A talent filled field come to compete in a wide-open and brutal Vuelta a España

If the Giro is to cycling fans the gateway into summer, then the Vuelta is surely the backdoor out again. Beginning in the height of a mid-late August summer and ending three weeks later in the fading light of a slowly cooling early-mid September. To me it typically signals about four weeks left of my fair-weather-cycling season (which, if truth be told, barely got started in the first place this year) as well as a sign that my October Thanksgiving turkey isn't far away.

Thankfully though, there's three weeks of action before any of that and it's setting up to be a heck of a race even if today the organisors confirmed that the times taken on the race opening team-time-trial would no longer count towards the general classification after riders complained about the dangers of the stage finishing on the beach, literally.

When I seen a picture taken yesterday by Nicolas Roche of his bike tire sinking into the sand, I couldn't help but feel this was surely the most appropriate way to mark the start of a Grand Tour race in Spain, and that perhaps they could have went one step further and had the clock stop only upon the fifth rider on his team lying down on a sunbed. Instead they've gone a step back and disregarded the point of the stage at all except now for show.

Still, let that not take anything away from what's in store for we've a host of big hitters showing up expecting to win it and none more so than Tour champion Chris Froome who will be looking to do what Alberto Contador failed to do at Giro-Tour by completing a single season Grand Tour double win and becoming the first man since Bernard Hinault in 1978 to do the Tour-Vuelta double (or Vuelta-Tour double as it was in Hinault's day).

There's also Froome's Tour nemesis, Nairo Quintana and his sidekick Alejandro Valverde, out to get that dastardly Froome this time, while Astana will roll up with a team loaded with team leaders in the shapes of Vincenzo Nibali (out to make amends for a poor start to his Tour defence and to show his final week form is still there), Fabio Aru (out to go one better than his 2nd at the Giro), and Mikel Landa (out to ignore any team orders to support the other two since he's, likely, joining Sky next season anyway).

So that puts the top four from this years Tour all at the start line in Porto-Banus and they will be joined by TeJay Van Garderen who took ill and abandoned the Tour from 2nd place in the final week, which will see four-fifths of that five-piece boy band that he formed out of the 'fab-four' after the first week of the Tour, going on a re-union Tour of Spain. Does that simply make it a fab-four again with Contador replaced? Or does someone like Fabio Aru jump in, in the roll of Ronnie Wood in the Rolling Stones, as a new member?

Aru certainly deserves to be mentioned in the same category as the Tour's top-four finishers, plus Tejay. They should all be a little tired whereas he has targeted the Vuelta all season. Likewise Landa (3rd at the Giro) and even Domenico Pozzovivo (6th in 2013 Vuelta) will look to take advantage of tired legs.

And it's tired legs that will surely play a pivotal roll. The climbing comes early and often -- on just the second stage, which is now the first official stage, the race finishes on the summit of a cat. 3 climb -- and that won't play into the hands of the Tour survivors. Stages 4 and 6 both have short-sharp hill-top finishes to test the field and create time gaps, before the first mountain stage a day later with a cat. 1, 20km at 5% average gradient, summit finish. Then, sandwiched between two flat stages, on stage 9 is another summit finish on a 3.5km, 11% grade leg snapper to complete a hellish first week into the first rest-day. And you thought the first 10 days of the Tour was demanding? How each of the Tour contenders have recovered and who has done it best will be fascinating to see as those who haven't will surely be exposed by now.

The second phase only gets harder with six stages of which four are in the mountains and only one is considered flat. And of those four mountain stages, all four have summit finishes with the first on stage 11 looking a real nightmare with five climbs crammed into just 138km.

There's a fair chance the Vuelta will be won by here and for 98% of entrants it will surely have been lost, but after a second rest day there are five more stages of which we have a bit of everything including rolling roads, medium mountains, a final flat stage, a penultimate day in the mountains (though without a summit finish this time) and, on the day after the rest day, and 38.7km time-trial. You would imagine that this will be to the advantage of Froome from which he will surely believe he can take time out of (or back on) his rivals, but given what has come before, how the legs react by this third week is anyone's guess.

The Vuelta doesn't have the prestige of the Tour but in recent years it has become the race that those with disappointing seasons, by their own high expectations, turn to for salvation as well as a race for those looking to poach some late season glory. Beyond that though it's one brutal race in its own right and for fans everywhere, suffering from a post-Tour hangover and safely located in their armchairs, this is sure to be a brilliant cure.