Aug
21
Preview: Vuelta a España 2013
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Preview: Vuelta a España 2013
Wednesday 21 August 10:08
Eleven summit finishes with Angliru as the final decisive climb
The route of the 2013 Vuelta a Espana (ASO)
The 2013 Vuelta a España,
will take an anti-clockwise route around Spain, starting with four
stages amongst the hills and sea lochs of Galicia before heading south
through Extremadura and Andalusia, eastwards into Catalonia, Andorra and
France before returning to the north for the showdown on the ultra-hard
Angliru – where Juan Jose Cobo effectively sealed victory in the 2011
Vuelta by dropping Sky riders Froome and the previous race leader, Bradley Wiggins.
Although there is a team time trial to start off with – beginning on a
large batea (a floating wooden platform traditionally used for
shellfish farming) on one of Galicia’s many sea inlets – the riders will
only have to wait one day before tackling the first summit finish of
the Vuelta on the long but not excessively tough Alto da Groba.
The next will come just 24 hours later, at the Mirador de Lobeira,
with a fourth hilly stage in Galicia further shaking up the
classification before the race starts to wend its way south. Missing,
however, will be a much-expected stage round the Ponferrada World’s
Circuit of 2014.
Whilst Galicia’s difficult start will surely have shaken up the
general classification, the next big sort-out comes in three summit
finishes in Andalusia as the race returns to Spain’s deep south after
bypassing it completely in 2012. A 16-kilometre ascent of Peñas –
Blancas outside Estepona, and then two days later a 6.5 kilometre climb
of Haza Grande in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, have
never been used before in the Vuelta. In between, though, the climb of
Valdepeñas de Jaén, last tackled in 2011 and so short and steep it is
known as the Mur de Huy of Spain, will make a welcome return. Combined
with the extreme heat that features regularly in Andalusia in August –
the last time the Vuelta went there, in 2011, it was in the high
thirties – the gaps on the overall classification should be significant
by the time the race leaves the south.
A painfully long transfer to Aragon sees the race reach its mid-way
point with an individual time trial, the only one of the race, with two
more flattish stages preceding the next triple whammy of mountain
stages, in the Pyrenees. Whilst the Coll de la Gallina summit finish is
hardly an easy start, Peyragudes – a continuation of the better known
Peyresourde climb, with a three kilometre descent preceding the final,
gentler rise up to the finish – will come at the end of a long stage
over several Pyrenean cols.
In a nod towards its past, the last Pyrenean stage ends at Formigal,
where the Vuelta had its first ever mountain top finish back in 1972, 40
years previously – with a victory for legendary Spanish climber, the
late Jose Manuel Fuente.
By this point the Vuelta would be almost decided, were it not for
the third and last set of three back-to-back mountain stages through
Cantabria and Asturias – Fuente’s home region. First off is Peña
Cabarga, where Vuelta 2011 runner-up Froome and Juanjo Cobo had a
spectacular climbing duel – with the Briton taking his first Grand Tour
stage. 24 hours later the race reaches Asturias, with an ascent of the
Naranco climb: formerly used as the finish in a popular one-day race, it
is now frequently a part of the Tour of Asturias.
If the Pyrenean trek to Peyragudes will almost certainly be the most
difficult day-long test for the overall classification contenders, the
organisers have saved the toughest single climb of the race for what is
effectively the last day of the Vuelta. Last used in 2011, the 13
kilometre slopes of the Angliru has regularly decided the overall
outcome of Spain’s biggest bike race. And with only a largely ceremonial
stage to go in 2013, from Leganes to Madrid, the Angliru will surely
play the same role again this autumn.
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