Alberto Contador will ride the Vuelta a Espana after all, having recovered from the injury which ended his Tour de France challenge.
Last month, Contador had ruled himself out of his home Grand Tour as he suffered frustration in his bid to recover from a broken shin bone.
But on Thursday morning, the two-time Tour and two-time Vuelta winner posted a video on Twitter announcing he would ride.
“I’ve been riding the bicycle for the last 10 days and yesterday was the first day I could climb a mountain pass without knee pain”, the 31-year-old said in a subsequent release from the Tinkoff-Saxo team.
“That excites me, motivates me and has led me to make the decision to run the Tour of Spain. I know it’s a Tour of Spain I’ll have to do in a very different way than I had thought earlier in the season, or as I planned the Tour de France, but I think it can be very good considering the end of season and to start next year with guarantees.”
Contador’s return further boosts what looks like being an exciting field for the Vuelta, with Team Sky’s Chris Froome targeting the race following his own Tour injuries, while Giro d’Italia winner Nairo Quintana (Movistar) also plans to take part along with the likes of Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) and Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha).
The Vuelta starts with a time trial in Jerez de la Frontera on August 23.
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
UAE tour of the Netherlands
UAE squad: Rohan Mustafa (captain), Shaiman Anwar, Ghulam Shabber, Mohammed Qasim, Rameez Shahzad, Mohammed Usman, Adnan Mufti, Chirag Suri, Ahmed Raza, Imran Haider, Mohammed Naveed, Amjad Javed, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed
Fixtures: Monday, first 50-over match; Wednesday, second 50-over match; Thursday, third 50-over match
