The Irish UCI Pro Continental team Aqua Blue Sport are weeks away from making their Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a Espana and are fine-tuning their form in their final races in the run-up to the Spanish tour. Their Vuelta participation will mark the first ever start for an Irish team in a Grand Tour.
Aqua Blue Sport will begin August in Spain with the 2.HC Vuelta a Burgos and the five-stage event will be on a hilly and challenging parcours, where the team will be aiming for stage victories.
When Burgos ends the team will focus on its preparations for La Vuelta with training camps for just over a week. The next race for the team will be the four-day 2.HC Arctic Tour of Norway starting August 10th.
It has been a successful July for Aqua Blue Sport with an overall victory for Stefan Denifl in the Tour of Austria. At the Tour de Wallonie, Adam Blythe narrowly missed a sprint stage victory with a second place and Michel Kreder finished the week in fifth overall.
Denifl’s win in Austria added to the team’s previous successes this season. In June, Larry Warbasse won Stage 4 of the Tour de Suisse and followed up with victory in the United States National Championships.
The Vuelta a España starts in the French city of Nimes with a team time-trial on August 19th. The 21-stage race will cross back into Spain and cover 3,297.7 kilometres before the finish in Madrid on September 10th.
The race consists of five flat stages and, eight hilly stages and five mountainous stages. It will cross 50 summits but there will also be a chance for the team’s time trial experts with a 13.8 kilometre individual race against the clock.
Stephen Moore, Aqua Blue Sport General Manager said a sense of excited anticipation is gathering.
He said: “It is incredible to think that later this month we will begin the latest stage of our journey at La Vuelta. We are ready and all that must be done now is select our strongest team. We are at the most advanced stage of preparation but before that our focus will be on the other events at Burgos and in the Arctic. We will treat those races with as much importance as La Vuelta and hopefully clock up some more victories. August is looking like our most exciting month yet.”
