Presentation in Estepona, Málaga

Spanish leaders of Telefónica-backed squad attend event held by Unipublic in the Costa del Sol on Saturday

Alejandro Valverde: “It’s a beautiful route. The Vuelta always takes us to attractive sceneries and it should be an exciting race to watch. It’s obviously, though, up to us riders to confirm the expectations and offer some spectacle. In my opinion, the most difficult stage will be Andorra’s. We will have gone through three grueling weeks of racing by then and it will also be an absolute monster of a route. It might become a key factor on how some leaders tackle the race as a whole. Regarding myself – well, I’m feeling great at the moment, training is going as we expected and now I just want to put a backnumber on and confirm those good legs. It usually has nothing to do with how you feel when you’re training at home. I can’t wait to start; my first race will be the Mallorca Challenger, later this month.”

Mikel Landa: “There are plenty of beautiful stages in this Vuelta. It will be hard from start to finish, no doubts about that. As you can imagine, I really like to race in the Basque Country as much as possible, and when the organisers put a route in front of you as the stage finishing atop the Balcón de Bizkaia, it makes for an even more attractive menu for you to come. It’s great news for us overall. There are other stages which sound really well, such as the Lagos de Covadonga one – a climb really special for us riders, with lots of history written there – or the Andorra finale, which sould be really demanding, even more so considering it’s on day twenty of the race. We all will surely be saving some energy to take advantage from it. It also brings me good memories, since I won there in 2015.”

Eusebio Unzué: “The first look makes me think it’s even harder than previous editions. There are many demanding mountain-top finishes which could create massive gaps between the GC contenders, combined with some other really demanding, shorter climbs. Even though there are 40km of time trials -a reasonable amount, I’d say-, the route is clearly on the climbers’ side. I don’t feel like the TTs should be too much of a factor here. Andorra has to be considered as the crucial stage in this Vuelta, not only because it’s hard but also because it’s the final day where you can change things overall. However, the Lagos stage and the TT after the second rest day should benother big reference, and give us a clearer look on how the Madrid podium should look like.”

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Picture (c): Unipublic