The start of February traditionally sees one of the first professional races of the European season taking place on the island of Mallorca. Many of the top European riders use the event to test their form and get used to racing with new teammates. This year the event clashed with another top level race taking place in Qatar, with several teams attracted to the warmer desert weather as a place to start their 2010 campaign.

The event on Mallorca has a little more history having first been staged in 1992 and featuring some top riders in its list of past winners including Swiss Champion Alex Zulle, French Champion Laurent Jalabert and Spanish Champion Alejandro Valverde. This year's 19th version of the race was slightly different to other 5 day races in that it was actually a series of 5 individual races, with riders able to miss a day of racing and yet still continue to ride the rest of the event. This was to make the race slightly less intense for riders who may not yet have reached peak fitness.

For spectators the more relaxed nature of the event made catching a glimpse of some of the best professional riders much easier. Not that the race distances would be easy for us mere mortals with the length of each day's course ranging from 116 to 172 kilometres. Each day the race started and finished from a different location on the island, which this year included Palma, Cala Millor, Inca, Deia and Magaluf. The fourth day of the race was the best for anyone wishing to watch from the roadside as the riders raced past, because the route took them over 4 mountain passes on the course which started and finished in Deia but took the riders up to Alcudia and through the Tramuntana mountains over the 900m high Coll de Puigmajor.