Preview Stages 1-9 Stages 10-15 Stages 16-21 A strong, loyal and selfless servant on the crucial days when stage races are won and lost, Sepp Kuss is pretty much exactly what you’d mould if you had the power to shape the perfect team-mate. It was therefore something of a surprise when the two men he helped to victories in this year’s Giro d’Italia and Tour de France went out of their way to try and deny him a Vuelta a Espana title. Sepp Kuss is surely a man you want to keep onside. This, for pretty much everyone, will always be the most memorable moment of the 2023 Vuelta a Espana: Wherea ..read more

Preview Stages 1-9 Stages 10-15 Remco Evenepoel bested all his overall rivals in the Stage 10 time trial and then won Stage 14 in the Pyrenees. If it weren’t for the small matter of shipping 27 minutes on Stage 13 in between those two triumphs, it would have been a pretty good week for last year’s Vuelta a Espana winner. That grim stage for Remco featured the greatest density of climbing of any Grand Tour day this year – 4,000m in just 135km. There have been longer mountain stages and there have been stages with more height gain, but none where so much ascending has been packed into so sho ..read more

Preview Stages 1-9 I’m already a day late with this, so the time trial will have happened by the time you’re reading it. Let’s ignore that for the time being and instead make some sort of effort to sum up the first nine days of racing in this year’s Vuelta a Espana. I’d normally do a fuller recap, but the race has been a bit rambling and confusing, so it seems to make more sense to pick out a few events and themes that hopefully explain where we are better than a blow-by-blow account would. This was the top 10 on the first rest day. Let’s work our way back from that. And these are the thi ..read more

Until the racing or an abandonment or two tell us otherwise, we can keep this very simple. The main contenders for the 2023 Vuelta a Espana are the guy who won it last year; the guy who won the three before that; and the guy who’s won the last two Tours de France. I will throw a few other names into the mix lower down though because there’s a pretty strong field. Remco Evenepoel – the guy who it last time Foto Fabio Ferrari / LaPresse If you only normally follow the Tour de France, you’ll have no real clue who Remco Evenepoel is because he’s never raced it. The plan was to win the Vuelta last ..read more

Preview Stages 1-9 Stages 10-15 Stages 16-21 Jonas Vingegaard’s average daily time gain over Tadej Pogacar over the first two weeks of this year’s Tour de France was less than half a second. He improved on this rather dramatically over the next two days. While the Dane was frequently second by seconds, by the end of three weeks he was first by minutes. As I said last week, the shape of this race was Pogacar reliably gaining seconds with his faster finish, while Vingegaard waited for opportunities to attack earlier in the day with a view to perhaps gaining minutes. It was death by a thousand ..read more

Preview Stages 1-9 Stages 10-15 I can actually cover this middle week in a paragraph for all the significant developments there’ve been: Jonas Vingegaard’s lead over Tadej Pogacar has slipped from a barely meaningful 17 seconds to a neither-here-nor-there 10 seconds. Everyone else is now even further behind than they previously were. I say that Vingegaard’s advantage is neither here nor there because it feels like, at some point, either he or Pogacar will go all Mortal Kombat and wheel out a decisive finishing move. But who knows? Maybe this is the race: two superhumans battling each other ..read more

Preview Stages 1-9 This year’s Tour de France was seen as a straight head-to-head between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard and almost immediately appeared to become that. That’s probably better than only having one of them left in the race – or neither. We have a decent idea how good different riders can be going into the Tour de France, but even with the best training bodies aren’t machines and so fitness varies unpredictably. The traditional nature of Grand Tours means that any weaknesses among the overall contenders can often stay hidden surprisingly deep into the race. Not so with the ..read more

This 2023 Tour de France preview is so breath-takingly comprehensive, it actually features a smattering of references to riders who aren’t Tadej Pogacar or Jonas Vingegaard. There’s a quick look at some of the big stages coming up in the first week as well. Last year’s Tour de France was won by Jonas Vingegaard ahead of Tadej Pogacar. The previous edition was won by Pogacar ahead of Vingegaard. There’s only one way to decide this… with another Tour de France! The Slovenian’s 2020 victory and uncommon strength across a broader range of races arguably makes him the more significant figure, so w ..read more

Marco Alpozzi/LaPresse Preview Stages 1-9 Stages 10-15 Stages 16-21 Primoz Roglic famously lost the Tour de France in a mountain time trial. He was first overall at the bottom but only second by the top. This time he did the reverse, albeit with a gut-churning pause halfway up when he dropped his chain and came to a complete standstill. That stationary moment must have torn open a few old scars, but it didn’t prove costly in the end. After three weeks of attrition in the form of crashes, illness and not-being-quite-as-good-as-some-of-the-other-guys, Stage 20 almost felt like the first burst ..read more

Preview Stages 1-9 Stages 10-15 Stages 16-21 A rapid descent on soaking roads with equally wet clothing in one degree temperatures anybody? No, I wouldn’t fancy it either. The case for the Giro to be considered the most gruelling of the three Grand Tours has a little to do with the terrain – which never truly eases – and a lot to do with the weather, which is frequently shitty. Week two got underway with Stage 10, which involved 195km on mountainous back roads in near-freezing torrential rain. Inside the first 10km, overall contender Alexandr Vlasov was in trouble and off the back. His team ..read more