The main Grand Tour players may be the same at the Vuelta a España as they were at the Tour de France – UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike – but both their tactical approaches to the two races couldn't be further apart, with the roles almost completely reversed in Spain compared to what they were in France.
Visma tried everything they possibly could to dethrone the infallible Tadej Pogačar at the Tour, so much so that they brought a 'Classics' squad in their own words to try and explode things in the punchy first week, knowing full well that a battle solely in the mountains would prove difficult to emerge from as the winner.
