la Vuelta el fin

La Vuelta is over. I loved every minute of it, and then some. I was blown away, by how hard this Grand was. The Spanish have a flair for their country and their cycling. Cycling is, if you did not know... Kinda a big deal in Spain, check out the nationalities in the peloton. They do pretty good, current Olympic RR Gold is Spanish. The "smaller" Spanish teams at la Vuelta rode their hearts out, the passion that they have for their country came through in every pedal stroke.
I'm going to be a little stereotypical here, so you might want to skip over this...
Is it me or can the Spanish climb? I'm not talking about "just" climbing, I'm talking about destroying, punishing vertical climbs. And Fast, they climb like they are on fire. Rodriquez, Mosquera, Anton, Nieve, and that guy Contador(who did not race la Vuelta, but did just win* le Tour). I know they are all like 5'3" 110lbs, but they can fly.

Photo credit © Álvaro Astiz Conde
Even with all that firepower the lithe Frenchman, David Moncoutie who was on a mission for his 3rd, took the KOM from the locals.

Tyler stole the last stage from Cav in Madrid, this time a head-to-head sprint, but it was not enough to bridge the 7point gap that Cav had to take the Verde points jersey. Photo credit © Sirotti

During all of this weekend had to offer, I totally missed out on US National Champs. I missed it, just like that. Check out VeloNews. Talk about young guns coming into their own. Phinney took the TT and Ben King took the RR, both are prodigies for Trek Livestrong. Looks like we have some heavies about to hit the ProTour. Yeah!!! Worlds and then "the race of the falling leaves".