Preview: Vuelta al Pais Vasco 2015

With the Vuelta al Pais Vasco coming up it's the start of one of my favourite parts of the season; there's something about the Paris-Roubaix, Pais Vasco and Ardennes classics month which feels like the season is heating up towards the Grand Tours. This preview will look at what I believe to be the best stage in the Pais Vasco.

Stage 5 - Eibar - Aia 156km
It's not a very long stage nor does it have any huge mountains to navigate. What it does have though is three climbs up to Aia which are all punishingly steep and narrow. The final climb is a gradual climb from the east of Aia which makes its way over a beautiful shoulder of mountain on a well surfaced two lane road. But this is short lived, within the last 5km there's a hairpin bend and the well surfaced duel lane road turns into a farm track style single lane road that ignores all thoughts of road geography and just heads straight up. It's normally not possible to see gradient on a still photo but the fact that the two street view photos below look so so steep is testament of the climbs difficulty.

Using my crystal ball I would say that the winning rider will be a Grand Tour contender who can deal with these Monte Zoncolan style climbs - from the start list this would be Nairo Quintana. Now, this is a fools errand, but the following are my predications for top 10 on the stage and the time gaps.....

1. Nairo Quintana
2. Thibault Pinot +0.03
3. Tejay Van Garderen +0.05
4. Rinaldo Nocentini +0.05
5. Joaquin Rodriguez +0.10
6. Adam Yates +0.18
7. Robert Kiserlovski +0.25
8. Jean Christophe Peraud +0.41
9. Rui Costa +0.41
10. Igor Anton +0.41