Date: Friday, September 6, 2024
Distance: 173.5km
Start location: Logroño
Finish location: Alto de Moncalvillo
Start time: 13:15 CEST
Finish time (approx): 17:19 CEST
Following a couple of days spent riding over terrain better described as hilly rather than mountainous, stage 19 throws the riders back into serious climbing. The Alto de Moncalvillo will be the 2024 Vuelta a España‘s eighth summit finish, and also its penultimate one, as the GC race nears its conclusion. After this there is just one more (albeit especially difficult) mountain stage to come tomorrow, before the race comes to a close at the Madrid time trial.
Before the road goes uphill today, however, the riders can enjoy the landscape of La Rioja’s vineyards. One of the most popular and oldest wine regions in Spain, the picturesque vineyards that characterise the region will be the backdrop for much of the racing today. The tempranillo grape is the one that’s being grown most of all around here, known for the fruity, light tastes the red wines grown here have, while enthusiasts might want to pay a visit to the start town of Logroño, where many of the wineries used to age the local varieties (which mature especially well on oak barrels) are aged in underground cellars known as ‘calados’.
Logroño was also the point of departure the only other time Alto de Moncalvillo featured at the Vuelta, back in 2020. This time the riders will head out further west into the province of Burgos before switching back on themselves towards the final climb, but the terrain is comparable. Like then, there will be only one climb tackled before the finale, and it’s not one to be overly concerned about, averaging a modest 4.8% for the duration of just 5.2km. Crested 70km before they start the final climb, it’s unlikely to have much of an impact.
This might not, therefore, be a full mountain stage of the kind that those monstrous days either side of the last rest day, but the Alto de Moncalvillo is alone enough to make it a potential turning point in the red jersey race. After a relatively gentle first 1.5km to ease them into the climb, the road ramps up to over 9%, and barely relents for the remaining 7km to the top, including one especially nasty ramp of 16%. In 2020, Primož Roglič and Richard Carapaz exchanged blows on these steep inclines, the latter pulling away from him in the final kilometre to win the stage, but the latter defending the red jersey (only temporarily, though;…