The Express before the Rise

The first week of this year's Vuelta ended the way it began, with Cancellara in the golden jersey. The Bern Express regain the leader's symbol today in a rainy Valencia winning by a large margin the second ITT of the race. He did so riding an almost carbon-copy race of the ITT he won at the Tour: he started slowly, did an impressive middle part distancing beyond reach every other competitor and finished strongly but not as strongly as in the earlier part of the race.

The most impressive rider in this first week has been without a doubt André Greipel, the German rider of Columbia-HTC won two stages (one after an amazing crash less than 3 kms from the finish line) in a row and weared the golden jersey into today's stage. Another rider who has been strong in this first week has been Vacansoleil's Slovenian sprinter Borut Bozic who was consistent in the Top 10 in the bunch sprints and who took Stage 6 as his first ever Grand Tour stage. Slightly disappointing has been Daniele Bennati instead (at least for me), with the Liquigas rider never finding his groove in the bunch sprints so far.

As far as the GC riders are concerned, the situation is pretty interesting. Cadel Evans leads the way, 1 minute and 12 seconds behind Cancellara, with a two seconds advantage on Piti Valverde and eight on Samuel Sanchez. Fulgsang, who is in 21st position so far, is only 51 secs behind Evans, and ahead of him we find riders such as Basso, Gerdemann, Vinokourov and Zubeldia. So I do believe that we're in for an interesting stage tomorrow, the first mountain stage of the Vuelta.

Tomorrow the race will arrive on the Categoria Especial Alto de Aitana, after the riders already went up and down seven times (four category 2 climbs and three category 3). It's a stage well suited for a long early breakaway while the leaders won't try anything before the last climb is well under way. The stage will not be decisive as far as the GC is concerned, and I won't be surprised to see a small group of 6-8 riders arrive together atop the Alto de Aitana.

I do certainly hope to be wrong and that already from the foot of the climb we'll see fireworks from the favorites, but I doubt this will happen.