Cadel Evans and Alberto Contador to miss the Vuelta a Espana – Cycling News
Vuelta a Espana is starting on the August 20 and will conclude on the September 11. Javier Guillen who is the director of the race believes that it will be a nail biting contest and it will be before time to predict anything about the race.
Tour de France winners of two previous years, Cadel Evans of team BMC and Alberto Contador of team Saxo Bank SunGard will be missed at the tour as both the cyclists are not participating at the event this year.
It is expected that more spectators will be cheering the riders at Vuelta a Espana 2011 than previous years as race is starting a week earlier. Vuelta this year will began at the time of local school holidays in Spain and that will “Give the youth the opportunity
to contribute to the success of the Vuelta,” as Javier said.
Vuelta a Espana is finishing in the second week of September and right after two weeks the World Championships are starting in Denmark. Early start of the race will make it a perfect contest for cyclists looking ahead for World Championships as Vuelta will
provide the cyclists a great opportunity to prepare for the World event in Denmark.
As Guillen said, “I won’t deny that the Vuelta is also a preparation race for the World’s and I won’t complain about it. It’s a chance for us to have great riders participating and I also know that it’s impossible to predict a winner.”
The race will take the cyclists through the Basque country for the first time since it has race started in 1978 as Javier briefed, “The Basque country is the hot bed of Spanish cycling, like Brittany is for French cycling.”
Peter Sagan, Marcel Kittel and Taylor Phinney will be making their debut of the grand tours in Spain as by making an appearance in Vuelta a Espana. Jurgen Van den Broeck, Bradley Wiggins, Andreas Kloden and Janez Brajkovic will return to the cycling scene
after they crashed out in the Tour de France, 2011.
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