Link: http://www.lavuelta.com

Note: This post was written on Friday but because of server problems, this didn't get posted until Sunday.

It's almost September, a full month after an exciting Tour de France and big time cycling is back! Yes, the 63rd running of the Vuelta a España, or the Tour of Spain, will commence this Saturday, August 30th and finish 3 weeks later on September 21st. The final grand tour of this season will see some big guns battling it out in a war that wasn't allowed to take place in July.

Spain's Alberto Contador and his Astana team are back with a vengeance to prove once again that they are both the best stage racing team in the world and that Contador is the best stage racer in the world. Joining Contador at the top of the favorites list are this year's Tour champ Carlos Sastre (Team CSC-Saxo Bank), Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne), Damiano Cunego (Lampre), Igor Antón (Euskaltel Euskadi) and Contador's teammates Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden.

...

Defending champ Russian Denis Menchov (Rabobank) will not be back to defend his title having already ridden two grand tours this season but Rabobank is sending promising young Dutch rider Robert Gesink in his place. Also missing is Tour number 2 Australian Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) who will be away nursing the leg injury he suffered at a post Tour party. Substituting for him will be Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych who will be looking to make amends for his lower than expected form at the Tour.

The route for this year's Vuelta looks to be for the climbers. The opening stage is a rather short team time trial similar to the Giro's while a 40km time trial will shake things up a bit before the big tests come. There will be 8 mountain stages plus a 16km mountain time trial. The route includes the grueling climb up the Angliru on stage 13 and promises to be a nail biter.

So who will win this year's Vuelta? Common sense says that Contador is the man to beat. He has prepared significantly for this race and should be fresher since his team wasn't invited to this year's Tour. Sastre is the other big favorite purely because of his Tour success. But is he in the same league as Contador? Would he have won if Astana were allowed to participate at the Tour? Tough to say, that's why they have the race.

Both Valverde and Cunego want to make up for their sub par Tour's. Valverde had one bad day which cost him a possible podium spot, if not more. Cunego, on the other hand, didn't quite have it together from the start. He struggled up the relatively easy climb of Super Besse and never challenged in the Pyrenees or the Alps. To make matters worse, he crashed out badly during the final week of the race.

Valverde has shown great form since the Tour by winning the Clasica San Sebastian and being competitive in Beijing. Cunego has stayed out of competition while nursing his injuries so he's a big question mark.

Rabobank's Gesink first became known to most of us during this year's Tour of California. He won the queen stage by beating eventual winner, Levi Leipheimer. He also followed that result up with a top placing at Paris-Nice as well as the Tour of Poland. At 22, the Vuelta will be his first grand tour.

Igor Anton is a wild card. He has shown excellent progression during his career and since he will be given the sole leadership role at Euskaltel Euskadi, he may be the spoiler if the contender's don't live up to their expectations.

This will certainly be an exciting race. Race Director Víctor Cordero said it best, "This year the Vuelta will be the Tour. It will have the best participation of all three Grand Tours." Now on to Granada!

My pick for top 3 at this year's Vuelta:
1. Alberto Contador (Astana)
2. Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne)
3. Levi Leipheimer (Astana)

PS. This will also be the first time we get to try out Cycling TV's new website/player. I'll report back once I get a handle on this. I'm crossing my fingers.

Update: Cycling TV did, in fact, work. It took some time to figure out what to click and when to click it and you had to know the scheduled time didn't necessarily correlate with when it was coming on.