2022 Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta teams announced

Mathew Mitchell

Published on June 24, 2022
in Women's Cycling

This year’s Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta race takes place between 7th and 11th September 2022. The race organisers have just announced which teams will be taking part in the significant Spanish race. This year the race will have 5 stages, up from 4 in 2021 and 3 stages in 2020. The recent publishing of the 2023 Women’s WorldTour calendar shows that this will be the last late-season edition of the Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta. In 2023, the race will be moved to the beginning of May.

All 14 of the Women’s WorldTour teams have taken up their invite to race in Spain. We’ve seen a few recent events where WWT teams haven’t raced, like Roland Cogeas in RideLondon & the Women’s Tour, so it’s not always a given that they turn up. That should mean we get a decent start list, with a decent period between the stack of the 2022 Giro Done and the re-born Tour de France Femmes with the Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta.

Of the 3 teams guaranteed invites to WorldTour races, Parkhotel Valkenburg has chosen not to race. Ceratizit-WNT and Valcar-Travel & Service will be racing, however. It makes sense for the Dutch team to focus on other races, in particular, the Simac Ladies Tour which doesn’t finish until September 4th.

The rest of the wildcard teams include all of the Spanish continental teams like Rio Miera, Massi-Tactic, Bizkaia Durango and Soltec. That should help ensure local interest. Cofidis will make the trip from France with Team Coop-Hitec Products coming from Norway. For the latter, despite being a long-standing team it’s their only grand tour of the 2022 season after being overlooked for Giro Donne and Tour de France Femmes selection.