Saturday sees the start of the last of the Grand Tours for 2008, the Vuelta a Espana. With last years winner, Denis Menchov staying away due to exhaustion and Cadel Evans out with an injury all the attention is on 2008 Giro winner and 2007 Tour champion Alberto Contador of Team Astana.Back in May, Contador got 8 days notice of an invite to ride the Grio and responded by winning the race. Speculation suggests that Contador is fired up for the race and it has been a major goal for the team for most of the year following there non-invite to the Tour de France. At the Olympics Contador worked to get his team mates in a good position and then retired and was changed when Sanchez came accross the line for the Gold medal. Many put this down to him conserving his energy.

The course favours a climber too with a return to the fearsome Angliru climb in the Pyrenees, an uphill time trial and 5 mountain top finishes. In fact the course is more interesting than this years Tour de France and should present some top notch racing.

- Cadel Evans is sitting out the event due to an injury but news broke in the last few days that he won’t be riding a Ridley bike in 2009. The team have split with Silence-Lotto and will now sponsor new russian Team Katousja. Incidentally Evans has just signed a new contract with Silence-Lotto to last 2 years, ending specualtion of a move to the new Russian team.

- Scott have also split with former team Saunier Duval-Scott and will be sponsoring Team Columbia for 2009.

- Giant, who have sponsored Columbia and its predeccesor T-Mobile since 2004 will now sponsor Rabobank.

- Not to be left out Cervelo have split from CSC-Saxo bank, setting up their own test-team for 2009.

- CSC-Saxo bank will ride Specialized bikes next season.