It's part of the anatomy of the cycling calendar that every grand tour is preceded by a short warm-up stage race in a mountainous part of the country that hosts the three-week race. The Giro contenders use the extremely mountainous Giro del Trentino to prepare for the biggest Italian race while the Tour favourites head to the Alps and the Dauphiné to finish off their build-up for the world's biggest bike race. The Vuelta counterpart to those two races is the Vuelta a Burgos which starts today and offers the riders for the Spanish grand tour a perfect opportunity to test themselves out in high mountains, on short, explosive finishing climbs and in fierce crosswinds - three challenges that often play a crucial role in determining the overall winner of the three-week Spanish race. Starting at 15.20 you can follow the first stage of the Spanish race on CyclingQuotes.com/live.

Among the Vuelta contenders, it is mainly the riders who also raced the Tour de France that have decided to skip the possibility to build up their form in Burgos during the coming week. Among the riders that weren't present in the French grand tour, most will be present on the start line later today. Vincenzo Nibali and Ivan Basso continue the preparation that was kicked off in Poland last week while Samuel Sanchez kicks off his autumn season on his Spanish home soil. Among these riders, only Basso can be expected to fight for the win while Nibali and Sanchez will mainly use the race to prepare for later objectives. Instead, the big favourite is Nairo Quintana who won't race the Vuelta and so can allow himself to go all out for the win on a course that suits him perfectly.

The Vuelta a Burgos usually has a stage for the pure sprinters and this year will be no different. Saturday's 162km stage from Dona Santos to Santo Domingo De Silos has a tough start as the top of the category 3 Alto del Cerro is located just 13km from the start. From then on the roads level out but the riders face a steady climb up to a plateau and a short, sharp descent to the finish in Santo Domingo De Silos.

 After the first passage of the line, the riders will tackle a 39km circuit that sends them back up to the plateau where they will stay for some time before the fast descent towards the finish. As usual, the wind can come into play but this day should end in some kind of sprint where the fast finishers can really reach high speeds in the downhill finish.

As usual there aren't many sprinters in the Burgos peloton but a few of them have travelled to Spain for this year's race. The dual stage winner Jens Keukeleire has travelled home but Orica-GreenEdge still has a formidable lead-out train with Allan Davis and Mitch Docker who are ready to launch Leigh Howard in the sprint. To take the third consecutive team win, the Australian has to beat riders like Francesco Lasca, Luke Rowe, Daniele Ratto/Lucas Haedo, Luca Paolini, Giovanni Visconti, Anthony Roux, Pablo Urtasun, Anthony Ravard/Lloyd Mondory/Valentin Iglinskiy, Simone Ponzi, Edwin Avila, Zak Dempster/Jonathan McEvoy, Stephane Poulhies, Daniele Colli/Pier Paolo De Negri, Pablo Torres and Unai Iparragirre who are the sprinters in the race.

Starting at 15.30 you can follow the stage here and you can read our race preview here.