Date: Saturday, September 7, 2024
Distance: 172km
Start location: Villarcayo
Finish location: Picón Blanco
Start time: 13:00 CEST
Finish time (approx): 17:17 CEST
For the riders who have spent much of this mountain-heavy edition of the Vuelta a España struggling in the grupetto, more concerned with merely surviving and making the time cut each day than chasing any individual glory, today brings both good news and bad. The good news is that this will be the last mountain stage of the race before tomorrow’s entirely flat time trial in Madrid. The bad news, however, is that there are multiple days’ worth of climbing to be tackled in this one stage, with no less than seven mountains and nearly 5,000m elevation gain to overcome.
In fact, this stage is arguably the hardest of the whole Vuelta. The organisers have gone out of their way to make the parcours as punishing as possible, taking a circuitous route through the Burgos part of the Cantabrian Mountains to squeeze in as much climbing as possible. The potential for carnage is high, and even time gaps on GC that seem safe could be surmounted.
Things don’t start so hard initially, with an opening third more in keeping with the hilly stages that have preceded today. The climbing begins with a shallow 3% rise to the summit of the category three summit Las Estacas de Trueba, after which they plummet downhill for 15km before taking on two climbs, the Puerto de La Braguía and Alto del Caracol, in quick succession, neither of which average more than 6%. From that point on, though, things begin to get harder. The Portillo de Lunada that follows it has been deemed hard enough to be rated category one, lasting a lengthy 14km and rising at a not inconsiderable 6.1%. This is followed by the similarly steep, albeit half as long, Portillo de la Sia. The only real respite comes next in the form of a 20km descent, but that’s to take them to the foot of another category one, Puerto de los Tornos (11.3km at 6%).
All that will be enough to leave the riders exhausted by the time they at last arrive at the day’s showpiece, Picón Blanco. By this point, the race could already be in bits before they even reach the climb, especially if any GC riders or teams take it upon themselves to ignite the race early. That said, committing before a finishing climb as hard as this is risky, as riders will still need to have plenty in the tank not to run out of gas on what is, with an average of 9.1%, by far the…