24 hours after Peter Sagan
won his maiden Grand Tour stage, Germany's Marcel Kittel announced his arrival
as one of the peloton's fastest new sprinters with an emphatic win in Spain.

Kittel, a 23-year-old German with
thighs so thunderous even pop singer Beyonce would be jealous, was in a league
of his own as he skittled through his rivals to take the biggest win of his
career in Talavera de la Reina.

Given that Friday's stage seven
presented the peloton with the first chance of a flat finish in this year's
Vuelta, that's quite a return for the Skil Shimano starlet: victory at the
first

The
Vuelta's second TTT was won by Liquigas on Thursday after the team of Italian
defending champion Vincenzo Nibali blew stage six apart in Cordoba.

Led over
the line by Slovakian sensation Peter Sagan, Liquigas clocked by far the best
time of all their rival teams in southern Spain - although oddly enough, they
seemed to have picked up Movistar veteran Pablo Lastras along the way.

Instead of
celebrating their barnstorming TTT win, however, Liquigas inexplicably turned
on themselves, with horse-faced defending champion Vincenzo Nibali
gesticulating and Sagan looking rather sheepish under

The
Gazprom-funded Russian-based team Katusha looked to be running on empty during the Tour
but now their engine is really hitting top gear.

Back-to-back
wins from Daniel Moreno and now Joaquim Rodriguez means Katusha are the
Vuelta's in-form team, with both Spanish riders currently sitting comfortably
in second and third in the GC, ready to pounce on the next Sylvain Chavanel
slip.

Named after a type of rocket artillery first built and fielded by the Soviet
Union in World War Two, Katusha always had big ambitions. Yet in recent races,
we've seen a Katusha team firing nothing but blanks - a

On a day
that Sylvain Chavanel moved into the leader's jersey, a rather wooden Mark
Cavendish drew a line under what has been a miserable Vuelta for the Manxman.

You can't
blame Cav for wanting to make an appearance in HTC-Highroad's last ever Grand
Tour; nor can you criticise him for his hunger to become only the fourth rider
in history to win stages in all three Grand Tours in the same year.

But let's
be honest here: Cavendish has really had a Spanish stinker - from day one in
Benidorm, when he was dropped by his team-mates during the TTT, right through
to the moment he decided to throw in

At some
point during his final descent into Totana, Pablo Lastras must have had some
serious thoughts about how he was going to celebrate his victory.

Nine years
after he first won two stages in his debut Tour, Lastras added a third - all at
the not-so-tender age of 35.

Using all
his experience and nous, the Movistar veteran took his fellow escapees by
surprise on the final climb of the day before soloing down the descent to take
the win.

With three
riders - including the dangerous all-rounder Sylvain Chavanel - in pursuit, you'd
have thought Lastras would have been far too busy simply

On Saturday it was all doom and gloom, but Sky put things right with wins in both Spain and Germany 24 hours later.

First, Norwegian cannonball Edvald Boasson Hagen blasted his way to victory in the Vattenfall Cyclassics in Hamburg; then, in temperatures as high as 42 degrees, the "Five-Million Man" Chris Sutton surprised the pack with a stylish win in stage two of the Vuelta - the first Grand Tour success of his second career after swapping football for cycling.

Let's face it: Sky were an utter shambles on Saturday as they limped home in 20th place in the TTT. But you're only as good as your

The
sun was out in Spain but the sky still caved in for Brit abroad Bradley Wiggins
on the beach in Benidorm.

Team
Sky, usually so disciplined as a unit, had a completely shambolic opening TTT -
and at one moment had just four of nine riders together on the road until
Xabier Zandio managed to rejoin Wiggins and his fellow pace-setters in time for
the finish.

Typically,
this being the Vuelta, TV pictures were pretty shoddy and no one had any idea
what actually happened on the 13.5-km course around the popular package holiday
beach resort.

It
actually all seemed to start okay for Sky, who were

All eyes will be on Benidorm, the birthplace of package tourism, as the Vuelta gets under way this Saturday barely four weeks after the Tour de France.

Following the most exciting Tour in years shouldn't prove a problem: excitement levels are high; the hilly route — which dips into the Basque region for the first time in 33 years — is both interesting and original (there are no Pyrenees, for example, but still six summit finishes); and all the big names who crashed out of the Grande Boucle with broken bones now have a chance to make amends in the season's third and final major stage race.

If