Mark Cavendish: 'We are going to the Vuelta a Burgos to support Mikel Landa'

Mark Cavendish will resume his season at the Vuelta a Burgos, where he will ride in support of Mikel Landa along with the rest of the Bahrain-McLaren squad.

The Spanish stage race is one of the first back after the coronavirus break and will start on Tuesday July 28, running for five stages and ending on the day of the first WorldTour race back, Strade Bianche, on Saturday August 1.

"We are going there to support Mikel Landa who has been training full-gas with the guys for the Tour de France, so he is in incredible form," Cavendish said in a press release issued by the team.

The team says the Manxman will "try his chances" at stage victories on the flatter stages two and four, having never participated in the race before and his last win dating back to stage three of the Dubai Tour in February 2018.

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He will face tough competition in a strong field that features sprinting talent such as Sam Bennett (Deceuninck - Quick-Step), Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates), Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and Nacer Bouhanni (Arkéa-Samsic).

Alongside Landa and Cavendish, Bahrain-McLaren will take Pello Bilbao, Damiano Caruso, Eros Capecchi, Marco Haller and Heinrich Haussler to Spain, the WorldTour squad having held training camps in three different locations over the past few weeks.

"We have a final few days of training before we go off racing. We’ve had three locations for training over the last few weeks. One in Andorra, one in Italy and one in Germany," team boss Rod Ellingworth said. "The camps all finish this Saturday, and then there are a couple of days to go before we start racing next week in Burgos. Everyone is in good condition and most importantly of all in good health. Hopefully, we will see you all on the road in the next few weeks, and we are looking forward to getting back to racing."

Landa will be racing for the GC, having won the race back in 2017, with other favourites likely to include Deceuninck - Quick-Step's Remco Evenepoel, Movistar's Alejandro Valverde, Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) and Ineos' Richard Carapaz, who will also take Iván Sosa, the winner of the past two editions.