plenty of the other stages look to have a small climb and then a downhill finish. I think a couple of the stages look set up for great attacking cycling from a bit out.

Anyway, it's La Vuelta. It's not La Vuelta if there's no climbing.

D9Male

No, I meant Covadonga stage. There is (in my opinion) no chance of any GC action on the Category 1 as the last climb is so hard, it is the first week of the race and there is a long stretch of flat between the final two climbs.

I don't see the downhill stages that can make a difference. Stage 2 profile is misleading. That bump in the last 15km is only around 80m. Descent on stage 7 is not going to make any GC difference. The climb is not hard enough and the descent averages around 2.2%.

Stage 13 is a very nice stage alright. A few more of these, particularly at least one in the high mountains is what is needed.

I don't have any issues with the volume of climbing, it is just that all the stages are so similar. And not nearly enough ITT to balance the climbing.

MPFGLB

Pawlie wrote: »

Landa will be alot fresher than the above mentioned as he wont be doing the tdf, he is from the basque and has shown all to see how good he can climb, I reckon the course will suit him,
dont think Dan will have a strong enough team around him :-(

He didn't do the Tour in 2015 and he wasn't fresh for the Vuelta ? He has said himself he is not great at end of the season

He has ridden the Vuleta before you know ...4 times

And as I said he is not great on short steep finishes

The course is full of short steep finishes and has been for a few years

Pawlie

MPFGLB wrote: »

He didn't do the Tour in 2015 and he wasn't fresh for the Vuelta ? He has said himself he is not great at end of the season

He has ridden the Vuleta before you know ...4 times

And as I said he is not great on short steep finishes

The course is full of short steep finishes and has been for a few years

Yes he has rode it before but never as a team leader you know and has always rode in support of someone, Froome will prop win the TDF and might not do the Veulta, as the double is near impossible nowadays, so i think Landa will lead sky like he will at the giro, I reckon he will be an even more improved beast again this year climbing but will need to have improved his TT too

MPFGLB

Pawlie wrote: »

Yes he has rode it before but never as a team leader you know and has always rode in support of someone, Froome will prop win the TDF and might not do the Veulta, as the double is near impossible nowadays, so i think Landa will lead sky like he will at the giro, I reckon he will be an even more improved beast again this year climbing but will need to have improved his TT too

He was co leader in 2015 and had starting out as much of a chance as Aru

Don't know what else to say on this ...time will tell

I think there are at least 3 riders at SKY better suited to this Vuelta course and that includes Intxausti

Think Landa will do well in the Giro but I see Nibali and Valverde as possible winners there (if they ride and reports are saying they will)

Anyway let come back in September and see who predicted correctly

Pawlie

MPFGLB wrote: »

He was co leader in 2015 and had starting out as much of a chance as Aru

Don't know what else to say on this ...time will tell

I think there are at least 3 riders at SKY better suited to this Vuelta course and that includes Intxausti

Think Landa will do well in the Giro but I see Nibali and Valverde as possible winners there (if they ride and reports are saying they will)

Anyway let come back in September and see who predicted correctly

The joys of having diff views

Brian?

It's made for Contador to retire with a Vuelta win. He's skipping the Giro and I don't think he has it in him to win the Tour. It'll a fine way to send off for the greatest Grand Tour rider of his generation! If it wasn't for one dodgy steak he'd be in the frame for the greatest Grand Tour rider of all time.

MPFGLB

Brian? wrote: »

It's made for Contador to retire with a Vuelta win. He's skipping the Giro and I don't think he has it in him to win the Tour. It'll a fine way to send off for the greatest Grand Tour rider of his generation! If it wasn't for one dodgy steak he'd be in the frame for the greatest Grand Tour rider of all time.

Contador has said that he doesn't like the course because of the short steep climbs

Imagine he will go for the Vuelta if he doesn't win the Tour or Olympics. If he wins either of those he probably won't do the Vuelta

Also now there is talk that he will maybe not retire if he doesn't win the Tour and maybe even not if he does ....

I think for some it is hard to retire ...Boonen was suppose to retire 4 years ago

Brian?

MPFGLB wrote: »

Contador has said that he doesn't like the course because of the short steep climbs

Imagine he will go for the Vuelta if he doesn't win the Tour or Olympics. If he wins either of those he probably won't do the Vuelta

Also now there is talk that he will maybe not retire if he doesn't win the Tour and maybe even not if he does ....

I think for some it is hard to retire ...Boonen was suppose to retire 4 years ago

Bertie talks down his chances for every race. If he doesn't win the Tour he'll do the Vuelta, no doubt about it.