Team Sky are aiming for a top-three result at the very least in the Vuelta a España's opening team time trial, which the British squad won last year in Galicia by the narrowest of margins over Movistar.
In 2016 time differences between Sky and Movistar were inside a second, with the British team finally taking the win and Peter Kennaugh becoming the first leader of the race.
This year’s team time trial, though, is a very different kettle of fish to both 2015’s controversial 7.4-kilometre opening sprint along the beachside in Marbella, and 2016’s much longer, more technical, 27.8km course in the remote rural reaches of southern Galicia. This time, instead, the TTT is a relentlessly urban course and, at 13.7km, just under half the length.
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“We want the top-three for sure and we are definitely prepared for it,” Gabriel Rasch, Team Sky sports director at the Vuelta, told Cyclingnews on Friday. “We’ve been over the course twice already, it’s very technical so it’s definitely a bit more difficult for us to win, but I don’t think there will be big time differences between the favourites."
Other top contenders for the opening stage are difficult to predict on such a short, technical course, which has a small climb mid-way through and is mostly run through city centre streets.
Visually, the high point will likely be when the teams thunder through the Roman amphitheatre, built in the first century AD, where yesterday’s teams presentation was held, but the race will probably be won or lost on the marginally straighter final three or four kilometres.
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