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Only three stages left, but there is still much more to be written in this year’s Vuelta. Join The Roar for live coverage of Stage 19 of la Vuelta a Espana from 11:30pm (AEST).
The first difficulty of today’s parcours, the third category Alto de Valdvia, comes at 90 kilometres.
This climb is not very threatening, with the road rising to only 350 metres in altitude over the 14 kilometres of uphill. This ‘climb’ is more or less false flat.
The riders then face a long, gradual descent until they reach 35 kilometres to go, where the road starts to rise for the toughest segment of today’s stage. The Alto La Paramera is rated as a second category climb, rising for 16 kilometres at a touch over four per cent.
This should not create too many hassles for the general classification contenders, but you never know.
Two-time Vuelta runner-up Fernando Escartín discussed the major difficulties of today’s stage with CyclingNews:
“Fatigue will be having an impact by this point and I’d expect a breakaway containing some of the stronger riders who aren’t in the GC battle to feature. As we’ve seen before, the cobbled climb up into Ávila is likely to be the decisive point and could cause some minor splits among the GC riders.”
With tight, cobbled roads at the finish, the final descent into the finish should be extremely fast, with the GC teams at the front.
I have not been able to find percentages of the final climb, but in any case, a different set of riders come to the fore on cobbles, no matter how steep the climb.
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