This weekend, Chris Froome (Team Sky) will become only the second reigning Tour de France champion to ride the Vuelta a España in the same season. Carlos Sastre is the only other rider to have done it. Sastre often did both races in the same season, but visited his home Grand Tour as the Tour de France winner back in 2008.
Sastre went on to finish third overall just over four minutes behind race winner Alberto Contador. Just days ahead of Froome's attempt, Cyclingnews caught up with Sastre to get his thoughts on Froome's chances, his rivals, and Sastre's own experiences.
Cyclingnews: What do you think of Froome's decision to ride the Vuelta a España?
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Carlos Sastre: It's a good thing. Why not? It seems like he and his team are having a great season. In the Tour de France we saw that he was suffering in the last week but he recovered well. The Vuelta a España is not as hard as the Giro d'Italia this year, it's more explosive. Froome is a rider that can defend himself very well on these kinds of climbs. Why not try it and try to make it possible? I think it's great.
CN: What was your experience of doing it? You had the Olympics in between also.
CS: I had the Vuelta in my head from the beginning as well. I didn't have as much time to recover because Beijing was in the middle of those days of recuperation after the Tour de France. After all of the criteriums, Beijing was not easy and then two weeks after it was the Vuelta a España so it was quite difficult. The start of the Vuelta was not easy for many different reasons [he had fallen out with team manager Bjarne Riis after deciding to leave the team -ed] but, after that, I felt good and I finished on the podium of the Vuelta so my condition was not bad.
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