This weekend saw the start of the 2010 campaign for the Vuelta a Espana, the premier Spanish cycling Tour, and this year commemorates the 75th anniversary of the competition in Spain. To mark the occasion, the organisers have changed the cycling shirt colors for La Vuelta. These cycling shirts have changed their colors several times over the years, but recently, they have been similar to those used in the Tour de France. So what are the changes for 2010?

There are two main changes: the General Classification leader is awarded the Red Jersey. This has been used in the past during La Vuelta, but in more recent years has been reserved for the Mountains Classification leader (rather than red-spotted white jersey in the Tour de France). Of course, since the Red now goes to the GC leader, the Mountains leader’s cycling shirts had to be changed too. So the MC leader now wears the new Blue-spotted White jersey (or Blue Polka Dot). The Points leader continues to wear the Green Jersey. There is no Young Rider’s Jersey in la Vuelta a Espana, but there is the Combination Classification instead, which (as you might expect) combines all the rankings in the general, points and mountain classifications. The Combined leader wears the White Jersey.

I will not be giving a blow by blow account of la Vuelta as I did for the Tour de France, but you can follow the daily trials of the riders and teams by checking out the official site of La Vuelta a Espana. Don’t forget to click for your language using the little flags in the navigation bar.

Perhaps the biggest – and possibly most controversial – news pre-tour was the fact that the RadioShack Team were not included this year, which of course means no Lance Armstrong and his team of co-riders, despite winning the Team Classification in this year’s Tour de France.

Last night (Saturday) saw the first stage of the Tour, which was a team time trial around the streets of Seville, won by HTC-Columbia, and led home by Mark Cavendish, who wears the first Red Jersey of this year’s competition. The second stage, today, involves a 174 km ride from Alcala de Guadaira to Marbella, which is currently in progress as I write with Marcos Garcia clinging to his 1 minute lead. Find out more at the official site.

I’ll update on the race every few days for this one, to keep you up-to-date with who’s wearing the leaders’ colored cycling shirts!

Well which races should we be looking out for? I mentioned in a previous post that the most famous road tour is the Tour de France. The other important European road races are the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta a Espana and the Eneco Tour of Benelux.

The four main classifications, each having their own distinctive cycling shirt colors, are Overall Leader, Points Leader, Mountains Leader and Young Star (awarded to the leading under-25 rider and indicating a potential future star). Here is an overview of the colored jerseys each leader wears when participating in the major tournaments.

Tour de France

Just as a quick reminder from my previous post, the jersey colors in the Tour de France (Le Tour) are yellow for overall leader; green for the points leader; red and white polka-dots for the mountain stage leader (the King of the Mountains); and white for the young star.

Giro d’Italia

When the cycle race is in Italy – commonly called the Giro – the riders’ cycling shirts change their colors. Now the overall leader wears a pink jersey. Then it’s mauve (or cyclamen) for the points leader; green for the mountains leader; and again white for the young category leader.

Vuelta a Espana

The action has now gone to Spain and La Vuelta. The overall leader’s cycling shirt is back to yellow. The points leader however wears a blue jersey; for the mountain stages leader it’s an orange jersey; and in La Vuelta there is no jersey awarded for the under-25s leader.

Eneco Tour of Benelux

In this tour, the racing winds its way through Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The Benelux tour was devised to provide a more challenging race as the Tour of the Netherlands was deemed not to be hard enough. However the separate Tours of Belgium and Luxembourg still exist in their own rights. The overall leader in the Eneco Tour wears a red jersey; the points leader wears the blue shirt; there is no jersey award for mountain stages in the Eneco Tour; and in Benelux the yellow jersey is worn by the under-25s young star.

So remember when you get excited watching the progress of the guy in the yellow cycling shirt, make sure you are watching Le Tour or La Vuelta, because if it’s the Eneco Tour you’ll be looking at the bright young thing coming through, rather than the overall leader!