Following on from his participation at Clasica San Sebastian at the weekend which was his first race back after injury during the Tour de France, Alberto Contador will line up at the five day Vuelta a Burgos in Spain this week.

Contador will use the race as preparation for the forthcoming Vuelta a España. He will be joined on the Tinkoff team by Jesús Hernandez, Sergio Paulinho, Ivan Rovny and Yuri Trofimov who also raced at San Sebastian whilst Michael Gogl comes to the race after a strong fourth place overall at the Tour of Denmark, and the team is completed by Adam Blythe and Jay McCarthy.

Despite wins in most of the major Spanish stage races in the calendar, the Vuelta a Burgos is a race that Contador has never etched on his palmares. However, with the race forming part of his build-up towards the Vuelta a España following his Tour de France disappointment, it may be more of a case of finding form than racing for the victory.

“For Alberto, he comes here from injury so we have to see how he is,” said Directeur Sportif Ivan Basso. “We will focus on bringing him through the race in a good way, and we will see how he recovers from San Sebastian and go from there.”

“For the other riders, it’s a good race to take their opportunities for results. We will see day-by-day who can do what. In this race I think you can get your own results, which is important for the riders. I want to see the Tinkoff spirit, which is in our DNA, to see the team fighting, motivated, committed and working hard in the race.”

“It’s nice for me as it’s my second experience as first Sport Director, and I’m happy to share this with Jan Valach – we’ll repeat the same experience of Croatia where we had a great race,” Basso continued.

“This is a much different race, first of all because our GC captain is there, Alberto, and it’s an important race as we have 12 other WorldTour teams there, and it’s a very difficult race. We will try each day to see what we can do.”

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