Esteban Chaves is hoping that his lack of racing will be the key to him sealing his first Grand Tour win at the Vuelta a Espana. After a strong first week, Chaves is still up there with all the GC favourites.

“The beginning has gone very well for me,” Chaves told VeloNews. “I said to everyone that is the most important thing to save the most energy you can. It’s hard to do so here in northern Spain. It’s been hot, as well. We are trying to continue with this plan of conserving energy. These races are won in the last week. You saw that in the Giro. In the final week, you can see the best riders.”

For the Colombian riding for Orica-BikeExchange, he hopes to be fresh in that final week, having only raced the Olympics since finishing second at the Giro.

“This year has been different with the Olympics close to Colombia, so I did my route preparations for the Vuelta in Colombia but with the Olympic road race objective in the middle,” Chaves added. “It would have been too much stress coming here to race the Vuelta a Burgos and then going back to race the Olympics and then returning to Europe.”

The small climber gave some details of the type of training he has been doing back home over those months in Colombia.

“I would usually do a mix of things,” Chaves said. I would do many intervals behind the motorbike or the car. I rode a lot of kilometers, and a lot of kilometers on the climbs or at altitude. This way I could arrive here with calmness.”