After greeting the various authorities present at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, like Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France, José Manuel Franco, president of the CSD, and Ada Colau, mayoress of Barcelona, Javier Guillén, director of La Vuelta, showed his “liberation” once the route was revealed: ” At last. I have a great feeling, we believe that it is a great route, a Vuelta that looks to the sky. We cannot deny that it is a tough Tour… and an attractive one”, he told AS. In 2009 it was the first Vuelta in command of him and now he designed together with his assistants, especially Kiko Martín, one of the most demanding at a mountainous level of the recent era.
Regarding participation, this time there is a great detail that can change many calendars: the World Cup, which is always held on the last Sunday of September and after La Vuelta, in 2023 it will be held before, and after the Tour, in the macro World Cup event of different cycling disciplines that will be held in Glasgow in the first half of August. “We have had to adapt to the circumstances and now we have to see which riders are interested in coming. We want the best to always be present and hopefully this will be the case on August 26 at the starting line in Barcelona”. stands out.
Now, and once the route has been seen, the teams remain to be known. There are 20 sure: the 18 in the World Tour category and the two best Pro-Teams of 2022: Total Energies and Lotto-Dtsny. In this way, and unlike other great tours in recent times in which some team of said category gave up participating, La Vuelta only has two invitations left. In 2022 there were three exceptionally, and they already highlighted that this was not going to happen again. There are two places and four Spanish Pro-Teams teams: Euskaltel-Euskadi, Kern Pharma, Burgos BH (these three were in 2022) and Caja Rural (absent last year after a decade). It is far from certain that it is a rotating system… nor is it ruled out that an invitation could be for a foreign team, Like Chris Froome’s Israel. “We have to study it and sooner rather than later the invited teams will be known. It’s more expensive than ever.” Guillen said.