It may still be Classics season, but the 2026 women’s calendar will be defined by the mountains, with iconic summits featured in all three Grand Tours. The Tour de France Femmes has Mont Ventoux, the Giro d’Italia Women featuring the Colle delle Finestre, and it was confirmed on Monday that the Vuelta Femenina will tackle the Alto de L’Angliru, one of the sport’s most fearsome climbs.
The 2026 Vuelta Femenina route, revealed in Madrid, features a gentle build-up through Galicia and Léon, before a mammoth double header finale in Asturias, with stage 6 finishing atop Les Praeres, and stage 7 tackling the Angliru.
At 13km in length with an average gradient of 9.7% – though it’s closer to 13% in the second half – the Angliru already looks hard on paper, and historic men’s Vuelta battles on its slopes have cemented in our minds just what a beastly climb this is. So, for the women’s race to finish at its peak is an exciting and important moment, but it wasn’t one that the Vuelta organisers came to easily or on a whim.
Article continues below
“We always like to be in touch with the teams and with the riders, and until now we have had a few doubts about [whether] to do it or not,” Kiko García, the Vuelta’s technical director, told Cyclingnews. “Because a few teams say ‘yes, it’s a good idea to do it’ and other ones say ‘maybe it’s too early, maybe just wait a couple of years’ because we were still building women’s cycling.
“We really think that it’s a good time to be able to go with the women to these climbs. It was a little bit challenging because, as you can imagine, they are both very steep climbs, and especially Angliru on the last day, after a week of racing, probably the legs will be a little bit tired for the last day,” García said. “But we are convinced that it’s a fantastic challenge…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…