Vuelta a Espana: Simon and Adam Yates face new Team Sky leader David de la Cruz amid competitive field

Team Sky would achieve something never done before next month, should they complete the set of three grand tours with three different riders in the same year. After Chris Froome’s triumph in Rome and Geraint Thomas’s glory in Paris, the Spaniard David de la Cruz will lead Sky’s charge to be crowned the champion in Madrid on 16 September.

Froome and Thomas have opted to rest from the Vuelta a Espana, which begins on Saturday, and will take on the far less demanding Tour of Britain. That move has left something of a power vacuum at Team Sky with the prodigiously talented Egan Bernal also resting following the Tour de France – he crashed heavily in this month’s Clasica de San Sebastian, causing a minor bleed on the brain and requiring facial and dental surgery which ruled him out for several weeks.

De la Cruz, 29, joined Team Sky in January and immediately set his sights on the Vuelta, as both his home race and the scene of his most impressive grand tour so far, the 2016 edition which he briefly led after winning stage nine in a breakaway, eventually finishing seventh overall. “I do not know exactly where I will finish,” the Catalonian said this week. “But I have trained and sacrificed to do well in the general classification. I have many ambitions and we will see how far we can go.”

There was a hint of a potential leadership challenge, however, from his team-mate Michal Kwiatkowski when the recent Tour of Poland champion tweeted that he hoped the team would be “focused & flexible from day 1” – a possible reference to Sky’s power shift from Froome to Thomas during the Tour de France once the Welshman’s superior strength became obvious.

Team Sky, who officially announced their line-up on Wednesday morning, will face competition from a varied range of threats – the grit of BMC’s Richie Porte, the climbing strength of Movistar’s tiny Nairo Quintana, as well as Astana’s rising talent who finished third at the Giro, Miguel Angel Lopez – but heading the list of favourites is the Briton who pushed Froome closest in Italy, Simon Yates.

Yates sat out the Tour de France in order to be fresh for the Vuelta, and will have the rare chance to ride with his twin brother Adam in a strong line-up for the Australian team Mitchelton-Scott. It would be a first grand tour victory for the 26-year-old from Bury and would complete another set: the first time one country has won all three grand tours in the same year with three different riders.

He performed outstandingly for much of the Giro, wearing the maglia rosa until stage 19 when Froome put in an explosive attack over the Col delle Finestre which left Yates broken.

“The objective is to put together a solid three weeks and finish strong because that’s an area he can improve on,” said sporting director Matt White this week. “He’d never had a lead in a Grand Tour before. He was in the best form of his life; perhaps we got a bit carried away but he learned what his limits are. You can learn from that experience of pushing too hard.”