It's part of the anatomy of the cycling calendar that every grand tour is preceded by a short warm-up stage race in a mountainous part of the country that hosts the three-week race. The Giro contenders use the extremely mountainous Giro del Trentino to prepare for the biggest Italian race while the Tour favourites head to the Alps and the Dauphiné to finish off their build-up for the world's biggest bike race. The Vuelta counterpart to those two races is the Vuelta a Burgos which starts today and offers the riders for the Spanish grand tour a perfect opportunity to test themselves out in high mountains, on short, explosive finishing climbs and in fierce crosswinds - three challenges that often play a crucial role in determining the overall winner of the three-week Spanish race. Starting at 15.30 you can follow the queen stage of the Spanish race on CyclingQuotes.com/live.

Among the Vuelta contenders, it is mainly the riders who also raced the Tour de France that have decided to skip the possibility to build up their form in Burgos during the coming week. Among the riders that weren't present in the French grand tour, most will be present on the start line later today. Vincenzo Nibali and Ivan Basso continue the preparation that was kicked off in Poland last week while Samuel Sanchez kicks off his autumn season on his Spanish home soil. Instead, the big favourite is Nairo Quintana who won't race the Vuelta and so can allow himself to go all out for the win on a course that suits him perfectly.

The race comes to its usual dramatic conclusion with its queen stage to the of of the HC climb Lagunas De Neila. This year the riders will travel 170km from Comunero de Revenga to the feared summit and those kilometres won't be easy at all. The race starts out with a big mostly flat circuit that only contains the category 2 Alto del Cargadero at the 52km mark. That circuit will be tackled twice but on the second lap, there will be a slight modification at the beginning which means that the riders will get the chance to climb the category 3 Collado de Vilviestre before another passage of the Alto del Cargadero.

From there, the riders head onto the final, crucial circuit that sends the riders up the category 2 Alto del Collado after which a short descent leads to the bottom of the finishing climb. The first time, the riders won't go all the way up to Lagunas De Neila and so the climb will only be of the first category. Instead, they will head down a descent to once again tackle the Alto del Collado before reaching the bottom of the final climb once again.

This time, they will go all the way to the top of the 14,8km climb which has an average gradient of, 5,28%. The first 10km are rather easy with a gradient that hovers between 2% and 6% but the final 4,8km are extremely difficult. The 11th km has a gradient of 11,3% and the 12th is a little bit steeper at 11,6%. From there it gets a bit easier with a 8,8% gradient for the next kilometre but the 15th kilometre is the most difficult of them all at 11,9%.The road levels out for the final 800m which have a gradient of 4,0% but at that point the race will have exploded to pieces.

Last year the stage was dominated by Colombians as Johan Esteban Chaves and Sergio Henao left everybody behind them and Chaves emerged as the fastest in the sprint. Daniel Moreno who had been the dominant figure of the early part of the race, managed to limit his losses sufficiently to take the overall win ahead of Henao and Chaves. In 2011 it was young Mikel Landa - one of the big favourites for today - who took a breakthrough win while Iban Mayo, Mauricio Soler, Juan Jose Cobo, Ezequiel Mosquera and Samuel Sanchez won the stage on one of Span's most iconic climbs in the years from 2006 to 2010.

Today Nairo Quintana is expected to crush the opposition but the race could get a bit more exciting than initially expected. The tiny Colombian has appeared to be a little fatigued during the first stages and could be challenged by young Landa who has shown promising signs recently. The same goes for David Arroyo and Dario Cataldo while Samuel Sanchez appears to be surprisingly strong right now. Of course it will also be interesting to see what Ivan Basso and Vincenzo Nibali can do in their final big test ahead of the Vuelta.

Starting at 15.30 you can follow the drama here and you can read our race preview here.