July 01, 2023
The region’s iconic Jaizkibel climb will be the final decider of today’s stage, but who can reach the top first and stay clear from trouble on the flat run-in to the finish?
Distance: 208.9km
Start location: San Sebastián
Finish location: Vitoria-Gasteiz
Start time: 12:15 CEST
Finish time (approx): 17:04 CEST
Clásica San Sebastián is arguably the most overlooked major race on the cycling calendar. Held the weekend after the end of the Tour de France, it often gets lost in the post-Tour lull as fans take some downtime following all the drama of the La Grande Boucle, but it’s always an exciting and selective race won by quality names, most recently Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick-Step) with a vintage long-range attack. And though the wider cycling community may sleep on it, the notoriously passionate local fans always show up in numbers. There are few if any images more emblematic of cycling fan culture than crowds of orange-clad Basques densely packed roaring their support on a steep hill in the green Basque countryside.
Then there is the city of San Sebastian itself, which is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Spain. Renowned for its in-city beaches, Spaniards travel up here during the summer to escape the searing high temperatures of the rest of the nation. Despite its small size, it also hosts world-recognised annual jazz and film festivals, the latter of which in 1958 hosted the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which has since been preserved in the canon of the greatest ever films. And for foodies, San Sebastian is a must; it features the second most Michelin star restaurants per capita of any city in Europe, where you can sample the region’s famous seafood and tapas.
Stage two profile sourced via ASO
The Tour de France has visited San Sebastian once before when it hosted the Grand Départ of the 1992 edition, but neither of the two stages that year (a prologue won by Miguel Induráin at the peak of his powers, and a road stage that culminated in a bunch sprint won by Frenchman Dominique Arnould) bore much resemblance to Clásica San Sebastián. For this year’s stage, by contrast, that classic will be a handy point of reference as to what to expect, featuring as it does many of the same roads and the similar hilly terrain that makes that race so…