Vuelta a España 2019 – Team Preview

At this time of the year all eyes are once again pointed towards La Vuelta. One of the 3 Grand Tours that is often characterized by a lot of climbing on steep ramps, hilly terrain and a tough life for the sprinters that dare to participate. This week we will release a number of key articles on this years La Vuelta, ranging from parcours previews to team previews and jersey contenders.

Yesterday we published our Vuelta a España 2019 Route Preview, so if you haven’t read that one yet, read it here: Vuelta a España – Route Preview or click the link in the post series above.

Today we will take a look at all the teams that are participating in this years Vuelta and the riders they bring to battle it out! Riders that we think or have announced they are going for the GC are noted in Bold, while sprinters are noted in Italics.

Now, let’s take a look and discuss the teams one by one!

AG2R La Mondiale
Riders: Francois Bidard, Geoffrey Bouchard, Clement Chevrier, Silvan Dillier, Dorian Godon, Quentin Jauregui, Pierre Latour, Clement Venturini.

AG2R brings an almost entirely French team, with the only exception being the Swiss rouleur Dillier. They will rely on Venturini to get some results in the sprint. He may lack the pure speed of some other sprinters in the race, but the slightly challenging and hilly stage are very much to his liking. For the GC, Latour is the designated rider. He has struggled with ilness this season, having a very low amount of racing days under his belt so far. However, this does mean he has fresh legs and no signs of fatigue. With a strong 6th place in Poland, his form seems to be improving so we think he may very well become one of the big GC suprises.

Astana Pro Team
Riders: Manuele Boaro, Dario Cataldo, Omar Fraille, Jakob Fuglsang, Ion Izagirre, Gorka Izagirre, Miguel Angel Lopez, Luis Leon Sanchez

One of the most exiciting teams in the race! Astana brings a massive amount of climbing power to the race, with Lopez and Fuglsang seemingly sharing GC-leader duties . They will be supported in the mountains by Sanchez and the Basque enclave of Izagirre (x2) and Fraille. Astana always has some tricks up their sleeves, so if their GC-leader are in good form we are in for some exiciting and hard racing.

Bahrain – Merida
Riders: Yukiya Arashiro, Phil Bauhaus, Heinrich Haussler, Domen Novak, Mark Padun, Hermann Pernsteiner, Luke Pibernik, Dylan Teuns

Bahrain – Merida brings a pretty interesting, albeit a little disappointing, stage-hunting team. Bauhaus and Teuns are the most likely candidates to be succesful in the hunt for stages, although Bauhaus has been having a mediocre season and Teuns’ form remains a question after a hard Tour de France. According to the team, Padun will also target the GC in addition to going for stage wins. While a big talent, we don’t he will be up there with the big guns in the various gruesome mountain stages.

BORA – Hansgrohe
Riders: Shane Archbold, Sam Bennett, Jempy Drucker, Davide Formolo, Felix Grossschartner, Rafal Majka, Gregor Muhlberger, Pawel Poljanski

Another pretty exciting team! With Bennett, they have the fastest sprinter the race who has shown to be in amazing form. He has great support with ‘The Flying Mullet’ Archbold acting as a lead-out man. Both Formolo and Majka will act as the teams GC contenders, but we believe Majka will have a better chance at making it into the top 10 given his current form.

Burgos – BH
Riders: Nuno Bico, Jetse Bol, Oscar Cabedo Carda, Jorge Cubero Galvez, Jesus Ezquerra Muela, Angel Madrazo, Diego Rubio Hernandez, Ricardo Vilela

Well… what to say? Probably the weakest team in the race. We will no doubt see their jersey many times in various breakaways, but we think they simply lack the quality to be truly competitive and challenge of stage wins.

Caja Rural – Seguros RGA
Riders: Jon Abersturari Izaga, Alex Aranburu, Sergey Chernetski, Domingos Goncalves, Jonathan Lastra, Sergio Pardilla, Cristian Rodriguez, Gonzalo Serrano Rodriguez

Caja Rural is one of the standard wild card teams in the Vuelta. On paper, they actually have a pretty decent team given their status. However, this was also true in the last few years but they always seem to underperform and dissapoint in the Vuelta. Hopefully, this year is different. Sprinter Abersturari and puncheur Aranburu have shown to be in excellent form and will be their main riders to watch

CCC Team
Riders: William Barta, Pawel Bernas, Patrick Bevin, Victor De La Parte, Jonas Koch, Szymon Sajnok, Nathan Van Hooydonck, Francisco Ventoso

We all knew before the season that CCC would not focus on the Grand Tours due to them getting their team together at the very last minute. Even with that knowledge, this team is still incredibly weak for a World Tour team. On the positive side, it might be a good learning expercience for their youngsters, but we just don’t see them having any meaningfull impact in the race.

Cofidis, Solutions Credits
Riders: Darwin Atapuma, Nicolas Edet, Jesper Hansen, Jose Herrada Lopez, Jesus Herrada Lopez, Luis Angel Mate, Stéphane Rossetto, Damien Touzé

Another one of the standard wild card teams, which should not be suprising since Cofidis is also a main sponsor of the Vuelta itself. Their team is actually quite decent though, and last year they had a very succesful Vuelta with a stage win and several days in the red jersey. They will once be hunting for stages in the mountains, with the brothers Jose and Jesus Herrada Lopez and Maté as their main candidates for a win.

Deceuninck – Quick Step
Riders: Eros Capecchi, Remi Cavagna, Tim Declerq, Philippe Gilbert, Fabio Jakobsen, James Knox, Maximiliano Richeze, Zdenek Stybar

As we are used to, Deceuninck – Quick Step starts without a GC rider and will purely go for the stage wins. They bring in sprinting talent Jakobsen for his first Grand Tour, and he will get help from, in our opinion, the best lead out man in the world: Richeze. It remains too be seen how he will handle the tough and rolling terain the Vuelta, but he should challenge for the stage win at least a couple of times. Other candidates for a stage win are the experienced Gilbert and Stybar, who both will find many mur’s to their liking.

EF Education First
Riders: Hugh Carthy, Lawson Craddock, Mitchell Docker, Sergio Higuita, Daniel Felipe Martinez, Logan Owan, Rigoberto Uran, Tejay van Garderen

EF brings a suprisingly strong climbing squad! Uran will be their leader and try to challenge for the podium with, among others, the help of his Colombian compatriots Martinez and Higuita. If all of their riders are in absolute top form, they honestly might have the strongest mountain team!

Euskadi Basque – Murias
Riders: Aritz Bagues, Fernando Barcelo Aragon, Cyril Barthe, Mikel Bizkarra, Mikel Iturria, Oscar Rodriguez, Hector Saez Benito, Sergio Samitier

We are a fan of Basque riders, so it’s great a see Basque teams are on the rise again. Last year, Rodriguez caused a big upset by winning the mountain stage to La Camperona, and he will once again be their biggest hope for a stage win. Since the race travels across the Basque Country again this year, there will no doubt be massive amounts of crazy fans with flags alongside the road.

Groupama – FDJ
Riders: Bruno Amirail, Mickaël Delage, Killian Frankiny, Tobias Ludvigson, Steve Morabito, Marc Sarreau, Romain Seigle, Benjamin Thomas

1 word: Disappointing . Obviously, the French teams sends their best riders to the Tour de France each year, but this year Groupama – FDJ team seems especially poor. They will hunt for stages and hope that Sarreau will be able to supris in the sprints stages, but we just don’t see it happen.

Lotto Soudal
Riders: Sander Armee, Thomas de Gendt, Carl Fredrik Hagen, Tomasz Marczynski, Tosh Van Der Sande, Brian Van Goethem, Harm Vanhoucke, Jelle Wallays

The riders from Lotto Soudal will only have 1 thing on their minds this Vuelta. They will do everything they can to honor their deceased friend and teammate Bjorg Lambrecht. On paper, their team isn’t that strong, but we can except them to try to be in every breakaway. Also, is he is up for it, they have one of the favorites for the mountains jersey with de Gendt.

Mitchelton – Scott
Riders: Sam Bewley, Esteban Chaves, Tsgabu Grmay, Damien Howson, Luka Mezgec, Mikel Nieve, Nicholas Schultz, Dion Smith

Chaves is back! The ever-smiling Colombian rider lit up the race three years ago and ended up in third place. Since then, he has struggled with various serious injuries and ilnesses. However, he finally seems to be freed from all these troubles. Let’s hope he is truly back in form, in which case he will be one of the strongest climbers in the race. Aside from Chaves, they also bring in-form sprinter Mezgec, who will find many stages that suit him.

Movistar Team
Riders: Jorge Arcas, Richard Carapaz, Imanol Erviti, Nelson Oliveira, Antonio Pedrero, Nairo Quintana, Marc Soler, Alejandro Valverde

El Tridente, again. This time with Carapaz, Quintana and Valverde (and Soler as an added bonus). To our suprise, Movistar’s D.S. said that he hopes Valverde will not challenge for the GC and ride in support of Quintana and Carapaz. But let’s be honest, we all know that is not going to happen. Their team is insanely strong, but we expect them to fail once more due to their leaders having different interests and riding for themselves.

Team Dimension Data
Riders: Edvald Boasson Hagen, Nicholas Dlamini, Amanuel Gebreigzabhier, Benjamin King, Louis Meintjes, Ben O’Connor, Rasmus Fossum Tiller, Jaco Venter

On paper, this team does not actually look that bad. In reality however, almost all of their riders have been massively underperforming for the entire year. Meintjes and O’Connor seem to have completely lost their climbings legs, and we don’t think King will replicate his success from last year’s Vuelta when he took 2 stage wins. Their best change for a stage win is probably Boasson Hagen, but even he is not having the best year in his carreer

Team INEOS
Riders: Owain Doull, Kenny Elissonde, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Sebastian Henao, Vasil Kiryienka, Wout Poels, Salvatore Puccio, Ian Stannard

For Ineos’ standards, this is a pretty weak team. We always except them to destroy the other teams in the mountains with their climbing train, but looking at the team that is not going to happen this time. Poels and Hart share leadership duties, but we think they will both fall a bit short and not be a serious threat to the podium.

Team Jumbo – Visma
Riders: George Bennett, Robert Gesink, Lennard Hofstede, Steven Kruijswijk, Sepp Kuss, Tony Martin, Neilson Powless, Primoz Roglic

What a team! Jumbo – Visma brings out the firepower with Roglic as their leader, and Kruijswijk and Bennett riding in his support and acting as back-up GC riders. In addition they have strong climbers Kuss and Gesink, who finally returns from injury after his crash in Liege Bastoge Liege, and ‘Der Panzerwagen’ Martin. Looking at this team, we think this Vuelta is Roglic’s to lose. If he has recovered well for the Tour, we might even see Kruijswijk challenge for the podium as well.

Team Katusha Alpecin
Riders: Enrico Battaglin, Steff Cras, Matteo Fabbro, Ruben Guerreiro, Pavel Kochetkov, Vyacheslav Kuznetsov, Daniel Navarro, Willie Smit

Not good at all, to say the least. The goal of the team is to hunt for stages. Battaglin and Navarro probably have the highest chance of getting a good results, but even then their form simply does not seem good enough to get a win. With the future of the team still being uncertain, we will probably see their riders in the attack many times in the hopes of getting themselves a contract for next year.

Team Sunweb
Riders: Nikias Arndt, Wilco Kelderman, Casper Pedersen, Robert Power, Nicolas Roche, Michael Storer, Martijn Tusveld, Max Wahlscheid

The whole Dumoulin-saga has been overshadowing Sunweb’s season in the last few months. Now that that is finally, they can hopefully focus on getting good results again. Their main goal is the GC with Kelderman. There is no doubt that he is a very talented rider, but he is always hindered by something, whether it is crashes, ilness or just simply back luck. His season has also been marred with injury, so our expectations are low, but we would love to be suprised. In addition to Kelderman, they also bring in Wahlscheid who will have a shot a the sprint stages.

Trek – Segafredo
Riders: Gianluca Brambilla, John Degenkolb, Niklas Eg, Alex Kirsch, Jacopo Mosca, Kiel Reijnen, Peter Stetina, Edward Theuns

The most noticable name for Trek – Segafredo, and their biggest hope for succes, is 10-time stage winner Degenkolb. He will share sprinting duties with Theuns, who will probably target the flatter stages while Degenkolb will be the assigned man for the hillier and slighty uphill sprint stages.

UAE Team Emirates
Riders: Fabio Aru, Valerio Conti, Fernando Gaviria, Sergio Luis Henao, Marco Marcato, Sebastian Molano, Tadej Pogacar, Oliviero Troia

And last but not least, UAE brings a very interesting team to the Vuelta. Aru had surgery early in the season and rode the Tour de France purely to get back in shape for the Vuelta, but he ended up being suprisingly strong given the circumstances. UAE also brings the most exiting talent in the race: Pogacar. We are looking forward to seeing how he will hold up in his first Grand Tour and if he will actually try to ride for the GC. With Gaviria, they also have the biggest challenger for Bennett for th sprint stages.

TEAM STRENGTH RANKING:

Now that we have taken a quick look at all of the teams in the race, it’s time to rank them! Our ranking is based our estimates of the teams strength on paper, and how much impact we think they will have on the race. So without further ado, here is the ranking:

* * * * * Team Jumbo – Visma , Movistar Team , Astana Pro Team
* * * * EF Education First , BORA – Hansgrohe
* * * Mitchelton – Scott , Team Sunweb , UAE Team Emirates , Team INEOS, Deceuninck – Quick Step
* * Team Dimension Data, Trek – Segafredo, Lotto Soudal , Euskadi Basque – Murias , Bahrain – Merida , AG2R La Mondiale , Cofidis Solutions Credits , Groupama – FDJ , Caja Rural – Seguros RGA
* Katusha Alpecin , CCC Team , Burgos – BH

The end:
And that’s it, you now know what each team brings to the Vuelta and what you can expect from them!

We’d like to thank you for reading our teams preview and we hope it gave you some meaningful insights ahead of this exciting looking Vuelta! 

As a final note we’d like to mention that we will be releasing our jersey favorites preview later this week. We will also be doing daily stage previews troughout the entire #LaVuelta19!

If you would like to keep up with all our previews and betting advice, you can follow us on twitter: BehindThePeloton !

For now: Gracias por leer y hasta pronto!