This week’s sport on TV: From the Vuelta to Channel swimming

At 20, Ruiz won the Volta a Catalunya and three years later claimed the Vuelta a España crown. He also had podium places in the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia and remarkably is one of only three men to have competed in all Grand Tours in the same season three times.

For most, it is one mountain range too many and Tadej Pogačar, who has finished in the top three in all eight Grand Tours he has contested, with five titles, is again skipping Spain. The Vuelta began yesterday in Turin and dips into France on Tuesday before reaching its homeland on Wednesday for a time trial in Figueres (TNT Sports 1 and 3, 3.15pm). Jonas Vingegaard is favourite, though Egan Bernal may dream of being the eighth man to complete the grand slam.

Speaking of endurance sports, BBC Breakfast will be in Dover tomorrow (BBC One from 6am) to cover the build-up to the 150th anniversary of Matthew Webb being the first to swim the Channel unaided – and indeed impeded by a jellyfish sting. Webb took 21 hours and 45 minutes; the record now is 15 hours less but it is still an ordeal. The journalist John Goodbody, who has written a new book on Webb’s feat and accomplished it himself in 1991, said that while more than 2,600 have swum the Channel, that is 10,000 fewer than those who have climbed Everest.

Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori took rather less time to defend their US Open mixed doubles title on Wednesday. The Italian pair were the only doubles specialists allowed to enter as the organisers preferred to cobble together partnerships from the stardust singles players and play sets to four games rather than six. Errani and Vavassori needed just 92 minutes to win their final against Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud and only two other matches lasted more than an hour. The proper stuff starts today (Sky Sports Tennis, 4pm). Last year, Dan Evans’s first-round match against Karen Khachanov took a record five hours and 35 minutes to complete.

Meanwhile, the women’s Rugby World Cup began on Friday. The Red Roses have high hopes of winning a third title, but New Zealand have won six of the last seven tournaments. The Black Ferns begin their quest today against Spain (BBC iPlayer 5.30pm). The only team to have beaten them in the World Cup since 1991 is Ireland, who are in their group and start today against Japan (BBC Two, noon).

Photograph by Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images