I came to La Vuelta ready to compete. I did good training in Colombia and then I raced Tour de l'Ain to speed up the legs before the last grand tour of the season.
Of course I am here to try and do well, and why not, finish in a place that's high in the GC. I'm here with a great selection of teammates that can support me everywhere, this means on flats and in the mountains. It's important to be united and to do the maximum we can while staying consistent across three weeks of racing. There's probably no key moment, because in a stage race every day can be the difference. As we've seen in the past you can win or lose La Vuelta in medium mountain stages, or any stage that looks simple on paper. Of course to me the TTs are also important. I trained a lot on my Specialized Shiv at home to get all the advantages over my competitors I possible could in that discipline. I hope the job I did works out.
Of course the competition is really hard. We have a lot of uphill finishes, first of all. There are also a lot of good competitors. It's been a long time since we've seen all these GC guys together in one race. At least five or six guys have the possibility to win the overall.
To me, the favorite is probably Nairo Quintana for what he's already shown. But of course Chris Froome and Alberto Contador are always there. There is also Purito (Joaquim Rodriguez). He can count on his ability to speed up on the climbs and win stages, and also go for bonifications. It's really a great, open competition and it'd be nice to ride with this team and try and get good results with such a high level of racing every day.
Concerning today's TTT, we're ready. We performed recon of the course this morning. It's a technical course with a lot of roundabouts, but it's the same situation for everybody. We'll do the best we can today with the guys we have here, to get a strong kick-off for the 2014 edition of La Vuelta.
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