After starting in Oviedo, the home city of 2008 Olympic champion Samuel Sánchez and Spanish climbing legend José Manuel Fuente, the course bumps along the rugged and beautiful Asturian coast before turning south towards one of the most famous climbs in Spanish cycling. First tackled in 1983, Covadonga last featured in 2012 when Caja Rural's Antonio Piedra completely justified his small team's wild card invite by winning the stage. None of this edition's star names has ever won there, so it will be interesting to see how they tackle it bearing in mind a much tougher mountain stage lies just ahead.
The gaps between the big guns weren't very significant back in 2012. We'd expect that to be the case again today.
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Super agents - How the rich and powerful are growing ever more influential
A lot of contracts and futures are controlled in the hands of a small number of people in this new era of professional cycling -
'The Loch Ness Monster of cycling' – New details of the One Cycling project revealed by Belgian press
Het Laatste Nieuws reveals men's teams expected to receive €1 million a season, women's teams €500,000, with four new races -
Tom Pidcock named Laureus Action Sportsperson of the Year for Olympic MTB success, Tadej Pogačar loses out to pole vaulter Duplantis
World champion was nominated for Sportsman of the Year award following his historic Triple Crown winning season -
Tour of the Alps: Michael Storer goes solo to win stage 2 and take race lead
Australian strikes again for Tudor as Seixas and Bardet finish 41 seconds back
