Received wisdom suggests that fresher legs tend to win out at the Vuelta a España, and so Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2r-La Mondiale), who missed the Tour de France and all bar three days of the Giro d’Italia, leaps off the page as a dark horse for the podium in Madrid next month.
The man himself, however, is less convinced – of the theory rather than of his chances – pointing out that his 2015 season has not been lacking in intensity. Since beginning his campaign at the Tour Down Under in January, Pozzovivo had amassed 42 race days before the Vuelta began, despite two enforced breaks from competition.
“Freshness is all relative because I started my year early in Australia and I did decent race down there too,” Pozzovivo told Cyclingnews in Cordoba on Thursday. “I’ve still raced a lot, and on top of that, I’ve had to recover from an operation in January [to remove pins from the tibia he broke in a crash last summer – ed.] and I had to get over the crash in the Giro in May, so it was a season of playing catch-up in a lot of respects. I might be a little fresher than the riders who’ve done a Grand Tour, but not by much, because it’s still been a demanding year.”
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Less than a week after leaving the Giro by ambulance, Pozzovivo put in an appearance in the press room in Campitello Matese to announce his intention to make a prompt return to action and make a long-awaited Tour de France debut. As it turned out, he was back in time for the Tour de Suisse, where he finished 5th overall, but Ag2r-La Mondiale opted to withhold him from La Grande Boucle.
“It was a little bit of a regret, because I’d found my condition a bit and it would have been nice to be able to take advantage of it,” Pozzovivo admitted. “But in any case, I did a nice Tour de Suisse and then I rested for a bit with an aim to finding another peak of form at the end of the season, so hopefully it comes at this Vuelta.”
Pozzovivo’s build-up to the Vuelta, too, was not without its complications. In early August, he was married in Cosenza, an event bookended by an altitude training camp on the Stelvio and the Tour de l’Ain, his final warm-up for the Vuelta. “It was a bit difficult alright, to prepare at altitude for the Vuelta at the same time as you’re preparing for your wedding,” he smiled. “But I was able to help my wife with the most important stuff.”
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