“The mountains form part of the DNA of the Vuelta a España,” race director Javier Guillén told Spanish sports daily AS on Tuesday evening, and to judge by the route that organisers Unipublic have produced for 2023, it’s very hard to disagree.
After 2022’s single hors categorie ascent to Sierra Nevada, this year there will be no less than five, two of them well-known ‘monster’ ascents of the Tourmalet and Angliru. The Pyrenees, completely missing from the race in 2022 and 2021, are back in their toughest Vuelta format since at least 2015. And rumours of there being ‘only’ eight summit finishes in 2023 proved to be an underestimate: in fact there are 10, an average of almost 50 percent of all the stages.
2023 is not just about the revival of relatively-recent Vuelta traditions like the plethora of uphill finishes, though. Organisers have delved much deeper into the race history books with the revival of a mid-race time trial through the flatlands and vineyards in the region of Valladolid.
The time trial stage in Valladolid, a city visited on 64 previous occasions by the Vuelta, is one that has proved vital to the overall outcome of the race on multiple occasions. To name but a few – in 2010 for Vincenzo Nibali en route to his first Grand Tour win, in 1994 for Tony Rominger by winning the prologue in Valladolid and then leading the race from end to end, in 1989 for Pedro Delgado when he took an utterly unheralded time trial victory, and even as far back as 1964 for Raymond Poulidor.
But if Pou-Pou was able to secure his only Grand Tour overall victory as much thanks to the Spanish contenders squabbling amongst themselves as to his time trialling skills, 59 years later and with the Tourmalet looming fast on the horizon on stage 13, the Valladolid time trial will likely fade quickly in the race’s collective rear-view mirror. And for Spanish climbers like Enric Mas, three times second in the race, that certainly doesn’t present a problem.
“I’m absolutely delighted with the route,” the Movistar racer said, “I’ll settle for a ‘draw’ in the Valladolid time trial, if you bear in mind the time Remco [Evenepoel, 2022 Vuelta winner] took on us that day in Alicante’s race against the clock.
“Races recently have been decided there [in time trials]. The Tourmalet is a really difficult stage. I’m grateful that the Vuelta does stages like that, because personally, they suit me down to the ground.”
Any similarities to the 2022…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…