The 71st Vuelta a España starts this evening with a team time trial. Lotto Soudal will be the third of twenty-two teams to take the start, at 18:34.

Sports director Marc Wauters analyses the 27.8 kilometres long course.

“It’s a very beautiful course, but very demanding and definitely not flat. It’s quite a specific start. The first five hundred metres the road goes uphill and it’s rather steep. After the first corner, to the left, it’s one more kilometre uphill but with a lower gradient. It will be important not to take an explosive start, but to save some energy. The rest of the course is more straight. The riders will be able to reach a high speed. With six kilometres to go, the riders hit the last tough part. It will be crucial to keep as many riders in the train as possible before they get to this point.

“We are no specialists in this discipline, but we had the best possible preparation. We took the time for a recon and have analysed the course thoroughly. Bart De Clercq, Adam Hansen, Maxime Monfort, Tosh Van der Sande and Jelle Wallays are good at it and we can count on them. The experience and communication skills of Adam Hansen and Maxime Monfort will be crucial to guide the team during the time trial, so the speed doesn’t drop for example. We would like to finish in the first half of the ranking. The team time trial isn’t very important to us, but still we want to have a good feeling afterwards.”