I was somewhat amused at the little scene of Luísle high fiving a "fan" who then gave him a push when he was solo on Ixua (which was only 'sort of' the Alto de Ixua, the various Arrates/Ixuas are a bit confusing). Spanish commentary seemed amused, English commentary was completely befuddled. Kirby referenced "obviously someone he knows"... well, yes, it would be. It was his brother, Pedro León, who plays for SD Eibar.
The issue is that "Arrate" is not actually the summit - there are two summits, Ixua (sometimes called Izua as per this year's race) and Usartza. The main road from Eibar to the Santuário de Arrate is the traditional side of the climb, used for many years in this race, in the Euskal Bizikleta and the Subida a Arrate. 5km from Eibar, there is a left turn; continuing straight on takes you to Arrate, and turning left takes you over the Alto de Ixua, to Markina-Xemein.
Comparison of the traditional sides of Arrate and Ixua. The high point of the Arrate route is the Alto de Usartza.
For many years this was the only fully paved side of the road. Therefore, the most common route for the race was to simply go over Ixua, double back over the Alto de San Miguel to Elgoibar, and then climb all the way to the summit before using a "mountaintop finish" at Arrate (in much the same way as Xorret del Catí, it's a "sort of" MTF). Examples like this, from 2010:
In recent years we've seen two alternative routes introduced. The first, through Arrate to Usartza via the industrial estate at Azitain, starting at the N-634 roundabout to the northeast of Eibar rather than the town itself, allows Arrate to be a mountaintop finish (you can see it at around a kilometre from the summit here):
This is the version from the TT a couple of years ago when Quintana won the race, descending the traditional side of the climb back into the town.
This also means that they can do a very short double Arrate loop, climbing the same brutal side twice consecutively, although that option has not been taken up in a pro race to date. On the descent they would pass the Ixua junction, but it would not be worth considering Ixua the summit as it would only be a 350m ramp after a couple of kilometres descent. The
hormigón side, which they climbed yesterday, is this one:
That profile only includes the route to Usartza, but you can see the junction for Eibar at the 3,9km mark - this is where they turned left yesterday onto a proper road and then almost immediately right to do the 350m ascent to Ixua, hence why they gave the points out at Ixua even though it wasn't the outright high point of the road that they took (similar I guess to the La Molina GPM in the Volta a Catalunya). For a long time the Matsaria side was used as a rat run by fans trying to get up to the key parts of the climb for the races, but not considered capable of handling the pros, it seems in better condition than a few years ago although that may just have been from giving it a good clean, as it used to be absolutely bathed in detritus from the trees.
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