The Vuelta a Espana has a reputation as a revenge race for riders that have had little success in the first part of the season, mainly in the Tour de France. Vincenzo Nibali, Joaquim Rodriguez, Domenico Pozzovivo and Tejay van Garderen are looking for redemption after their disappointments earlier in the year but this year the Spanish grand tour is more than a race for the losers. Chris Froome is the first rider since Carlos Sastre to chase the Tour-Vuelta double and with the Movistar duo of Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana and the Astana pair of Mikel Landa and Fabio Aru all trying to continue their run of success, race director Javier Guillen has had a hard time believing the formidable start list that will make the third grand tour highly contested. CyclingQuotes.com takes a thorough look at this year's favourites and outsiders and finds out all about their strengths and weaknesses.

 

With its position at the end of the season, the Vuelta a Espana has always been different from the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. While the first two grand tours are the big objectives for most riders, the Spanish race is often the chance for redemption and many riders usually make a late decision whether to do the race. Often that has led to less spectacular start lists and less motivated riders, with many using the race to prepare for the World Championships.

 

However, things have changed and for the last two years the race has had a much stronger field than the Giro. Last year it was the misfortune of Alberto Contador and Chris Froome that suddenly meant that the race could boast no less than three riders from the Fabulous Four in addition to a huge talent like Fabio Aru and the usual veterans Joaquim Rodriguez and Alejandro Valverde. After Nairo Quintana had crashed out of the race and Chris Froome had slowly ridden himself into form, it came down to a thrilling battle between Froome and Contador in a match that allowed us to get what we never got in France during the summer.

 

Race director Javier Guillen must still be pinching himself to see if he is dreaming as this year’s field is maybe even stronger. Unlike last year, all the big favourites completed the Tour but they have not had enough racing yet. While Vincenzo Nibali will be looking for redemption on Spanish roads and Nairo Quintana has always planned to do the Vuelta, Chris Froome has made a late decision to try to become the first rider to win the Tour-Vuelta double since the Spanish race was moved to its current autumn slot. Only Alberto Contador who also did the Giro, has put an end to the season as even not the Tinkoff-Saxo captain has been inspired by team owner Oleg Tinkov’s dreams of a grand tour treble.

 

As usual veterans Joaquim Rodriguez and Alejandro Valverde will try to continue their love affair with the Spanish grand tour after hugely different Tours that saw the former fade and the latter achieve the biggest goal in the remaining part of his career. Fabio Aru and Mikel Landa will again team up after they so successfully finished on the podium in the Giro and with Nibali and most of the formidable Giro squad at their side, they will be ready to go for grand tour glory for Astana.

 

Tejay van Garderen saw his podium dreams fade away when he was struck by illness in the Alps and is now looking for revenge in Spain. The same goes for compatriot Andrew Talansky who had a disappointing Tour while Domenico Pozzovivo will try to turn his fortunes around after he crashed out of the Giro. Add the veterans Samuel Sanchez and Frank Schleck, huge talents Sergio Henao, Joe Dombrowski, Rafal Majka and Esteban Chaves and consistent grand tour contenders like Pierre Rolland, Daniel Martin, Daniel Navarro and Daniel Moreno to the list and you have the recipe for three weeks of excellent racing in Spain.

 

CyclingQuotes.com has taken an in-depth look at the race's favourites, assigning 5 stars to the race's biggest favourite, 4 to his two biggest rivals, 3 to three other potential winners, 2 to four of the podium contenders and 1 to 5 of the race's minor outsiders. In this article, we take a look at the 4-star riders that may be seen as the main challengers to the race's biggest favourite.

 

Nairo Quintana (****)

Nairo Quintana must have had some sleepless nights since his big attack on the Alpe d’Huez failed to deliver him the elusive Tour de France victory that he had been chasing hard for three weeks. If it hadn’t been for poor positioning on a wet and windy day in the Netherlands, there is a reasonable chance that the Colombian would have worn yellow on the top step of the podium in Paris. Of course it would have made for a different race if the Colombian had not lost that time in Zeeland but with Chris Froome suffering from illness in the final week, the Brit wouldn’t have much to do against the in-form Colombian who confirmed his ability to shine in the third week of a grand tour.

 

The general wisdom is that it is too much for a young rider in the early phase of his career to go for glory in consecutive grand tours. No one has ever managed to make the Tour-Vuelta double since the Spanish race got its new autumn slot and this speaks volumes about the difficulty of the challenge that culminates at the end of a long season for most of the riders. However, Quintana and Movistar have never been afraid of bucking the trend and the Colombian will already try to make amends for his defeat during the next three weeks in Spain.

 

Already in October, Movistar announced that they planned to field a two-pronged attack with Quintana and Valverde for both the Tour and the Vuelta. Despite a brief hesitation in confirming those plans, both stars will again team up after they formed a very successful pair in France and like Astana, they go into the race with more than one potential winner of the race.

 

However, the roles are slightly different this time around. In the Tour, Quintana was the undisputed captain of the team and it was clear right from the start that Valverde will be the plan B. In the end, they came away with two podium places but the plan was always to win the race with Quintana.

 

In the Vuelta, the two leaders are more on an equal footing. In the past, Valverde has proved that no one is better than doing the Tour-Vuelta double than him and so the team has lots of guarantees by having their Spanish star on the roster. For Quintana, this is a completely new challenge. He has never done two grand tours in a single season and the massive task of the Tour-Vuelta double is a lot harder than what he tried last year. Twelve months ago he won the Giro and was on track for a successful Vuelta until he crashed two days in a row and was forced to leave the race at the midpoint. Hence, no one knows how he will handle the strains of six weeks of grand tour racing and so the team has made the wise decision not to focus everything on Quintana in their home race which is extremely important.

 

Nonetheless, Quintana stands out as their best chance to win the race. Despite his reliability and consistency, Valverde has only managed to win the Vuelta once and in a field stacked with grand tour talent it will be very hard for him to come out on top. Barring accident, he is almost guaranteed to finish in the top 5 but to win the race is a different matter. Quintana is much more of a gamble but he is the only rider who has the means to beat Froome if the Brit is at his best.

 

No one knows how Quintana will handle the challenge but everything suggests that he should be able to do well. In fact, it seems that his main asset is hos formidable ability to recover and that will be of utmost importance at this late point of the season. In every grand tour, he has had a slow start but has found his best legs for the final week when he has been able to make the difference. In the 2012 Vuelta, the 2013 Tour, the 2014 Giro and the 2015 Tour, he has always suffered a bit in the first week before hitting peak condition for the third week.

 

Quintana has never completed the Vuelta since he turned into a grand tour contender but with his excellent ability to recover, the Spanish grand tour should be the one that suits him best. While the Giro and the Tour are loaded with fresh riders, the Vuelta is a completely different matter where everybody is a bit in the unknown and many are just looking forward to the off-season. This is the grand tour where fatigue plays the biggest role and this should suit Quintana well.

 

On the other hand, it is the first time ever that Quintana has gone into a grand tour without his usual preparation with a long training camp at altitude in his native Colombia. This time it has all been about recovery been the two grand tours and so it is impossible to draw too many comparisons between this race and his recent grand tour outings. This is a completely new experience for Quintana. In fact, signs are that he is really starting to feel the fatigue as he suddenly considered skipping the race that had always been on his programme. In the end, he decided to be at the start but it indicates that the Tour has really taken its toll.

 

Quintana must have mixed emotions when it comes to the course. On one hand, the first week doesn’t include any very big summit finishes which means that he will have time to find his racing legs and avoid any time loss at a point where he is typically not at his best. On the other hand, the final week is probably even easier and this is where he is usually able to make the difference. Instead, it is all likely to be decided in the brutally hard second week where he has rarely been able to benefit maximally from his ability to recover.

 

However, his biggest concern must be the inclusion of the flat time trial in Burgos. Quintana has made massive strides in the race against the clock and he is definitely able to defend himself in this discipline. However, the windy plains in Burgos are definitely not made for a tiny climber like him and he simply doesn’t have the power to keep up with a specialist like Froome in that discipline. Even if Froome doesn’t seem to be at his previous level in the TTs, there is no doubt that Quintana needs a significant buffer by the time we get to the crucial stage 17.

 

Furthermore, there’s the question of team support. Movistar have always been able to field very strong teams of climbers but for once they look like the weakest team of the three that are likely to battle for the overall victory. While Astana have three potential winners and a block that closely resembles the one that dominated the Giro and Sky have lots of strong climbers, most of the Movistar team is made up of riders that are strong in moderately hilly terrain but don’t have the ability to be there in the high mountains. The key riders is Andrey Amador who was fourth in the Giro but the Costa Rican is not a pure climber and still needs to prove that he can back up his Italian performance which clearly overshadowed what he has done on the climbs in the past. Javier Moreno have never really confirmed himself as a pure climber and even though he has produced remarkable rides in the mountains, Giovanni Visconti comes up short against the domestiques at Sky and Astana.

 

This means that Quintana and Valverde will be isolated early in the mountain stages and that is a big disadvantage in a race where Astana are likely to play with the muscles. Funnily, Quintana benefits from the presence of a strong Sky team that will try to control things and this means that Quintana may be allowed to focus on Froome. With Valverde also on the roster, he has the benefit of having another GC threat in the team and so they have the chance to join the many Astana attacks if they are willing to risk everything.

 

In the Tour, the crosswinds were costly for Quintana and so he must be a bit concerned by the flat stages. The Vuelta usually has some crosswind action at some point but this time Quintana has a better chance to be on top of things. The Vuelta is less loaded with strong classics riders and this makes the fight for position slightly easier. He doesn’t have the firepower that Sky have for the flats but there is a bigger chance that he will be able to get to the mountains with no significant time loss. On the other hand, Quintana is not as punchy as Froome for the many puncheur finales in the first week and he could lose a few seconds on those occasions.

 

However, in the end, it all boils down to a question of gaining enough time on Froome in the crucial mountain stages in Andorra and Asturias in the second week. The extremely hard stage 11 suits a pure climber like Quintana perfectly and the finishing climbs in stages 15 and 16 are hard enough to make big differences. Nonetheless, history shows that Froome is impossible to beat when he is at 100%. When that has been the case, he has been in a class of his own and so it is very much outside Quintana’s control. If the Brit can recover for the Vuelta and come out flying like he has done in the Pyrenees in the 2013 and 2015 Tour, Quintana will be the one to lose time in the mountains and with a time trial also on the menu, there will be no chance to win the race.

 

However, Froome is trying to do what no one has done before and history shows that he recovers much worse than Quintana. In the past, he has faded in the third week but with this being his second grand tour, he could lose power a bit earlier than usual. If that’s the case, the next best climber will be in pole position to grab the opportunity in the three Asturian mountain stages in the penultimate weekend. If he can twice put in the same amount of time to Froome that he did on Alpe d’Huez, not even a long flat time trial will be enough for the Brit to dethrone Quintana who could win a second grand tour at just 25 years of age.

 

Vincenzo Nibali (****)

If everything had gone to plan, there would be no Vincenzo Nibali at the start when Astana roll down the start ramp for the Vuelta a Espana. The Italian had focused his entire season on a successful defence of his Tour de France title but he left with no yellow jersey. Of course he won a big mountain stage in the Alps but it was still a meagre outcome for the defending champion who even failed to finish on the podium.

 

There is no doubt that Nibali has felt the weight of expectation on his shoulders. Astana manager Alexandre Vinokourov has done nothing to hide his big ambitions and even though he has tried not to publicly criticize his captain, it is evident that he is not pleased with the results. As it comes on the back of another hugely disappointing spring season, Nibali has done very little to earn his big salary and with a Worlds course, that doesn’t suit him, he really only had one chance to salvage his season and prove himself worthy of his status in a team that is loaded with stage racing talent. As soon as he showed signs of weakness in the Tour, the idea of doing the Vuelta was mentioned and even though it has definitely not been to Fabio Aru’s and Mikel Landa’s liking, it was always going to be the only solution for Nibali to go to the Spanish grand tour.

 

Nibali’s case is a strange one. In the early part of his career, he was one of the most consistent riders in the peloton, riding strongly from the Tour de San Luis in January until Il Lombardia in October. However, since he became a father he seems to lack the motivation to be at his best for extended periods of time. Nowadays, he can only really get himself up to his extremely high top level once in a season and he is no longer willing to make the sacrifices that are needed to be a strong contender throughout the entire season. In the past two years, the spring seasons have been mere disasters and he has only really started to show some kind of form at the Dauphiné and the Italian championships.

 

However, there is no doubt that Nibali is one of the most gifted grand tour riders of his generation. Already at 30 years of age, he became one of the select few to have conquered every grand tour when he stood on the podium at the end of last year’s Tour de France after what was one of the most dominant wins in recent years. Right from his early days, he showed his big potential and has gradually matured into a rider who is now regarded as one of the Fabulous Four.

 

With 13 grand tours in his legs, Nibali is already a veteran in three-week races and it speaks volumes about his talent that he has never finished outside the top 20, not even when he made his debut in the 2007 Giro. In fact his worst result since he first made it into the top 10 at the 2009 Tour was a 7th place when he lined up as the defending champion at the 2011 Vuelta.

 

Despite that big amount of experience, Nibali finds himself in untested territory. He has done two grand tours in a single season a couple of times in the past but it has always been the easier Giro-Vuelta double. He has never lined up for another grand tour with this small amount of time to recover in between.

 

That makes his ability to perform a bit uncertain but things suggest that he could be more comfortable with the situation than Froome and Quintana who also find themselves with a completely new challenge. First of all, Nibali has not been riding at a high level in the spring season and so is probably a bit fresher than his two biggest rivals who both won races in the early part of the year. His poor results in the spring may have left the Astana management frustrated but now it could be a blessing in disguise.

 

Furthermore, Nibali has proved his ability to maintain a high level for an entire season. In recent years, he has followed a different path but he clearly has the physical skills to ride consistently for a long time. Instead, his poor performances in recent years are more a result of a lack of motivation than a question of capabilities.

 

Hence, the fact that he goes to the Vuelta just after the Tour could actually be a good thing for Nibali. This time it has mostly been important to recover in between the races. The important training was already done in France so for the Spanish grand tour he has not had to deal with the same kind of motivation issues.

 

Finally, Nibali finds himself under a considerable amount of pressure. Different riders react differently to the weight of expectation and it remains to be seen how he will handle the fact that Vinoourov is clearly not satisfied with his star rider. In the case of Peter Sagan, a frustrated team boss has clearly paid dividends and it could be the same for Nibali who is likely to be in good condition at the start of the Vuelta.

 

When he won the Tour, many said that the victory was more due to Froome’s and Contador’s absence than Nibali’s strength. However, Sky have admitted that their analysis of the numbers indicates that the Italian would have been hard to beat. This indicates that Nibali has the potential to challenge the best if he can hit his best form.

 

However, Froome has repeatedly proved that he is by far the best climber when he is at 100% of his capabilities and if he can find the same form he had in the final week of the Tour, Quintana will be hard to beat too. With the issue of recovery creating a different scenario, it won’t be impossible for Nibali to beat them in the mountains but he will probably have to rely on a wider range of assets to come out on top.

 

One of them is his extremely strong team. With Landa and Aru at his side, Nibali is one of three potential winners on the team. There is no reason for them to wait for a head-to-head battle with Quintana and Froome on the final climb so they will attack from afar. That plays into Nibali’s nature as he is never afraid of making a brave move and even though he is the most accomplished grand tour rider of the trio, we won’t be surprised if he is the one to animate the stages from the distance. Movistar don’t have the team to control the race and even though Sky are strong, it will be hard for them to ride on the front every day in the extremely tough second week of the race. Nibali has the means to turn everything around with a long-distance attack in the mountains like the one that allowed him to take the win in La Toussuire in July.

 

Furthermore, the mountain stages are more than just about climbing. This year there are two big climbing days with tricky descents in the finale and very little flat roads in between the climbs. Stages 11 and 16 are tailor-made for a rider like Nibali and are held in regions that are often plagued by bad weather where Nibali excels. A very strong Astana team and a great course give Nibali the perfect cards to come out on top.

 

Of course Aru and Landa are likely to be fresher than Nibali but the Italian still stands out as the best Astana card. Landa will probably lose way too much time in the time trials and even though he has improved a lot in the TTs, Aru will suffer a significant loss as well. Nibali is no specialist but he has improved massively and has done some very good TTs in the last two years. He even beat Froome in the TT at this year’s Tour and as the Brit has done poor time trials for more than a year, it won’t be completely impossible for him to repeat that feat in Burgos on stage 17. Finally, Aru and Landa have never shown the climbing skills that allowed Nibali to win the Tour so he is the rider most likely to be able to match Froome and Quintana.

 

In the past, Nibali has always had at least one bad day in a grand tour but since the 2013 Giro he seems to overcome that hurdle. That was the biggest chink in his grand tour armour but as that seems to be no longer an issue, he stands out as the biggest threat in the Astana camp. With a different preparation, Nibali could actually be the in-form rider of the grand tour stars and as he is backed by the strongest team and has been given a course suited to his aggressive skills, it won’t be impossible for Nibali to salvage a disastrous season by taking the second Vuelta win that eluded him two years ago.