When the director of the Vuelta a España, Victor Cordero, unveiled the route of next year’s race at a ceremony in Madrid on Wednesday, he said in a fiery speech: “We must stop the unending suspicions and conflicts. We share the same ideas as our colleagues at the Giro and Tour de France. Next year, there will not be more than 20 teams at the start. And they will have to respond to our impeccable ethical criteria. Only riders holding biological passports will be invited. And we will count on the sporting quality of the prospective teams.”

Cordero, claiming the 2008 Vuelta will be less hard and more vibrant, added, “After all the blows we have taken, this will be the Vuelta of expectation, representing a new cycling. It will be clean and spectacular, a sort of Promised Land.”

His introductory speech was very similar to that made by the Giro d’Italia race director, Angelo Zomegnan, who said at a televised preview “show” in Milan last Saturday that next year’s Italian grand tour will have a gentler course, “to put it within the grasp of clean riders.” He, too, put his trust in the biological passport — which was first lauded in late October by Tour de France bosses Patrice Clerc and Christian Prudhomme, who were present at both the Milan and Madrid presentations.

But are the 2008 Vuelta and Giro courses really any easier? And now that these two races are not part of the UCI ProTour — and so none of the 18 ProTour teams are obliged to compete in them — will they truly attract the “highest quality” teams?

Giro: multiple transfers, rugged finale
While the Tour de France route unveiled six weeks ago showed more respect to the riders with only one long transfer (on the final morning), the Giro course is littered with nine very substantial transfers. Not even one stage starts in the same town as the previous stage finishes. And for the first two weeks in particular, the riders will be spending almost as many kilometers riding team buses as sitting on their bikes.

What’s more, the last eight stages of the race can only be described as brutal. It will be spectacular for sure, but hardly a prescription for dope-free cycling. Just look at this set of challenges:

Stage 14: Five ascents in 195km, including the Passo Manghen that climbs through 5438 vertical feet in 23.5km, immediately followed by the finishing climb to Alpe di Pampeago that averages almost 10 percent grade for 7.7km.

Stage 15: Six climbs in 153km, including the 10km, 9.5-percent Passo di Giau and the terrifying finishing climb to the Passo Fedaia (a.k.a. the Marmolada), which has an 18-percent wall near the top of its 13.4km ascent.

Stage 16: A 13.8km uphill time trial to the 7547-foot Plan de Corones — including the last 5.3km on a dirt road that has pitches of 20 and 24 percent!

Stage 17: Said to be a flat 192km, this stage includes the Splugen and San Bernadino passes, both of which top 6300 feet in elevation.

Stage 18: Another so-called flat stage, but the 182km leg ends with four and a bit laps of the hilly 2008 world road championship circuit at Varese.

Stage 19: Four climbs in the last 60km of a 228km stage that includes the terribly difficult Passo del Vivione, which is 19.8km long averaging 7 percent, followed by the twin finish climbs of Presolana (4.8km at 8.3 percent) and Monte Pora (6.4km at 7 percent).

Stage 20: The toughest day of all, with three climbs in the second half of a 224km stage, featuring the Passo di Gavia (18.9km at 7.2 percent), the Passo del Mortirolo (12.8km at 10.3 percent) and the Passo dell’Aprica (15.4km at 3.2 percent).

Stage 21: Following a week of climbs comes a complete change of pace with a flat 23.8km time trial into the heart of Milan.

This succession of challenging days will make for great television, but can the organizer say seriously that this finale is designed for “clean” racing, with just one “rest day” in the middle giving the riders any chance of recovery?

Vuelta: Hard weekends, soft finale
The organizers of the '08 Vuelta might have a tough job putting together a competitive field because the ProTour teams, even if they send a team, will likely dispatch their “B” or “C” squads to Spain. The sprinters will have fun, because the opening and closing weeks are almost entirely made up of flat stages — or ones where the climbs are bunched at the beginning, not the end of the day. It’s hard to understand why the finale — other than a penultimate stage 16km time trial that finishes uphill to the Cat. 1 Puerto de Navacerrada — is so tame.

Roberto Heras en route to victory on the Angrilu in 2002

Photo: Graham Watson (file)

The race is likely to be decided on the previous weekend when the race tackles the five-climb stage 13 that finishes atop the spectacular Alto de l’Angliru (back after a five-year absence), which has gradients of 20-plus percent in its final kilometers. Stage 14 features six more climbs, with a finish on the summit of a new ski station at Fuentes de Invierno.

The only other decisive stages come on the Vuelta’s second weekend, in the Pyrénées. Stage 7 is the longest of the race at 224km, with three climbs before the mountaintop finish at La Rabassa in Andorra. Next day comes another summit finish, at Pla de Beret, while stage 9 has four climbs, including the Cat. 1 Puerto del Sarrabio, not far from the finish in Sabiñanigo.

It looks like a Vuelta that will neither attract the major stars (other than those training for the world championships) nor have a suspenseful ending. And it seems that the only grand tour in 2008 with a well-balanced course and a competitive field will be the Tour de France.