The final Grand Tour of the season arrives on Saturday August 23 with the Vuelta a España and that also means the long road from Turin to Madrid offers a last chance in 2025 to claim the revered place of a champion of one of the prestigious three-week races,
The battle will play out on the tricky and brutal Spanish climbs, with the iconic Angliru as the showpiece in a race which will bring some of the very best climbers in the world to the fore.
There will be no title defence and outright win-record chase from Vuelta stalwart Primož Roglič, as there has been for the past six seasons, and Tadej Pogačar, too, won’t be returning to where he made his Grand Tour debut. However, several of the world’s best will take to the start, this year is in Italy, in pursuit of the maillot rojo. A third UAE Team Emirates-XRG versus Visma-Lease a Bike general classification duel is expected to unfold after they traded spoils at the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.
Jonas Vingegaard will lead the latter as the main favourite, but he’ll have the duo of João Almeida and Juan Ayuso to contend with in the biggest mountain tests, alongside a whole host of other top climbers.
Here’s Cyclingnews’ assessment of who is in the running to win the 80th Vuelta a España.
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike)
Jonas Vingegaard will start the Vuelta a España as the main favourite for the red jersey, looking to improve on his second-place finish at the Tour de France and take his first Grand Tour victory in two years.
With no Tadej Pogačar on the start line, Vingegaard is the strongest climber on paper and will be flanked by a powerful Visma-Lease a Bike team at his second three-week race appearance in 2025.
It’s set to be his third appearance at the Vuelta, after his Grand Tour debut in 2020 and then another run at the 2023 edition, when he finished as runner-up to teammate Sepp Kuss, with…
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