Vuelta: Chaotic, exciting, thrilling – that's how a tour should be

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Crash in the team time trial on the opening day in Barcelona

Photo: Manu Bruque / EPA

The Tour of Spain is the wonder bag among the three grand tours. No one should be surprised if the unforeseen happens here. When nails are poured onto the roadway and oil is to be dumped on the road. When stage winners are suddenly covered in blood in the finish area. When the pros have to drive over a rain-soaked course in the dark. The Vuelta is the Vuelta.

To speak of chaos because of this, as the Belgian superstar Remco Evenepoel has repeatedly done these days, for example, is exaggerated from Ralph Denk's point of view. At the start of the team time trial in Barcelona the previous week, it had rained, darkness had already fallen when the last teams took to the track, resulting in numerous crashes.

For Denk, cycling must be a spectacle

"My God, sometimes the roads are slippery when it's raining," the head of the German racing team Bora-hansgrohe told SPIEGEL: "In an ideal world, you would have started an hour earlier and it would have been light at the end." But the world is not perfect, and there have also been teams that have set good times in the dark.

Denk is someone for whom cycling has to be a spectacle, the riders should reach their limits. The Bora boss is one of the old school. Not everyone sees it the way he does. The racing drivers' association has already enforced in two stages so far that the timekeeping does not take place only at the finish, but already kilometers before - because otherwise they would have considered the risk of falling too high in bad weather.

Timekeeping brought forward

However, this led to the absurd situation that on the second stage a rider drove into the red jersey of the leader, who was no longer one of the best at the finish. He benefited from the fact that he was in front at the time when the time was taken.

"No one understands it anymore," says Denk, and now he can get upset. Cycling is already complicated enough, "you don't have to introduce such rules and make it even more complicated."

In general, according to his taste, too much consideration is given to the drivers. The myth of cycling was only created by the fact that "the riders rode in all weathers," says Denk: "In the past, it was also possible." He doesn't want to "say that today's professionals are wimps, but..." He leaves the rest of the sentence open.

Sepp Kuss as the top favorite?

Wimps – that's the last thing that comes to mind when you see how the riders have to torture themselves again at this Vuelta. Right from the start, it was at least hilly, most stages have climbs built in, "the Vuelta has never been the sprinter-friendly tour," says Denk. It is the terrain of those who get along in the mountains.

It is therefore no coincidence that the American Sepp Kuss, the mountain specialist of the top team Jumbo-Visma, is currently leading the standings. The three stars in the field, Evenepoel and the two Jumbo-Visma captains Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard are still lying in wait.

They could give up the lurking position today. On the 13th stage, you will climb up to the Col du Tourmalet, the Pyrenean myth of cycling, one of the highlights of the Tour de France, this time also firmly anchored in the Vuelta program. Denk even believes Sepp Kuss is capable of overall victory, Roglič has already won the Giro, Vingegaard the Tour de France, so Jumbo-Visma could begrudge the noble helper from the USA the triumph in Spain to make the jumbo year 2023 perfect.

Actions of the separatists

Evenepoel, the defending champion from the Soudal racing team, wants to prevent that. He survived his crash following the stage win in Andorra, when he collided with a photographer after the finish, crashed and suffered a bleeding head wound. However, it is at least doubtful whether he will be able to compete against the concentrated jumbo superiority.

At the Vuelta, however, it is never certain whether Catalan separatists will ultimately have a say in the tour. On the starting stages, they scattered nails on the road, and the police were able to prevent the dumping of oil barrels on one stage. "For me, these people deserve to be severely punished," says Denk, otherwise only copycat acts would be provoked.

When the four separatists who had planned the oil sabotage were released, they were greeted with applause and standing ovations from people outside the courthouse.