Vuelta to remember Xavi Tondo at Sierra Nevada

Today, as the Vuelta a España prepares for its first summit finish at Sierra Nevada, it will be three months exactly since Xavi Tondo died in tragic circumstances during an altitude training camp at the same resort. Tondo, sixth in last year’s Vuelta, would almost certainly have been one of the riders to watch on today’s stage, and it is fitting that the Vuelta’s red leader’s jersey will be on the shoulders of his Movistar teammate Pablo Lastras as Spain’s national tour heads up the mountain that towers above Granada.

Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014). 

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