Samu inspects País Vasco ITT

Samu spent yesterday reconning the Vuelta al País Vasco's last stage; an individual race against the clock in and around Orio. Samu has been on the podium three times in this race and will, with the absence of Contador, line up on Monday as perhaps the biggest favourite to finally land that GC crown. According to Samu himself he virtually knows every centimetre of each stage, and that compared to last year, when he finished third, he's not suffering from knee pains. Samu commented that the hilly ITT in Orio was, as always, very hard, and having ridden the exact same course just a few days ago myself, I find the word 'hard' a bit of an understatement. It's a beautiful course but that climb out from the start is painful to say the least.