Movistar trio Quintana, Landa, Valverde in tilt for Tour de France

MADRID: Movistar announced all three of Nairo Quintana, Alejandro Valverde and the newly recruited Mikel Landa will team up to ride the 2018 Tour de France on Thursday.

The team are considered as British team Sky’s closest rival ands the line up represents their strongest assault on the yellow jersey yet.The Spanish outfit snapped up climb specialist Landa from Team Sky in August with the objective of ending Sky and Chris Froome’s grip on the Tour.

“We have the riders with the ideal profile to believe in winning the Tour, which is one of the few races we have still to win,” said Movistar general manager Eusebio Unzue.Quintana has won both the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta and has twice finished runner-up to Froome at the Tour in 2013 and 2015.However, the Colombian finished a disappointing 12th this year after loading his schedule with the Giro d’Italia in May where he finished second to Tom Dumoulin.