Many observers at the Vuelta a España are making comparisons between the break-through performance of Isidro Nozal at this year's race and the Vuelta victory scored by Melchor Mauri in 1991.

Like Mauri, Nozal rides for ONCE, is in his fifth year as a professional and was aged 25 going into the Vuelta. In his first four seasons, Nozal won a single race (a 9.7km time trial at last year’s Clasica de Alcobendas), while Mauri had just two criterium wins in his palmarès.

When it was pointed out to Nozal last week that his ascendancy at the Vuelta was just like Mauri’s 12 years ago, Nozal said, “I don’t have the class that Melchor had.”

There is a big difference between the two Spaniards because Mauri won four times before the 1991 Vuelta, which was then held in April and May. In February that year, he won two stages and the overall classification at the Ruta del Sol, and then took the overall title at the Tour of Valencia.

Despite those early-season successes, Mauri remained a team rider for ONCE going into the 1991 Vuelta, having placed 71st overall the previous year and 78th at the 1990 Tour de France. (Nozal finished 72nd in this year’s Tour!) Mauri’s team leader was Marino Lejarreta, who was seventh in the previous year's Giro d'Italia and fifth at the Tour de France. And Lejarreta was on good form that spring, having finished fifth at the Tour of the Basque Country, eighth at the Flèche Wallonne and seventh at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

The 1991 Vuelta started with an unusual 8.8km time trial that was contested by three-man teams. Each squad started three teams of three, with the leader choosing his two strongest teammates. Lejarreta rode with Johnny Weltz and José Luis Villanueva, but they placed only fourth, 16 seconds behind the winners, the ONCE "B" team of Herminio Diaz Zabala, Anselmo Fuerte and Mauri. And it was Mauri who took the leader's jersey as he was the first of his team across the line.

The next day, ONCE strengthened its grip on the race by winning the 40.4km team time trial, with Fuerte taking over the yellow jersey, although still equal on time with Mauri and Diaz Zabala. Significantly, in the TTT, ONCE finished 1:46 ahead of the Banesto team of pre-race favorite Miguel Induráin.

For the first seven days, Mauri, Fuerte and Diaz Zabala swapped the yellow jersey between them and they remained equal on time going into stage 8's 47km individual time trial on the island of Majorca. Induráin was expected to win the TT, but he could place only fifth — 56 seconds behind Mauri, who stunned everyone with his victory, just as Nozal did at the first individual time trial of this year's Vuelta.

There were four mountaintop finishes in the second half of the 1991 race. On stage 12 to Cerler, Mauri was 12th, conceding 1:03 to Induráin and Lejarreta; on stage 14 to Valdezcaray (an individual time trial of 24.1km), he finished sixth, only 13 seconds slower than teammate Lejarreta, and 42 seconds ahead of Induráin. At this point, a week from the finish, Mauri had a 1:43 advantage on Lejarreta, who was lying in second -- an almost identical situation to that between Nozal and Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano, who were separated by 1:48 after 12 stages of this year's Vuelta.

On the stage 16 summit finish at Lagos de Covadonga back in 1991, Mauri was seventh, conceding just 28 seconds to Lejarreta and Induráin; and on stage 17 to the Alto del Naranco finish, he was 11th, 29 seconds behind runner-up Lejarreta and 19 seconds down on Induráin. All this meant that Mauri went into the final, stage 19 time trial with a 46-second lead on teammate Lejarreta and 1:46 on Induráin.

There were still expectations that Mauri would crack on the 53.2km time trial at Valladolid; but the Catalan rider again confounded the critics to win the stage by 1:06 over Induráin. Mauri did show signs of weakness in the next day's final mountain stage in the Sierra de Guadarrama, but he regained the main group after twice losing contact, and ended the Vuelta with a 2:52 margin over Induráin, with Lejarreta in third.

Two months after that 1991 Vuelta, Mauri finished 64th at the Tour de France, which saw Induráin win the first of his five consecutive Tour victories. Mauri never won another grand tour, the closest he came being fourth at the Vuelta, sixth at the Tour, both in 1995.

The biggest tests at this year’s Vuelta still lie ahead for Nozal: Friday’s dead-flat stage 13 time trial at Albacete, the mountaintop finishes of La Pandera and Sierra Nevada over the weekend, and the uphill time trial a day before the finish in Madrid. The modest Nozal says he’s still riding support for Gonzalez de Galdeano, but all that could change in the next few days.

Just as it did for Mauri a dozen years ago.