The cycling season is held aloft on three main pillars, the Grand Tours. The high season begins with the Giro d'Italia in May, reaches its zenith with the Tour de France in July, and wraps up with the Vuelta a Espana in September. While there are certainly many other and important races through the year, these are the chief three, the great stage races. Today the third of those races, the Vuelta a Espana, wraps up, with a short jaunt to, and then several laps around Madrid. The Vuelta began, this year, in Southern Spain, then a few weeks ago went to the north, then to the east. Now it concludes in the center of the Iberian Peninsula. If things finish as they are expected to day Britain's Simon Yates will win a first Grand Tour after finishing third on the Vuelta a Espana's penultimate stage today in Andorra. Yates leads stage 20 winner Enric Mas by one minute 46 seconds with Sunday's processional race to Madrid to come. Since this last stage is set up as a ceremonial stage, no attack is possible. Simon Yates just needs to cross the line, perhaps with a glass of sangria in his hands. The 26-year-old Mitchelton-Scott rider came close to winning one of the sport's three-week races in May when he led the Giro going into stage 19, but Chris Froome won instead, at the last minute. All hail to Simon Yates and congratulations to the riders at the end of the Grand Tour season! International Cricket heats up today in this first weekend of the Asia Cup, held at the Dubai Sport City. The tournament will take place in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. While past tournaments have been in the 20 Twenty format, all games of this tournament will be 50 Over matches. Participating teams include India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan, and they will participate in group play until the Super Four begin play on Friday. Finals will be held on September 28th. India are the most successful team in Asia Cup history, having won six of the 13 tournaments held so far. Sri Lank has won five times, and Pakistan twice. India just finished a 5 test series in England and continues on within a few weeks with a test series in Australia. Superstar Virat Kohli has decided to take a powder, wanting to rest up for the next test series, so he announced he will not participate, to the great disdain of India fans. India, who will be led by Rohit Sharma in Kohli's absence, begin their campaign against Hong Kong on Tuesday in Dubai, then play rivals Pakistan at the same venue the very next day. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
