The Vuelta a España organisers have confirmed that the race will start in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, next year.
News of the departure location was announced by Unipublic at the start of the final stage of the 2023 race, starting in the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela and finishing in Madrid.
The Vuelta had only once before started in Lisbon, in 1997, when two stages took place in Portugal, with a third taking the race back across the border to Huelva in southerly Andalucia. It was the first-ever start for the Vuelta outside Spain.
Next year’s start in Lisbon is the second foreign start for the Vuelta in three years after it began in Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2022 and the fifth in its history.
Stage 1, to Estoril west of the capital, was won by Lars Michaelsen of Denmark after the sprinters suffered on the hilly terrain behind GC contenders Laurent Jalabert and Claudio Chiapucci, and the two following stages concluded with bunch sprints, won by Germany’s Marcel Wust.
The Vuelta was supposed to have two third-week stages in northern Portugal in 2020, but international border restrictions caused by the pandemic forced the organiser to substitute them for stages inside Spain.
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