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 15.30 you can follow the third 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.

Today the riders take on the longest stage of the race. At 175km, the route takes the riders from Villadiego to Ojo Guareña and it should be another day where the explosive climbers could gain a few seconds on their rivals.

From the start in Villadiego, the riders head north towards the finish and will take in more undulating terrain than they have done during the first two days. Already after 12km, the peloton crests the summit of the category 3 Alto de Coculina while the category 3 Alto de la Mota, Portello del Castillo and Alto de Bocos will all do their part to tire out the riders' legs later in the race. At the same time, there is the preeminent danger of crosswinds that can always blow the race apart.

With 23km to go, the riders pass the finish line for the first time and that means that they will get the chance to check out the final category 3 climb. The next time they get there, the stage win will be decided on the top of that ascent which has a length of 1km and average gradient of 5%.

Last year Daniel Moreno held off Sergio Henao, Matti Breschel, Allan Davis and Nacer Bouhanni in an uphill sprint on the first day to take the first leader's jersey of the race and we are likely to see the third consecutive uphill sprint on the third day of racing. We can expect a similar scenario today and riders like Simone Ponzi, Daniele Ratto, Jens Keukeleire, Rinaldo Nocentini, Anthony Roux, Mauro Finetto and Dario Cataldo will once again come into play.

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