LA VUELTA A ESPAÑA (2)

Alberto Contador duly won this year's Vuelta this afternoon, in his first major race back after suspension. As I predicted in July, he beat the pre-race favourite Chris Froome by more than ten minutes (i.e. miles), the latter losing time on nearly all of the mountain stages (of which there were many). The hype about Froome's being better than Bradley Wiggins in the Tour de France turned out to be just that, hype.

Beating Froome easily didn't mean that the race was dull, far from it. The big surprise was the strong showing of Joaquim Rodriguez. Rodriguez is generally known for a combination of explosive bursts on hilly finishes (eg la Mur de Huy at the end of La Fleche Wallone) and extremely poor time-trialling, which tends to scupper his chances in the three-week long Grand Tours. In this year's Giro, for instance, Rodriguez held the lead for much of the race, but lost it to Ryder Hesjedal by just 16 seconds following the final day's time-trial.

However, this year's Vuelta course was tailor-made for Rodriguez, with only one 37 km time-trial (which anyway included a 10 km category 3 climb), and some incredibly steep finishes, where he could snatch bonus seconds for finishing in the first three of a stage. After the time-trial, he was a surprising one second ahead of Contador. The latter then attacked last weekend on three in a row of the most brutal mountain stages I have seen, with gradients of up to 24%. But each time Rodriguez calmly stuck to his wheel, and then sprinted ahead of Contador at the end to claim the bonus seconds. Going into last Tuesday's second rest day, Rodriguez led by 28 seconds, with only yesterday's fearsome Bola del Mundo stage to come. Similar defensive tactics would see the diminutive Katusha rider home to his first Grand Tour victory.

Contador had other ideas. On Wednesday, he blew the race apart, in an attack which had commentators reaching for their superlatives. Catching his rivals napping on a fairly innocuous mid-stage category 2 climb, his teammates went for broke on the descent, before Contador time-trialled the last 20 kms uphill to the finish on his own. Rodriguez lost three minutes; and although he attacked on the Bola del Mundo and dropped Contador, it was never going to be enough to claw back the deficit.
 
So Contador is back, winning his seventh Grand Tour title (two Giros, two Vueltas and three Tours) out of the last eight starts. His only defeat was in the 2011 Tour, after he had won what was generally regarded as the toughest Giro ever (though he has since been stripped of two of those titles as part of his doping suspension). Without doubt, he is the best stage racer of his generation.

La Vuelta was also a triumph for team owner Bjarne Riis and his strategy of banking everything on Contador. After losing most of his Saxo Bank - Tinkoff Bank team to the new Leopard outfit a couple of years ago, it was thought that Contador would be short of help when the road started going uphill. But they showed themselves to be the best team when it mattered, not least on Wednesday. With Chris Anker Sørensen and new signing Nicholas Roche to help him next year, Contador will have a strong team for the 2013 Tour de France. Unless he falls off his bike before then, he is already my tip to win it.

Walter Blotscher