Date: Thursday 28 August
Distance: 170km
Start location: Olot
Finish location: Pal. Andorra
Start time: 12:35 CEST
Finish time: 17:16 CEST
The Vuelta a España organisers must have had an insatiable sense of wanderlust when designing this year’s route, as today’s finish in Andorra becomes the fourth different country visited in just six days. That matches the race’s record for most countries visited from the 2009 edition, when the route passed through both Germany and Belgium having begun in the Netherlands.
After today, though, the race is done crossing borders, the rest of the edition confined within the home nation. And on what is a stage that feels quintessential to the Vuelta, there is a feeling that the race proper starts today. Andorra might have its own cultural identity, with a history that draws heavily upon Catalan influence as well as the neighbouring Spain and France, it’s much closer to home than the exotic far away outings to Italy and France earlier in the week, and Spanish will be the language predominantly shouted at them from the roadside as the race to the finish.
While the finish will be across the border, the first 135km of this 170km stage will all take place in Spain (or, perhaps more accurately, Catalonia), starting in Olot, a city surrounded by four volcanoes in the Garrotxa volcanic field. While Olot is new to the Vuelta, having never before hosted a stage, the race will head eastwards from it and into the more familiar territory of the Pyrenees, the mountain range that every year plays a key role in the race for the red jersey, and will, both today and tomorrow, witness the first serious GC sort-outs of this year’s race.
The Collada de Toses tackled 41km into the stage will be the first category one test of this year’s race, but it’s the final climb to Pal that will witness all the action. Pal last hosted a Vuelta finish in 2010, on a stage won by Basque Igor Antón. The average gradient of 6.4% might not seem so severe, but, as the pint-sized Antón proved that day, it’s enough over the course of 9.7km for pure climbers to open up gaps and make an advantage; Antón won that day by three seconds ahead of Ezequiel Mosquera, and took the overall lead from a floundering Joaquim Rodríguez, who conceded almost a minute.
Unlike the uphill finishes that have preceded it this Vuelta, it’s a genuine mountain top finish, and therefore will establish a more reliable, accurate GC hierarchy than what’s formed in the previous days. But it’s also much too early in the race to draw too many conclusions — remember that just three days after Antón took that victory, and confirmed himself as the frontrunner for overall victory, he dramatically crashed out of the race.
Contenders
It could be the first chance for the breakaway to take a stage, but with a hard start it will take a strong climber to make it in the first group. For a breakaway to succeed it needs to contain riders who far enough back on the general classification for them to be allowed enough of a gap. Riders like Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Eddie Dunbar (Jayco Alula) and Pablo Castrillo (Movistar) are all Vuelta stage winners in the past and have lost enough time to go in the day's break.
Carlos Verona (Lidl-Trek) and Chris Harper (Jayco Alula) both won stages of this year's Giro d'Italia. Another star of that race was Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana Team) although he is closer to the top of the general classification, which could hinder the break's chances of getting enough of a gap before the final category one climb. It's the same situation for the Israel Premier-Tech duo of Marco Frigo and Matthew Riccitello.
Some of these riders may decide to stay in the peloton rather than the breakaway. The victory could come from the main bunch, and this would change the personnel likely to challenge for the win — Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Juan Ayuso and João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) are all looking sharp in the opening stages of the race.
Other contenders for the day's stage include Vingegaard's teammates Matteo Jorgenson, Ben Tulett and Sepp Kuss, Red Bull's Giulio Pellizzari, Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team), and the Soudal-Quick-Step duo of Mikel Landa and Junior Lecerf.
Prediction
We believe Jay Vine will win from the breakaway.
