I think I will be posting the stage previews on a day-to-day basis this week.
Stage 1: Marín - Salvaterra de Miño, 113.9 km
Things will be kicking off from the town of Marín in the Galician province of Pontevedra. The area is home to the Escuela Naval Militar where both King Felipe the 6th and his disgraced father Juan Carlos have undergone military training. Princess Leonor, the first in line to the Spanish throne, completed her second year of military training at the academy in 2025.
Princess Leonor (left) and her sister Infanta Sofía with rcently retired badminton star Carolina Marín (no relation to the town) during the Paris Olympics
Marín hosted a stage start in the 2016 Vuelta, but its biggest claim to fame within cycling is probably that it is the home town of David García Dapena. A rider that managed to improve once he left the domestic scene in Portugal and signed for the local Galicia team, at the time sponsored by the former Russian Celta Vigo footballer, Valery Karpin. Here he achieved his best results, including winning the Tour of Turkey in 2008 plus a stage win en route to a third-place finish overall the following year. However, it was of course his Vuelta stage win in Ponferrada in 2008 that was his greatest individual performance.
In the 2010 Vuelta he also did some unbelievable rides in service of his team leader Ezequiel Mosquera. Obviously both his and Mosquera’s displays during the race did indeed turn out not to have been believable soon after the event was over. If you wonder what he’s up to these days, he’s apparently selling volcanic jewelry from Tenerife. I guess it’s more luxurious than ice cream-
Other interesting names associated with Marín include Ghanian-Spanish long jumper Jean Marie Okutu, European and World Championship medal winning Taekwondoin Iván García Martínez, and the guy with the third most appearances in the history of Celta Vigo, right-back Hugo Mallo.
After the start the riders will make their way south towards Moaña. Now I have already mentioned some football players that represented the top team in the region, but none of them comes close to the Magician of Moaña, the living legend that is Iago Aspas. Apart from a failed trip to Liverpool and an unsuccessful loan spell in Sevilla, Aspas has spent his whole senior career at Celta Vigo. With close to 570 first team matches (soon to become 400 in La Liga alone) and over 220 goals, Aspas has become one of the most influential figures in the club’s history and a statue of him has just been scheduled to be placed outside the Estadio de Balaídos in Vigo. The club hasn’t won any titles during his time with them, but his goals have helped the team avoid relegations and he’s won the Zarra Trophy for most goals scored by a Spanish player in La Liga on four occasions. At this point it’s still unclear whether he’s continuing his career past the current season, but hopefully he hasn’t scored his last goal yet no matter what he decides or has decided regarding his future.
From Moaña the riders will tackle the main obstacles of the day: the Alto da Cruceiro and the Alto da Portela, which are both situated in the area around the Coto Redondo where it would have been possible to have found steeper ascents, but since this is meant to be a sprint stage that doesn’t really matter much. After a descent to Paredes, they will have to start climbing again for a while from the town of Arcade de Riba. This hill totals around 7.5 km at 3% avg., but it’s mostly false flat until the last 2-3 km. The bonus sprint of the day is located in Ponteareas after 91 km. From there on to the final, there is a few small lumps on the profile, but nothing that should put many riders in difficulty.
The final kilometer includes two roundabouts, a left-hand turn, a right-hand turn and some stretches that aren’t completely straight. This is combined with an average gradient of around 3%, at times up to 6-7%, but it flattens out before the line. If you want to win, you probably have to be at the front when they make the final turn around 600m before the line. The finish line is located near a church with a cemetery, some football fields and a some kind of cultural center. It doesn’t seem like the most scenic place in the area.
Salvaterra de Miño on the border with Portugal has hosted a Vuelta start in 2014, where they pretty much rode the opposite direction of today's route and finished in Cangas de Morrazo, just outside Moaña, where a certain Adam Hansen took the last of his five career wins.
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