After a relatively quiet 53rd overall in the Tour de Pologne, his first race back after a two month break, Giro d’Italia winner Vincenzo Nibali is continuing his buildup towards his next major objective, the Vuelta a España.
Starting today, the Astana rider will line out with several team-mates in the Vuelta a Burgos, where he will test his own form and also assess that of his rivals.
According to Astana’s directeur sportif for the race, Alexandr Shefer, the latter is as important as the former.
“Nibali made a steady return to racing at the Tour de Pologne, and we are generally satisfied with his fitness. The measure of uncertainty comes from the physical condition of his main competitors, and how well they are going this deep into the season,” he explained.
“At the beginning of the year in Argentina and Oman, and later along in Italy, we had a reasonably accurate picture of the rest of the peloton as they all came into form around us. But now, because it's August, it's much harder to tell who is going up and who is coming down.”
He, and Nibali, both see Burgos as a mechanism to determine who is strong and who is not. Also, it will enable them to know if the Italian’s own preparation for the Vuelta a España is going to plan.
The Spanish Grand Tour begins in seventeen days’ time. Burgos features steep climbs on stages three and five, offering Nibali the chance to try to clock up good results.
He will be backed by compatriots Valerio Agnoli, Paolo Tiralongo and Simone Ponzi, the Kazakhstani riders Fabio Aru, Arman Kamyshev and Andrey Zeits plus Slovenia’s Janez Brajkovic.