The 53rd edition of the Vuelta a España was held 5 to 27 September 1998 and began in
Córdoba and ended in
Madrid
Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
. The 1998 Vuelta had 22 stages over with the winning average speed of .
Spaniard
Abraham Olano
Abraham Olano Manzano (born 22 January 1970) is a Spanish retired professional road racing cyclist, who raced as a professional from 1992 to 2002. He won the UCI Road World Championships – Men's road race, World Road Championship in 1995 UCI ...
took the leader's jersey after the first individual time trial with 41 seconds over Frenchman
Laurent Jalabert
Laurent Jalabert (born 30 November 1968) is a French former professional road racing cyclist, from 1989 to 2002.
Affectionately known as ''"Jaja"'' (slang for a glass of wine; when he continued drinking wine as a professional, the nickname stuck ...
. Olano's lead in the mountains decreased each stage as teammate
José María Jiménez marked Olano's rivals and took several stage wins in the process until Jiménez took the jersey from Olano on the final mountain stage to Alto de Navacerrada with Olano in third place at 38 seconds. On the following day's individual time trial, Olano took back the lead to win the only
Grand Tour of his career.
The race also saw the astonishing comeback of
Lance Armstrong
Lance Edward Armstrong (''né'' Gunderson; born September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road bicycle racing, road racing cyclist. He achieved international fame for winning the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times fro ...
after he was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer in 1996. Armstrong's fourth-place finish was stripped by
USADA in 2012 due to doping.
Teams
A total of 22 teams were invited to participate in the 1998 Vuelta a España. Seventeen of the competing squads were
Trade Team I teams, four teams were Trade Team II teams, while the other team was Trade Team III. Each team sent a squad of nine riders, so the Vuelta began with a peloton of 198 cyclists, a total of 108 riders made it to the finish in Madrid.
The 22 teams invited to the race were:
Stages
Classification leadership
Final standings
General classification
Points classification
Mountains classification
Sprints classification
Team classification
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vuelta a Espana, 1998
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...
1998 in road cycling
1998 in Spanish sport
September 1998 sports events in Europe