yep, early rumours made it look like the Vuelta would have shift a bit in their fixed style of how to design stages. Larrau would be the perfect place for chaos. Aralar with a double ascent would be something different as well. Even there were mentioned options to finish on Laguna Negra with a great seguince of climbs. And Tourmalet at least with 1st cat and 1 HC before it.
However, latest rumours/news is going back more to the typical Unipublic Vuelta style. Miserat (with great possibilities for downhill finish/circuit/at least connection to other climbs) has been replaced by Xorret de Cati, which is a climb that can't be link to anything. So that will be the typical medium mountain stage, with some 3rd, maybe even 2nd category climbs on the route, but all in the early/middle section of the stage. Than Portalet seems te be almost completely removed and there are even rumours to make an extra loop through Lourdes and finish Tourmalet from the Campan side. Arrelar seems to be completely removed. And then the last week, the possible chain of climbs in Cantabria could be good (but no guaranty that all the Hoz'es are there), but followed by Angliru (so spare energy mode is more likely), Angliru never leads to long range attacks. And finishing on Cruz de Linares is a shame, even worse, Unipublic can made this there treadmark queenstage, with 3 or 4 'big climbs' but always 30 kilometers of valley in between them. So many great passes in the Asturias and they always make only the last climb count. The medium mountain stage in the Sierra Madrilena is still quite unknown. They are talking about some more hilly stage with 3/4 km climbs. We have to see if that stage will be hard enough to have relevance for GC.
Before sounding to negative, still curious how tomorrow the real route will look like. Not everything is known yet and it still has the potential to be a much better route than last years Vuelta.
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