Two years after their last participation, Euskadi and Kern will return to the Vuelta. The organizing company, Unipublic, which only had the possibility of inviting two second division teams (Pro Tour), has left Burgos BH, a fixture in the event for the last six years, and Caja Rural, a participant, out of the race. in nine of the last 10 editions. There will be 22 teams of eight riders that will start on August 17 in Lisbon: the 18 from the WorldTour (in alphabetical order, Alpecin, Arkea, Astana, Bahrain, Bora, Cofidis, Decathlon, Dsm, EF, Groupama, Ineos, Intermarché, Jayco, Lidl, Movistar, Soudal, UAE and Visma), the two best in the UCI Pro Tour in 2023, Israel and Lotto, and the two Spanish.
The choice of Kern, which will participate in its second Vuelta after its debut in 2022, and Euskadi (third Vuelta after its refoundation in 2021) rewards the youth policy of both projects, reinforced in their latest decisions. Three of the best young Spanish cyclists have made the jump to the WorldTour this year from the Navarrese team led by Juanjo Oroz: Igor Arrieta, to the UAE; Roger Adrià, to Bora, and Raúl García Pierna, to Arkea. Euskaltel, which has transferred the Galician Carlos Canal to Movistar, has embarked on a new stage under the management of Aitor Galdós, architect of the consolidation of Laboral Kutxa among the best teams in world women’s cycling.
Participation in the Vuelta is for the second-class Spanish teams almost a matter of life or death, the origin of a virulent rivalry between the four Spanish teams in the category, so dramatic that in the 2023 Vuelta it generated a conflict that is still ongoing. Halfway through the race, the leaders of all the teams, the UCI, the Vuelta itself and the World Anti-Doping Agency, received a dossier with information from the summary of Operation Ilex against doping (the one investigating Dr. Marcos Maynar and Vicente Belda in Cáceres, among others). others, and Superman López) that showed the relationships between Maynar, the Caja Rural manager, Juan Manuel Hernández, and some runners, such as the Venezuelan champion, Orluis Aular, whom Caja Rural withdrew from the race. The investigation by the Civil Guard concluded that the sender of the documentation was Jesús Ezkurdia, then manager of Euskadi and later dismissed for reasons unrelated to a shipment that the management of the Euskadi Foundation was completely unaware of.
“We do not have any problem with any Spanish team, we only have two invitations and quite a few candidates who are not only Spanish,” says Javier Guillén, responsible for the selection, who excludes that the controversy experienced in the last Vuelta with Caja Rural has influenced the decision. . “We know that we only make two happy and obviously not the rest. When Euskaltel and Kern were left out last year, the game was the same only as with Caja Rural and Burgos coming to the Vuelta.”