After their spectacular success in the Vuelta a España last year, with multiple stage wins, a podium finish for Esteban Chaves and sixth overall for Simon Yates, Orica-Scott's management feel that the highly mountainous 2017 Vuelta route could well suit their top riders' Grand Tour GC ambitions once again.
"It’s pretty good really, the route's pretty well balanced, even if the individual time trial" - at a hefty 42 kilometres - "is a little bit too long for Esteban and the Yates brothers. They're improving in their time trial skills, but they're not the best at that yet," sports director Neil Stephens told Cyclingnews.
"There's certainly enough terrain in the mountains to pull back any time losses there, though, and we're hoping to bring a very strong team to the Vuelta and we'll be up for a fight for the GC."
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At this stage, Stephens says, Orica-Scott are still working on which GC riders they will definitely bring, with the Vuelta presentation today "helping that process along, although it's not finally decided."
The Vuelta has proved a goldmine of top results for Orica in the last two years. Not only was 2016 their best ever overall series of results in the Spanish Grand Tour, 2015 was also a major success: Esteban Chaves took two stages in the first week, Caleb Ewan a third and Chaves fifth place overall and a spell in the lead represented a breakthrough result for the Colombian.
Nothing that Stephens saw in Thursday's late evening presentation makes the Australian feel overly pessimistic about his riders' chances of an even better series of results in 2017.
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