Alberto Contador defied all expectations when he announced that he would be able to take part in the Vuelta a Espana today. This came just a month after he fractured his tibia on stage 10 of the Tour de France, although he did not need surgery on his tibia.

 

"The doctor who was supervising my recovery in a clinic in Madrid wanted me to have another scan just before coming here and I told him I didn't have time and it didn't happen," Contador said with a smile to Cyclingnews. "But I wouldn't have wanted to change my decision if the scan went badly."

 

"This is a risk. The advice was to stay at home and start thinking about next season but I found it very hard to watch the end of the Tour on television because I had prepared so well for it. I also really wanted to be at the Vuelta this year, so here I am."

 

"The doctors removed the stitches after ten days, which was probably too soon and it reopened the injury," Contador said. "They also had to clean the wound again as there was still a little stone lodged inside there, because of the urgency of the original treatment. But when they stitched it back up again, everything changed and the recovery started to go better and more quickly."

 

But while Contador’s injury has not ruled him out of his home Grand Tour, it may have ruled him out for competing for the overall classification that he last won in 2012.

 

"To say I'm here to win could be too much," Contador said. "I'm coming here in a very different position to the Tour. I'll take things day by day and try not to lose time in the opening week and then we'll see what happens from there. If I have a bad day early on, then my approach might change, but for now that's the strategy."

 

The uphill finishes at Arcos de la Frontera on stage 3 and La Zubia on stage 6 will show us very early on what shape the Spaniard is in and whether or not he has the ability to compete with the rest of the GC men.

 

"There are those two uphill finishes early on, where explosive riders like [Joaquim] Rodriguez and [Alejandro] Valverde can attack and maybe I won't be able to hold their wheels," Contador said. "I don't expect attacks aimed directly at me but more due to the circumstances of the race."

 

Sky’s Chris Froome has been identified as the favourite by Contador, but he inists the Vuelta could be lost on the transitional stages that Contador used so well to unseat Joaquim Rodriguez from what looked like a certain win in 2012.

 

"He has a strong team and he's strong in the time trial and the mountains, so if he's at 100 percent, then Chris Froome is the favourite," Contador said. "But in this kind of race, every stage is important, as was the case in 2012 when I was able to change the whole Vuelta a España on a transition stage."

 

Contador says his team reflects his ambitions for the race and insists that Tinkoff-Saxo will not have as much responsibility as they had in the Tour.

 

"It's true that we don't have Nico [Roche], [Michael] Rogers or Rafal [Majka] here, but it's still a strong team. In any case, I'm not worried about it," Contador said. "I don't feel that I have the responsibility to control the race, as I'm not a favourite for overall victory. Other teams have more responsibility."