Two weeks after breaking his back in the 2025 Giro d'Italia, Basque allrounder Mikel Landa says he is hopeful of starting the final Grand Tour of the season, the Vuelta a España.
The Soudal-QuickStep veteran crashed out of the Giro on stage 1, fracturing a vertebrae and shattering his hopes of battling for a repeat to his podium finishes of 2022 and 2015.
While the Tour de France, his other big goal for 2025, is highly doubtful given the extent of his injuries, the 35-year-old was considerably more optimistic about his chances both of getting back on the road by June and making the Vuelta startline in Turin on August 23.
"I'm sure I'll get to the Vuelta, given the circumstances, the fracture was a good one, it's stable, all's going well," Landa told Eurosport.
"The pain is lessening every day."
Landa said the physiological corset he was wearing allowed him to walk and move around, and that mentally he was steadily improving. He was due for an X-ray on his back next week to check on his progress and roughly a month after his crash, all being well, he was expecting no longer to need the corset and be able to start on the rollers.
"Emotionally I felt a bit low, because I had high hopes for this Giro, I was in really good shape," Landa said on Eurosport. "I had sacrificed the first part of the season for this race, but my dreams of a return to the podium and win a stage went up in smoke."
"It's a very long recovery process and it's tough being out of action. When I watch the Giro on TV, I feel envious."
Landa said he had had calls and messages from his team leader Remco Evenepoel, for whom the all-but-certain absence of Landa in the Tour de France represents a major loss to his mountains support.
"It's difficult we'll meet up at the Tour," Landa said, "it's a pity, the whole year is going past without us being together on a race."
Landa has found himself forced to watch the current Giro. The ongoing GC scenario faced by UAE teammates Juan Ayuso and race leader Isaac del Toro has sparked memories, Landa said, of how he and Fabio Aru, Astana teammates and GC contenders in the 2015 Giro, were engaged in a power struggle. Aru finally finished second overall that year behind Alberto Contador, with Landa in third.
"I see Del Toro racing and sometimes I remember how I had better legs than Aru but I had to respect him as a leader," Landa said, "even though that stopped me racing for myself. It's a little bit the same thing now."
Landa even went so far as to suggest that Del Toro's best strategy for the third week would be to wait for a rival contender to attack and then follow him up the road. "But it wouldn't be nice of Ayuso to attack his own leader while he's in the pink jersey, though," he concluded.
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