Before the start of the Tour of San Luis, Vincenzo Nibali went to Brazil in order to test course for the 2016 Olympic Games road race in Rio de Janeiro with his teammates Fabio Aru and Valerio Agnoli and Movistar's Adriano Malori.

"The route is hard even for a climber", the former Tour de France winner explained to Gazzetta dello Sport. "The final circuit is really difficult and the descent is technical. There are sections where the tarmac is very broken up."

"The course is harder than I could have expected. There’s nowhere to recover on the second circuit, the climb is very stiff", Fabio Aru added.

The men will cover 256.4km in the road race, starting and finishing in Flamengo Park, as well as passing through iconic Rio locations including the Copacabana. The peloton will take on the ‘Grumari Circuit’ which contains the 1.2km, 7% average gradient Grumari climb and the 2.1km climb of Grota Funda which averages 4.5% four times during the race before they head onto the hardest circuit which will be tackled four times.