War of Spanish Succession

Home riders set to fight it out for Vuelta title

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spaniard Angel Casero will be looking over his shoulder at his fellow countrymen as he cycles up mountain summits and across sizzling plains in his quest for a repeat victory in the 57th edition of the Tour of Spain.

In July's Tour de France, five Spanish riders finished in the top ten -- a command performance for Spain that recalled Miguel Indurain's five-year winning streak in the early 1990s.

Now, four of those five -- Joseba Beloki, Igor Gonzalez Galdeano, Francisco Mancebo, Roberto Heras -- are among the 230 competitors expected to mount their bikes Saturday for the start of the 21-stage Tour of Spain, or La Vuelta de Espana.

Known to cycling aficionados as "La Vuelta," the 3,144-kilometer (1,965-mile) tour is one of the key events in the European cycling season, next to the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia.

Casero, who has sat out part of the racing season with a knee injury, will also have a strong foreign challengers in La Vuelta, even without this year's Tour champ Lance Armstrong or banned riders Jan Ullrich of Germany and Marco Pantani of Italy.

Colombian Santiago Botero, who took fourth in the Tour, is expected at the start. So are Eric Zabel, one of the best sprinters around, and Italian Gilberto Simoni, a strong climber.

Belgian Frank Vandenbroucke has signed up despite having been banned from races in his native Flanders -- including the World Championships -- for doping. And Italian cycling star Mario Cipollini last week he said he was postponing his retirement plans because La Vuelta is among the "targets I still want to reach."

Among the 80 Spanish competitors, Casero will be paying particular attention to world champion Oscar Freire and Oscar Sevilla, who Casero beat out on the last day of last year's Vuelta.

But he will also be thinking about the Tour's Spanish top-ten finishers, including Heras, the 2000 Vuelta winner and leader of Armstrong's US Postal team, and Joseba Beloki, who was second in the French race.

This year's La Vuelta begins with a 30-kilometer (19-mile) team time trial in the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia. Already in the fifth stage, it reaches its highest point with a finish 2,510 meters (8,275 feet) above sea level in the Sierra Nevada -- at the end of a 210-kilometer (131-mile) stage, the longest in the Vuelta.

The next stage is also a grueling, finishing at 1,840 meters (6,066 feet) altitude after a 153 kilometers (95.6 miles) of racing. And the brutal Alto de L'Angliru, a 1570-meter (5,176-foot) climb that is reckoned to be the toughest climbs in top competition, has been reinstated this year in the 15th stage.

The Vuelta ends on Sept. 29 with a 45-kilometer (28-mile) individual time trial in Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu stadium, home of the Real Madrid soccer team, to mark the club's centennial celebration.

Riders have been warned that doping checks will be strict this year. Aside from random tests held throughout August on riders and teams likely to take part in the race, officials are planning to check every competitor at the start in Valencia and administer surprise tests during the race.

 

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