Lasterketa Burua

With the good feelings of the recent Volta a Catalunya, Alejandro Valverde faces the great Basque week of professional cycling from this Saturday. The route that starts in Estella (Navarra) with the GP Miguel Indurain and continues from next Monday with an impressive edition of the Itzulia Basque Country.

The journey begins in the race that pays tribute to the five-time winner of the Tour de France. Valverde will reunite with this edition’s fifteen participations. He won in 2014 and 2018, both times reaching the finish line alone. The GP Miguel Indurain reaches this year the ProSeries category, which enables a list of higher-level riders, on a demanding route with steps through Erául, Guirguillano or Lezaun in the decisive part of its route.

The demand increases as of Monday with the Itzulia, a race that, like the Navarrese event, returns to the calendar this year after being canceled last year due to the pandemic. Alejandro thus returns to a competition in which he has not taken part since 2017, the year of his triumph in the general classification. In addition, he accumulates six stage victories, spread over a time interval that spans between 2003, his second professional year, and 2017.

A tough individual time trial in Bilbao opens six days with a lot of mountain and two key stages: the unprecedented final of Ermualde and the outcome of the final stage in Eibar.

Photo: Movistar Team / Photo Gómez Sport