There will be no Tadej Pogacar in this year’s Vuelta a España, which, following the Slovenian’s back-to-back domination of both the , will afford his rivals a sigh of relief.

As the Vuelta gets under way in Lisbon on Saturday with an individual time trial, the UAE Team Emirates rider will be elsewhere, planning towards his next target, the World Road Race Championships in Zurich.

Without Pogacar, Tour runner-up Jonas Vingegaard or Remco Evenepoel, , the final Grand Tour of the season offers the rest of the peloton a chance to bite back.

Defending champion, Sepp Kuss, teammate to Vingegaard at Visma-Lease a Bike, starts as favourite following his recent triumph in the Vuelta a Burgos, in which he won the toughest mountain stage.

Like many other former Grand Tour winners this year, including both Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic, Kuss starts his defence recovering from ill-health, after a lingering bout of Covid-19 in June ruled him out of the Tour de France.

“The other times I was sick with Covid it was really no issue,” Kuss said. “Just a few days feeling bad and then I could carry on with my life. But this time it took so long to recover and was also in my lungs. I was incredibly fatigued for many weeks and at that point, I couldn’t even have imagined starting the Tour.”

In 2023, the easy-going climber from Durango in Colorado, found himself unexpectedly in a position to win the three-week Spanish race, but faced rivalry within his own team, from co-leaders Vingegaard and Roglic, now racing with the Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe team.

Kuss, one of the most affable riders in cycling and a long-standing climbing lieutenant to both men, at first showed due deference, but then asserted himself in the closing stages and . His relationship with Vingegaard survived intact, but his bond with Roglic, who had wanted to take his teammate on, did not.

“Now we’re competitors but any race he’s in, he’s one of the main favourites,” Kuss said of Roglic. “It is always strange when you’re used to someone being in the team for so long and then you’re racing against them.”

After Saturday’s opening individual time trial, the Vuelta embarks on a route that is mainly mountainous, something that on paper at least should suit Kuss’s strengths. No less than eight mountain stages, and a series of uphill finishes, are bookended by two time trials, the longest coming on the final stage into Madrid.

“Every kilometre less [of time trialling] helps, but I think in the Vuelta it’s a race that is always decided in the mountains, especially this year with so many summit finishes,” Kuss said. “But with a time trial on the very last stage, it still can be close.”

Roglic meanwhile, a three-time Vuelta winner, is still recovering from the crash on stage 12 that . The Slovenian had been a podium contender at the time, but has not raced since leaving the French event on 11 July.

“Every week I’m feeling a bit better,” he said, “but these things don’t get better overnight. It takes time. I’m definitely good enough to ride, that’s why I’m here.”

Roglic admitted that his lack of racing could be an issue. “I will have to see how I am going and just how that pain will be, with changes of rhythm in the race itself. But I’m optimistic and every day that goes by, it’ll get better.”

There are many others who also plan to have a say in the final outcome. Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz, King of the Mountains in the Tour de France and winner of the Alpine stage to Superdévoluy, is a past Giro d’Italia winner, as is Londoner who has been dogged by bad luck since moving to Lidl-Trek, from Ineos Grenadiers, at the end of last year.

Another former Ineos rider, Adam Yates, will be seeking to optimise UAE Team Emirates leader Pogacar’s absence. Now 32, Yates, a dutiful sixth in July’s Tour de France, has yet to win a Grand Tour, although his CV is littered with stage race wins.

At Ineos Grenadiers, Josh Tarling, thwarted by a puncture in the Olympic time trial in Paris, will seek to ease that disappointment with strong showings against the clock in what is his Grand Tour debut. After a lacklustre Tour, in which the solid Carlos Rodríguez finished seventh, the British team will want to make headlines again.