In the absence of defending champion Nairo Quintana who chose a different race program this year, the four-time winner of the Tour de France and runner-up in Madrid in 2016 stands out as a natural favorite for the 72nd Vuelta a España. Soon after celebrating the yellow jersey in Paris, Chris Froome declared: “In previous years, La Vuelta felt like an afterthought. This year we've thought about it a lot. We're going there with a sense of mission and I just want to have a real shot at it.”
Team Sky is yet to win another Grand Tour than the Tour de France since its inception in 2010. There's no British winner of La Vuelta in the 82 years of the history of the Spanish event. Froome himself isn't content with having finished second on three occasions (2011, 2014, 2016). He often said La Vuelta is his favourite Grand Tour for the atmosphere he loves. In previous years, he won races prior to the Tour de France. This time around, receiving the vase of Sèvres on the Champs-Elysées in Paris was just a start for a season he hopes to be more prolific.
Backed by the likes of Wout Poels, Mikel Nieve, Diego Rosa, Peter Kennaugh and Gianni Moscon, Froome will face the competition of three former winners: Alberto Contador (2008, 2012, 2014), Vincenzo Nibali (2010) and Fabio Aru (2015). Like at the Tour de France, Trek-Segafredo unites Contador and John Degenkolb but the German sprinter who has ten stage victories of La Vuelta under his belt is expected to race more for himself meanwhile Sacha Modolo of UAE Team Emirates is touted as his main opponent in the bunch gallops. Nibali has called his closest team-mates Valerio Agnoli, Franco Pellizotti, Giovanni Visconti and his brother Antonio along with Spaniards Ivan Garcia and Javier Moreno to claim his fifth Grand Tour victory after finishing third in the Giro d'Italia this year. Astana has assembled a super team around the man who deprived Froome of the yellow jersey for two days last month. Miguel Àngel “Superman” López who won the queen stage of the Tour of Austria (third overall), Luis León Sánchez, Pello Bilbao and Alexey Lutsenko are part of the Kazakhstani line up.
The novelty is the first participation of Romain Bardet who finished second and third in the past two Tour de France. “I took some time to think about my second part of the season”, the Frenchman stated. “I had considered taking part in La Vuelta for several months. I'm delighted to do it to change my program of the previous years and to ride two Grand Tours the same year for the first time. I feel mature for it now. My ambitions will be different than at the Tour de France but I hope to impact the stages that suit me.” Domenico Pozzovivo who was sixth at the Giro d'Italia and double stage winner at La Vuelta Alexandre Geniez are the other options for AG2R-La Mondiale to shine in the mountains.
The 2017 La Vuelta also features a long list of dark horses, firstly with the trio of Orica-Scott formed of Esteban Chaves and the twin brothers Adam and Simon Yates. Tour de France King of the Mountain Warren Barguil and Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb), Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe), Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha-Alpecin), Steven Kruijswijk and George Bennett (LottoNL-Jumbo), Louis Meintjes (UAE Team Emirates), Rohan Dennis, Samuel Sánchez and Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing Team), Davide Formolo and Andrew Talansky (Cannondale-Drapac), Winner Anacona, Carlos Betancur, Ruben Fernández and Marc Soler (Movistar), Julian Alaphilippe, David De La Cruz and Bob Jungels (Quick-Step Floors), Igor Anton (Dimension Data) and Jaime Roson (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) also make the provisional start list extremely attractive.
