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Race Design Thread

Page 209 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I'm absolutely willing to help, though I'm a dinosaur and don't understand half of what you're referring to. It's by far the best thread on CN and hopefully it does influence the powers (paid course designers) that be. We're free labor. Can't beat that. I truly believe that ASO and the rest read this, and we may sway or influence races to come. How sweet! Let me know what I can do and how I can do it.
 
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Giro della Basilicata stage 1: Potenza - Tito ITT; 17.7km
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The race starts with an ITT that is rather hilly, you have a 3km descent at the start of the ITT and another descent at the end of it and after 7km you have 1km at 5%, followed by 6.2km of false flat, then the final descent starts.
As you can see it's a rather hilly ITT, not your typical flat ITT at the start of a stage race, but it's not a very technical one, if the riders don't take crazy risks the descents shouldn't be a problem for anyone not named Fränk Schleck.
Potenza is the capital of the Basilicata region and also the highest regional capital of Italy (819m above sea level), 12 times a Giro stage finished in Potenza, the last time in 2001, the stage was won by Danilo Hondo.
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The ITT finishes in Tito, a nice small town.
Potenza:
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Tito:
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The gaps shouldn't be too big, but it's a nice way to start a short stage race and we should get some gaps before the first road stage.
 
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I'll try to update several stages between today and tomorrow, then will have to send my computer back for repairs this Saturday. Next week I'll have plenty of time to update (hopefully...).

Tour de France Stage 5: Saint-Quentin - Verdun, 204km
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Climbs: Sivry (3,7km @ 3,2%)

Stage 5 again takes place between two places that saw fighting during the Great War, in two of the war's crucial battles. Some of the key battles during the 1918 Hundred Days offensive took place around Saint-Quentin, while the finishing town, Verdun, hosted one of the Western Front's largest battles back in 1916.
The stage itself is mostly flat, with some hills near Verdun to spice up an otherwise-predictable sprint finish. More interesting stuff is coming up soon, though...
 
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Tour de France Stage 6: Metz - Metz, 58km (ITT)
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Climbs: None.

Stage 6 features the "long" individual time trial of the race, in a 58km parcours from Metz to Thionville and back. With a very straightforward, almost pan-flat parcours, this will be the greatest chance for TT specialists to gain time on all other riders - time gaps that they will look to keep from now on, as we start heading into the mountains very soon. Big shakeup for the GC, right before entering the first mountain range - the Vosges.
 
I did warn I had a stage race of recycled ideas, and here we go, with one of the oldest and most storied short stage races in the calendar, the Ronde van België.

The real Ronde van België is a historic short stage race which first ran in 1908, but after a period of doldrums including several skipped editions in the 80s it disappeared from the calendar in the 90s only to return. In recent years a formula had developed but after the 2012 edition when Greipel won the first three stages back to back they decided to vary the formulae a bit more, then after 2014 and the last of three consecutive overall victories for Tony Martin they elected to replace the medium-length time trial with a prologue. I have gone back to the medium-length time trial because I've elected to avoid much in the way of pure sprinters' material to work with here. However, that's not to say sprinters won't have a chance, they'll just need to be durable. I have also tried to vary the race route in order to create an interesting and varied parcours that will favour the tougher riders and provides a real classics all-rounder's race, yet doesn't revert to formula; the Vlaamse Ardennen make but a fleeting appearance in the race, as do the climbs of Liège-Bastogne-Liège; we are instead seeking to use some of the less well-known areas for the decisive sections of the race. Like the real race, there are plenty of circuits to finish; after all the country is not large and we can reasonably cover the majority of it over five days of racing; this also enables us to utilize the obstacles we are using multiple times, since they aren't the most notorious ones.

Oh, and while the real Ronde van België has no mountains jersey, mine does. These are divided into two categories.

Stage 1: Brugge - Asse, 180km

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The original idea that eventually became this stage came in the wake of my Grote Prijs van Hoegaarden; I thought about a series of one-day races, along the lines of the Challenge Mallorca, based around different famous Belgian beers, following in the lines of the Coors Classic, the Amstel Gold Race and the Rund um den Henninger Turm. This one was going to be the Affligem Gold Race, from Affligem to the Vlaamse Ardennen and back. I couldn't find a feasible circuit to get all the cobbles I wanted in at the end looking at those immediately nearby, as I discovered the sectors that make up this closing section and more in the vicinity. The most convenient way, I found, was if I located the circuit around Asse, at which point it became more like a national championships circuit. Especially because a local man could be one of the favourites, that is to say Jürgen Roelandts, who became a god amongst men at last year's Gent-Wevelgem and bought my fandom for life in the process. I then rather forgot about the circuit for a bit, before another, less successful, rider from town hit the news - this time cycling's latest favourite comic villain/fall girl, Femke van den Driessche. Because of this connection, when I put together this route I was tempted to re-route the early part of the stage through Jabbeke for a joke as a result, but couldn't be bothered, notwithstanding that having expressed my distaste for the gleeful dogpiling of ridicule it would have been hypocritical of me. Bruges is a much more interesting, attractive and scenic city with much more history anyway.

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Like many cities with complex and attractive canal systems, Bruges often attracts comparisons to Venice; it's certainly the prettiest place the riders will visit today. Much like the current Ronde van Vlaanderen route, we will start in the Grote Markt and head towards the Vlaamse Ardennen; unlike de Ronde, however, there are two key differences. Firstly, here we travel directly; secondly, we only briefly enter them, since they are not expected to be significant to the race.

The first obstacles are well-known and fairly simple. Huisepontweg and Doorn are probably the best known stretches of cobbles to the west of Oudenaarde in the locality. After heading through that famous cycling city, we take on possibly the easiest of all the cobbled ascents in the vicinity, our first categorized climb, the Kattenberg, 1km long at 5,2% on small, smooth cobbles.

This leads to our next set of kasseistroken, first the more typical Ruiterstraat and then the comparatively wide and comfortable Kerkgate. This leads, as most people can guess, to the one classic Vlaamse Ardennen climb that we see in this entire stage race: the savage Molenberg. The rutted roads and uneven, rough cobbles here make it a real challenge; it is a key factor in the Omloop het Nieuwsblad and though far from the finish was of course where Fabian Cancellara put the hammer down in the 2010 Ronde van Vlaanderen. 500m at 9,8% on this surface is pretty tough, but in this stage we're far enough out it won't cause much action.

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From here we go full Omloop, heading to Zottegem via the famous Paddestraat and Lippenhovestraat cobbles, and thus ends our time in the traditional Classics terrain... all race. We're a long way from the end of the cobbles, however, we just have a period of respite as we head into Aalst and then to Affligem before entering our finishing circuit.

The first lap and a half of the circuit aren't quite the same; instead of the final climb and crossing the finishing line, we instead see the riders climb the Putberg, 460m at 4,7% which is wide but on some pretty useful cobbles.

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The other stretches of cobbles remain the same on all laps. The stage finishes with three laps of this 16,6km circuit with one climb and three stretches of cobbles:

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As you can see, there are two stretches of cobbles on slight downhills/downhill false flat. The first stretch, Varent, is in relatively good condition, but the second, the 1450m of cobbles on Molenstraat, is going to be a killer. There's no gutter to hide in, and the cobbles are in some pretty horrible condition - if the weather isn't nice, this will be nasty.

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Times across Molenstraat end 8,4km from the end of the circuit, therefore the riders emerge from these cobbles with 41,6km remaining the third time, 25km remaining the fourth and obviously 8,4km the final time. This leads into a twisty, narrow section which will enable gaps to be consolidated, before the riders take on a short uphill ramp that leads to a sharp left-hander onto Platijn, a third stretch of cobbles that leads directly to the Keierberg, the final climb of the day. Its official stats are 700m at 4,4% but it's very much a two-stepped climb; the first half is steep and cobbled, the second is almost flat and tarmacked. The max is 10% and a climb of around this gradient is sustained for around 100-150m early on before it eases off. This crests at 2,4km from the line the final time (so 19km and 35,6km remaining before that) so though this circuit is hardly the toughest thing that any real rouleurs will have to face in their lives, it's a serious first day with just enough to break things up with quite a technical run-in until the final few hundred metres in Asse.

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Tour de France Stage 7: Épinal - La Planche des Belles Filles, 223km
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Climbs: Bonne Fontaine (5,5km @ 4,3%), Schlucht (8,6km @ 4,6%), Platzerwassel (12,4km @ 6,2%), Hundsruck (6,7km @ 6,1%), Croix (3,5km @ 5,7%), Chevrères (3,4km @ 9,5%), Planche des Belles Filles (5,8km @ 8,6%)

We enter the very first mountain stage on the race... and it's a very long and difficult one, with 8 categorized climbs along the way and little flat in between.
The climbing starts early, with the summit of the first climb, Bonne Fontaine, coming 26km into the stage. This climb is followed by the Col de la Schlucht, often used in the Tour's visits to the Vosges. Then, after the intermediate sprint in Munster, we take on the first of three cat.1 climbs of the stage, the Col de Platzerwassel.
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After Platzerwassel there's a small uncategorized climb to the Grand Ballon, the highest point of the stage, followed by a long two-stepped descent to the southeast of Grand Ballon. Then, after a short flat section, we take on the short but fairly steep Col de Hundsruck.
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The climb is followed by 15 km of ascending false flat, then by the long climb to Ballon d'Alsace, another well-known climb, even if it's faced by its lesser-known east side.
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This is followed by a last "easy" section, featuring the Col des Croix, followed by another short false flat section, which takes us into the final two climbs of the stage, starting with the brutally steep Col des Chevrères.
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This short and extremely steep climb (with a whole km averaging over 13%) is only the preamble to the final cat.1 climb of the stage - and the summit finish of the race - the climb to Planche des Belles Filles.
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First used in the Tour de France in 2012, this climb has quickly gained notoriety due to its steep gradients (unusual for a French climb), and particularly its final ramps, peaking at a staggering 18% as per CyclingCols... at the end of a 6km climb with a 4km section averaging 9,5% earlier on. More than enough to see the first gaps among climbers in this race... particularly at the end of a 220+km stage with 8 climbs along the way. And after a time trial, to boot...
 
Stage 2: Lille - Hasselt, 170km

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The second stage of the Ronde van België is the flattest and easiest, and therefore the most likely to be settled in the kind of sprint we usually see in the northeastern part of the country. The origin for this stage was in a concept I had after visiting the region last year, to have a sort of "Euregio Tour" which would consist of four stages each starting and finishing in a city of the Euregio area - two out-and-backs around Aachen and Maastricht to have the local hills, then a flat circuit race around Hasselt and a hilly circuit race around Liège. The circuit proposed is used as the finish of this stage, however for the start I take it back to another race I had wanted to see (only to discover that at the amateur and/or kermesse levels it does exist, but would prefer it as a pro race as well); as I've done some "Memorial" races for cyclists who died young, I thought one for former Lombardia winner and 1970 World Champion Jean-Pierre "Jempi" Monséré, who died while in the rainbow jersey after a crash with a car on the course in the GP Retie the following year at the age of just 22, would be good. Especially as going from the monument to him near where he died to his birthplace of Roeselare would entail going through some good Classics terrain anyway.

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Rather distressingly, trying to find pictures of Jempi mostly leads us to the infamous photo of him in the road after his fatal crash, which I'm sure most of us don't really need to see. There's a documentary on him in Dutch available to watch, which delves a bit deeper into the man, one of the great "what could have been" stories of cycling history. Just to add another layer of tragedy to the story, Jempi's son was killed after being hit by a car when riding his bike, given to him as a present by none other than Freddy Maertens, just a few years later. He was seven years old.

We already covered the Vlaamse Ardennen area yesterday and don't want to double back on ourselves, so this is no pure memorial race. However, after starting in the town of Lille - not to be confused with Rijsel, which is what the city across the border is known as op Nederlands; normally outside of the Benelux (and in large parts of it) when we say Lille we of course mean the city in Nord-Pas-de-Calais that makes up the largest part of the Roubaix-Lille Métropole; here we mean the town of 16000 inhabitants in the Antwerp region.

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The first part of the stage is a neutralized stretch from Lille to Gierle, along the stretch of road where Monséré was killed, so as to pass the memorial to the fallen champion.

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The stage then passes through Retie and heads through the northeast corner of Belgium, from the Antwerp province into the Belgian Limburg. Of course, this is Belgium, so pretty much everywhere you go has some kind of cycling heritage; every small town has some connection or history to the sport. There are a couple of notable ones though. Firstly, we pass through Balen, which is of course the home town of many cycling fans' heartthrob, multiple monument winner, Classics legend, thumping trance fan and another Belgian former World Champion, Tom Boonen. Secondly, we pass through Heusden-Zolder and around the outside of the Zolder motor racing circuit.

I don't like Zolder, but that's mainly from my period of motor racing fandom. I hold a grudge against the circuit for killing one of the all time greats and a favourite in the sport of mine, Gilles Villeneuve, even though I hadn't been born when it happened. Gilles is a leading candidate (along with Stirling Moss and Ronnie Peterson) for the accolade of "best driver never to win a World Championship"; he was exactly the kind of sportsman I love: aggressive, mercurial, wonderfully talented and didn't know how to back off. There was no calculated Prost/Lauda racing with him, it was always heart over head, talent over tactics. You were always guaranteed excitement with Gilles around. The fans have long since claimed the race number of his final races as "his"; the number 27 is linked indelibly with Villeneuve to motor racing fans in the same way as "red 5" is Nigel Mansell or 46 is Valentino Rossi. Although a motor racing circuit, Zolder is a big cycling spot as well, hosting two road, three cyclocross and one BMX World Championships. I know nothing of the 1969 Worlds other than the result (Monséré won silver in the amateur race, for the record), but the 2002 Worlds were abysmal, a pan-flat circuit with 12-man teams controlling the race that led to Cipollini in rainbows. I won't link to highlights: there aren't any. I put an intermediate sprint there for its cycling heritage, though.

After this we head through Kermt, and onto the one real challenge in this stage, the pavé and unpaved road of Herkenrodebosstraat and Kermtstraat, just west of Hasselt. The first part runs from the gemeen of Kermt to an old factory building, and is on some nice, true Flandrien cobbles, mostly as per the below, but one particularly rough patch where they cross a disused tramline.

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This lasts for about a kilometre before the route toughens again, with the cobbles giving way to sterrato.

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If this is too narrow, then cars can turn off after the main part of the cobbles and take the tarmac route to rejoin at the end of the sterrato leaving skeleton neutral service like they do on the Koppenberg, but it should be fine. The sterrato section - which is popular with cyclists as you can see from the tracks in the road there - is around 1,5km long, leading to an overall sector length of about 2,5km.

From here the riders head into Hasselt before a long loop around the neighbouring city of Genk before looping back to the finish city where we cross the finish line for the first time at 54km from the line before undertaking three laps of an 18km circuit which includes that sector of cobbles+sterrato; these therefore finish at 46,3, 28,3 and 10,3km from the line. The sector is not super difficult and, as the only real obstacle on the circuit, there is plenty of time for teams to try to pull back attacks on it, but unlike those Zolder World Championships mentioned above, the sprinters will have to work to be there to contest the sprint when we get to Hasselt; a long and straight run-in from the cobbles before circumnavigating the city centre will perhaps benefit what remains of the bunch behind, but placement will be key going into the cobbled sector.

A stage for Kittel? God no. A stage for Degenkolb or Kristoff? Yea, probably.

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Very nice TdF stage. I hope a great Jura stage follows...

LS, Villeneuve was one of my favorite riders growing up. Here's one of my favorite moments, at the '79 French Grand-Prix in Dijon, Jabouille bringing the first win ever for Renault. Battle for second place in the final laps:

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RIP Gilles.
 
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Tour de France Stage 8: Belfort - Pontarlier, 173km
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Climbs: Crosey (4,7km @ 5,4%), Bugny (11,1km @ 4,2%), Chevrette (4,9km @ 5,5%)

Now we enter the Jura mountains... but alas, it's just for a transition stage before entering the Alps.
It's not an entirely featureless stage, though, with two remarkable climbs near the end: the long and irregular Bugny, and the shorter and steeper Chevrette, the latter only 10km away from the finish line in Pontarlier. With this being the only relative breather between the ITT/Vosges stages and the first alpine stages, the stage may end up being a win for a breakaway. Either way, the climbs should be enough to avoid a straight sprint here.
 
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Tour de France Stage 9: Pontarlier - Plateau des Glières, 221km
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Climbs: La Serra (12,1km @ 5,1%), Mont Salève (7,8km @ 8,9%), Glières (8,8km @ 7,5%)

For the first sunday of the race we have a very long stage, taking us from the Jura and into the Alps.
The stage features only three categorized climbs, but also little flat overall, with lots of short uncategorized climbs along the way as we head out of the Jura mountains. Things start picking up in the final third of the stage, with the first of two cat.1 climbs, the Mont Salève (until km. 2,5 in the profile below). Brutally steep, with a 2km section at 12,5%, this climb should leave the péloton in disarray, at least for a while.
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After the climb there's still 35km of irregular terrain left before the foot of the summit finish climb, the Plateau des Glières.
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While it's climbed from its "easy" western side (used in the final stage of the 2013 Tour de l'Avenir), it's still a very remarkable climb, with a terrible 7km first section averaging 9%, followed by a short descent and a much shallower ascent at the end. Another chance for climbers to gain some time, as long as they make their moves in the harder sections of the climb instead of the last two kms.
 
The only shame is that the Saturday stage will probably be one that's just left to the break, with two very tough GC days before it (long TT and a nicely-planned and very difficult Vosges stage) and the first Alpine MTF after it. Is the rest day on Monday or Tuesday? From here I'd probably suggest Tuesday would be better as I presume you're going into the Alps from here, which would mean some tired legs and stronger action in the next Alpine stage - then a rest day at one of the Alpine regular Tour hosts.
 
Me and my friends has rejuvenated our love for PCM 2006, easily the best of the series (altho I haven't played the the last 3 editions). We've gotten a little bored of playing the same Giro-route over and over again since the Tour and Vuelta-routes were boring that year.. The Vuelta 2006 race, not so much, altho we all obviously hoped for a diffrent result. Aight? Never mind...

We were fortunate enough that Cyanide has included 4 different versions of the Giro and Tour, some versions of week long races like Helvetie and a bunch of WC-routes which we could choose from. That has resulted in me creating one of the most tough GT's ever made! (at least that's what I like to think, some of you guys have probably done the same with better success). The route consists of, as far as I remember, 6 mountain stages in the Alps form TdF, 5 from the Giro, 3 from Suisse and 2 from the Pyrenees, the 2 deciding mountain stages. To balance the route out A BIT, I have included 3 more or less flat ITTs of 50 kms and a long TTT of 60 kims coupled with 1 WC route at 270 in Bogotá. And I forgot the fact that we will start with a 'prologue' up Chamrousse.

Its honestly some pretty epic stuff to play. Unfortunately, I lost out in the end due to Basso's superior recovery in the end with my man Valverde, but managed a decent 2nd overall and a bunch of early stage wins in the Alps. Rasmussen rounded the podium out who obviously received some secret dopage from motorman in between the stages, aka. the PCM-editor. If you want me to, I can post all the stages in here.
 
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Re:

Libertine Seguros said:
From here I'd probably suggest Tuesday would be better as I presume you're going into the Alps from here, which would mean some tired legs and stronger action in the next Alpine stage - then a rest day at one of the Alpine regular Tour hosts.
Pretty much what I had planned, exactly :D .

Tour de France Stage 10: Annecy - Morzine, 164km
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Climbs: Aviernoz (6,2km @ 4,1%), Fleuries (6,9km @ 4,4%), Ramaz (13,9km @ 7%), Joux-Plane (12km @ 8,2%), Joux-Verte (11,4km @ 7%).

The day before the first rest day, we get the first "true" high mountain stage of the race. Despite its relatively short length (164km) it's a very tough one, with the first two HC climbs of the race along the way.
The first third of the stage is realtively featureless, with two easy categorized climbs in the first 25km before the intermediate sprint, which is followed by some more hilly terrain.
It's at the middle part of the stage where things start to pick up, with the first HC of the stage, the irregular Col de la Ramaz.
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After the descent to Taninges, there's a last moment of respite, with 9 flat kms between Taninges and Samoëns, at the foot of the second HC of the stage - the Col de Joux-Plane.
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Unlike Ramaz, the Col de Joux-Plane is a more regular climb, with gradients consistently over 9%, except for a small easier section in the middle of the climb. The last 6km section, averaging 9,2%, should be perfect for big moves among the GC riders willing to take a gamble - with the rest day coming right after this stage, and with climbers still having plenty of terrain to gain back in the GC after the Metz and Cambrai stages, the risk may be acceptable.
After Joux Plane's very steep descent, there's 4km of flat-ish terrain in Morzine (which includes a first pass through the finish line), before taking on the last climb of the stage, the cat.1 Joux-Verte.
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Another very regular climb, but not as steep as Joux-Plane, which could see some more action among GC contenders not willing to risk it all in Joux-Plane. The descent will be critical too; the first 8km being fairly steep and littered with technical turns, which good descenders should take advantage of to gain even more terrain of their own.
After the end of the technical descent, there's still about 5km left (first of straightforward descent, then a slight ascent followed by some flat) before the arrival in Morzine. If there are big attacks at Joux-Plane and Joux-Verte, we could see another GC shake-up here. Even if the attacks are left for Joux-Verte we could see some good gaps at the finish line. Either way, it should be a fun stage.

Rest Day 1: Morzine.

No more updates for the weekend, since I'm getting my computer fixed now. Hopefully it'll be back for next week, when I'll have time to update.
 
A tour de france stage with the Ramaz-Joux Plane-Joux Verte combo? Bring it on! :D

But seriously, I don't know how often I have mentioned that I want to see the Joux Plane-Joux Verte double and especially in this years tour de france it would have fit sooooo perfectly as the last mountain stage. I'm still happy that the aso didnt make a mtf on stage 20 but it still could have been better by adding only one single extra and completely obvious climb. :(
 
Stage 3: Eupen - Dinant, 183km

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The third stage is the queen stage of the Ronde van België and the first stage in Walloon terrain. It is by far the toughest climbing stage, and will be a proper leg breaker for those more attuned to the flatter stages; a lot of GC action is likely here because the rouleur types will need to try to limit losses and hopefully the puncheurs have time to gain (even if they do, they could lose it going forward). No fewer than 12 categorized climbs crammed into 183km here, so it's pretty constant suffering.

The idea for this one is recycled, like the last stage, from two separate ideas although both use the same idea. The first was linked to the first stage - the Leffe Museum is in the picturesque town of Dinant, on the banks of the Meuse, although the beer itself is now brewed in Leuven. The second was an idea for a one day "Tour du Condroz" race, which would start and finish in Ciney and include some of the climbs around the Meuse south of Namur, around the pre-Ardennes hills of the Condroz region, but different - tougher - ones to those in the GP de Wallonie, because the run-in would be relatively flat.

Before we get there, however, since we finished stage 2 in a Euregio city, we are starting stage 3 in the capital of the Meuse-Rhine Euregio area, which also serves as the de facto capital of the small German-speaking parts of eastern Belgium. It lies very close to the German border and also to the border with Dutch Limburg, sitting at the eastern foot of the Ardennes.

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Straight off the bat we have the climb to Barrage de la Gileppe, which features in the hilly stage of the Ster ZLM Toer at present. It's not tough as Ardennes climbs go, 2,6km at a fairly consistent 5,5%. Another fairly easy climb leads to a very early intermediate sprint in the city of Spa, famous more for the nearby Spa-Francorchamps Grand Prix circuit than cycling although it does feature annually on the route of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and its most recent involvement as a stage host was in the 2010 Tour de France; like with the Cipollini Zolder Worlds, no highlights clip - there aren't any, for this was the infamous hilly stage where several riders crashed, and Cancellara pulled rank on the péloton and made everybody wait for Andy Schleck, then they all soft-pedalled in behind Sylvain Chavanel's solo break.

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After this we have a well-known LBL climb, the Col du Maquisard which usually follows the Col du Rosier in that historic race. It's the only classic Ardennes climb we have, however, as after this it's a mostly rolling period, with the next two climbs being very gradual - I elected not to take on the Côte de la Redoute while passing Aywaille. The stage is comparatively benign from here, for a while at least, until we get to the final 75km, which are monstrous. There are 7 climbs crammed into that final 75km (well, actually 5 as two of them are repeated), starting with arguably the hardest of them all, the Côte de Lustin. This climb is seen in the GP de Wallonie, but not from this, its toughest side and one of the hardest puncheur climbs in all of Belgium, the so-called "Triple Mur de Monty", 1,9km at 9% with some brutal ramps.

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This is no fun. This will be where the pace will first be upped, I think, and the first chaff will start to be shelled. We then descend the side that is climbed in the GP de Wallonie, and a brief period of flat takes us to another difficult challenge, the Côte d'Évrehailles, which matches up to this profile. 1700m at 9,5% is again brutal; the first time we climb this there are 57km remaining, but this is probably where the key moves will be made, since it crests on its second ascent just 16km from the line. We descend into Yvoir and cross to the western bank of the Meuse, before a brief stretch of flat and then take on the Côte de Méez, which will be our last climb of the day as well as the 5th last - cresting at 44 and 3km remaining. The first 500m average 12% so attacks could well follow here if there's still a bunch of some kind together (which I'd hope there isn't when there's just 5km to go!) but it then flattens out higher up. The descent takes us straight into the finishing city, where we finish on the riverside.

The first time we hit town we then double back to go through the centre, then a sharp hairpin sends us into another candidate for the most brutal climb of the day, the Montagne de la Croix. While Dinant - like much of the Condroz area - is known for being scenic and beautiful, this is not a beautiful road. Not in the slightest.

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This beast of a road, cresting 37km from the line, should really force the selection and mean we have a small group near the front at this point. I mean, while the whole 1500m averages a shade under 10% which is brutal anyway, the first 600m average an insane 16,7%. This should tear legs apart. Descending back into town (but not crossing the prior race route), the riders are then thrown straight into a further climb, which matches up to the first 2,1km of this profile, 2,1km @ 5,5% which in comparison to Lustin, Évrehailles and Montagne de la Croix classifies as "false flat"... still, it should make it difficult for domestiques dropped on Montagne de la Croix to get back on which means riders ought to be on their own in the élite group now. A few false flat kilometres and then a very narrow and tricky descent takes us on to a copy of the last few kilometres of the circuit, including the second passage of Évrehailles with its 9,5% average gradient at 16km remaining and of course the final ascent of the Côte de Méez as the last roll of the dice if it's been held together until now. It really oughtn't be. Dinant is a stunningly beautiful city, and I want it to seem pretty special to take the win here, hence serving up a brute of a hilly stage featuring some of the under-utilized monsters of the Belgian hills.

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Well, there's a bit more to remind you of that now, then :p

Stage 4: Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure - Le Lion de Waterloo, 172km

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Stage 4 is along similar lines to stage 1, with just a small hint of the Classics before its finishing circuit, which is more about rolling terrain and cobbles. Plenty of flat cobbles here, in fact, more so than you might otherwise anticipate in Wallonie. This stage is partly recycling ideas from the GP Hoegaarden and my re-designed Paris-Bruxelles using some of the cobbles in the area south of Brussels that seem to be going unnoticed, and partly brand new ideas based around the idea of a circuit honouring a great historical monument, the defeat of Napoleon. And the subject of an Abba song, of course, but let's gloss over that one.

Before we get there, however, we start off at a place which didn't exist until over 150 years after the battle for which Waterloo is of course most famous. The Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure are a formation of artificial lakes created by a series of dams built in the 1970s, and now form the largest lakeland area in the country. They were introduced to cycling in 2012 when they hosted the national time trial championships; each year since has seen a stage circling the lakes in the Ronde van België, first with Maxim Iglinsky holding off a thinned-out chasing pack by a couple of seconds in 2013, and then two sprints won by André Greipel and Arnaud Démare. Today, however, no looping around the region; they may be scenic, but the attempts at making a selective hilly stage around them clearly didn't work. My race's GC should be pretty shaken up after the cobbles in Asse and the côtes yesterday, so the riders don't want a straight sprint stage if they have any intent on making a difference in the race.

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The first part of the stage is pretty straightforward, heading northwards towards Brussels and skirting the outside of Charleroi, which hosts the start of La Flèche Wallonne and has a reputation as one of the ugliest cities in Europe thanks to a skyline dominated by heavy industry, stained brown and with smoke billowing. Again though, no time to stay, we're headed for the bergs.

On the way though, we say hello to the Circuit de Nivelles-Baulers - since we've visited Zolder on day 2 and Spa on day 3 it seems only fair to ride past the third and last F1 circuit Belgium has produced... and also by far the worst; a dishwater dull affair looping around a former airstrip, this rather flat circuit had little chance of making a name for itself against the might of the other two - especially the beloved Spa-Francorchamps - and has fallen into disuse. It also signals when we move from the transitional part of the stage to the challenges.

The first of these is the Côte de la Fermé du Pré, a 500m cobbled berg which then yields to another kilometre of flat cobbles. I used this in both my GP de Hoegaarden and my Paris-Bruxelles as it's a sizable obstacle with both flat and hilly cobbles - perfect. After this we head northward to Braine-le-Château for another couple of obstacles I used in my Paris-Bruxelles route, the Rue des Comtes de Rubiano and the brief downhill cobbles of Rue de la Vallée. After this we head for some more famous climbing, first with the 1km at a little over 5% of Dikkemeerweg:

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This is backed up almost immediately by the more famous Alsemberg, which, back in the day, used to be a decisive climb in Paris-Bruxelles, one of its more famous and iconic spots. Of course, even before the race had been euthanized into the Brussels Cycling Classic, much of its lustre was lost, with Robbie McEwen winning this former Classics hard man's race repeatedly, for example; the climbs like the Alsemberg no longer had it in them to break the field down. Here it's more ceremonial than anything else because we then loop back south into Wallonia into the town of Waterloo proper before heading to our finishing circuit.

The first thing we do is head past the finishing line, which is on this road passing the Lion's Mound, the artificial hill which stands on the site of the legendary battle. And then we start a 17,5km circuit of cobbled pain - five separate stretches of cobbles on the circuit, totalling 6,6km of the circuit!

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Some of these cobbles are easier than others, admittedly. The first stretch is the Rue Dimont, which is about 1400m long, and then leads almost directly into the best condition cobbles of the circuit, the Rue de la Marache. This is also a pretty long sector, 1700m, so though comparatively easy, riders will struggle to stay in the gutter the whole time! This is followed by the only climb of the circuit. It's actually not as steep as that cronoescalada profile makes it seem - going from the end of the Marache cobbles to the end of the Pêque cobbles is more reasonable - so 1,2km at about 4%, but the second half being on less than enjoyable cobbles.

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Descending into Ohain we then have the short Chemin de Chaubrire, which is the Côte d'Ohain which was included in my GP de Hoegaarden. This is a gradual ascent, nothing steep but the cobbles still make it less than fun. The last time up the Chemin du Pêque crests at 11km from the line, so the last time over this will be just inside 10km to the line... and it also leads on to the longest stretch of cobbles, the almost 2km of the Chemin du Bas Ransbeck.

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Narrow and difficult, the final time over these cobbles will be a tough slog, from which we emerge with 4,8km remaining. On the plus side for any chasers, the vast majority of that final 5km is on a wide open, flat and straight road, but really with so many cobbled stretches and the fact that this finishing circuit is tackled four times, with (hopefully) the strongmen and rouleurs having time to try to win back after yesterday's puncheur odyssey, should mean that people are all over the road by this point, giving us some pretty epic racing.

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Stage 5a: Péruwelz - Ieper, 92km

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Yes, I know split stages aren't really a Ronde van België thing these days, but they do happen at the .HC level - the Critérium International most obviously, of course, and the Post Danmark Rundt, the Driedaagse de Panne-Koksijde which takes place nearby, and some years also the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque are all examples. This is also helpful because while the finishing circuits in Asse and Waterloo were difficult racing terrain with cobbles and at least in the former case notable climbs, the Hasselt stage included a similar obstacle and the 40km final loop in the Dinant stage was puncheur brutality, it's a lot harder to find such a circuit in West-Vlaanderen once you head outside the Heuvelland, so instead the "short circuit" finish will be the stage 5b time trial.

But before that, there's a short semitappe which presents a potential GC banana skin as we move back from Walloon territory to the land of the Flemings. Our starting town, Péruwelz, is a regular host of the Tour de l'Eurométropole (formerly known as the Circuit Franco-Belge) and is known for the dramatic Basilique de Nôtre-Dame de Bonsecours, which dominates the town's skyline.

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For the most part, this hard and fast short stage - which may even take barely two hours if the péloton puts the hammer down - is flat. We pass through Tournai, with its cathedral and belfry inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage sites, and its scenic and cultural centre, regarded as one of Belgium's proudest cities. There's little time to consider the cobbles of Le Samyn even though we're in Le Samyn country, we must press on.

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After this we pass through Mouscron, a city on the border with the Roubaix-Lille Métropole which has a complex cultural history and has passed from Dutch-speaking to Francophone territory as recently as the 60s. Like Péruwelz it's a regular host of the Tour de l'Eurométropole and, almost as if to reinforce its position as a Walloon city given its proximity to the Flandrian provinces and history, the Tour de Wallonie. But it is of course more famous to cycling fans because it is here that one of cycling's great characters, most complex and compelling individuals was born; one of the trifecta of mercurial tragic talents of the mid-late 90s, the great Frank Vandenbroucke. Of course, I needn't go into great detail on why Vandenbroucke is so fêted and why his story continues to attract interest and make new fans even now, six and a half years after his death; the man's career speaks for itself in that respect. Instead I shall just link to this documentary which opens up with what, despite a win in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a GC overall in Paris-Nice and other classics like Gent-Wevelgem, is his most famous performance, the 1999 Vuelta stage to Ávila when he tore apart Ullrich, Olano, Jiménez, Tonkov and Heras just for the hell of it. That stage video is 100 minutes of Frank Vandenbroucke being Frank Vandenbroucke. Enjoy. Of course, ten years on, his career was over, his reputation in tatters and his personal life had fallen apart. Turbulent relationship issues both personally and professionally, and drug problems both performance-enhancing and recreational ruined him, leaving him broke and alone, and by the end of 2009 he had died at the age of 35, long lost from the top level of the sport, and suffering a pulmonary embolism in a hotel room in Senegal.

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Here we are heading through VDB territory, staying close by the French border all the way around the the southern tip of the Heuvelland, where we are in the westernmost exclave of Wallonia, and indeed we head into the Comines-Warneton municipality, which includes the village of Ploegsteert where he was brought up. The stage has been utterly flat to this point, but if we're going to honour Frank Vandenbroucke, there has got to be a platform for attacking, so I have included a couple of Heuvelland climbs in the last 15-20km. Uncharacteristically, given I've looked to only hint at the climbs of the Flemish Ardennes or the "true" Ardennes (as opposed to the Condroz) in this race and more aim at using less well known obstacles in this cycling-mad country, I have picked some well-known ones; although that said, the Heuvelland climbs are much less numerous than the other ranges, and therefore in the races that use this area - Gent-Wevelgem, the Driedaagse de Panne-Koksijde, the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque, the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen - every climb in the region gets a mention.

The main action on the stage is going to come, inevitably, on the most famous Heuvelland climb, the savage Kemmelberg.

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With steepest gradients of over 20% on its nasty cobbles, this classic climb is of course the focal climb in Gent-Wevelgem, although here, coming just 14km from the line, it's much closer to the line than there. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, a high profile one-day classic is more of a bright spot on the palmarès than a stage of a .HC stage race so riders are more willing to take risks for it, and secondly, there's a TT this afternoon, so riders aren't going to attack 45km from home, so if we want to coax attacks that are meaningful we have to make the run-in short enough to tempt people into thinking they can gain more here than they will subsequently lose in the time trial. The climb is followed almost immediately by the Scherpenberg; the final 300m at 7,5% will be where any moves here are made, but it's an easy climb so will be more about consolidation after Kemmelberg than anything else, and leaves a fast and frenetic final 11km into the centre of Ieper/Ypres; much as Waterloo is one of the most famous Belgian cities owing to its military history, so too Ypres has an infamous reputation owing to its position of prominence as a battlefield in the horrific trench warfare of World War I that left this once - and now once again - beautiful city a wreck, and dotted the countryside around the city with those vast, solemn cemeteries to those who lost their lives in that most savage of wars. The World War history was a large part of the city's appearance on the 2014 Tour route, marking the centenary of the outbreak of that conflict. There's no greater historical reasoning behind choosing Ieper as a stage town however, it's just located close at hand (and of course always features in the Gent-Wevelgem run-in) and is sizable and historic enough to host.

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This just leads us to the final stage:

Stage 5b: Ieper - Ieper, 15,8km (ITT)

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This is a pure power ITT, an almost literal out-and-back around the surroundings of Ieper. The short-mid length is best suited to the likes of (when healthy, obviously) Adriano Malori, but Movistar tend not to ride this race; Martin has won the GC from stages like this in recent years, but can he cope with the brutal cobbles elsewhere in the race and the steep climbs of stage 3, and would Etixx back him when they have so many capable Classics engines in the team anyway?

Either way, whoever wins the Ronde van België I have designed will have proven themselves a true Classics all-rounder, with tactical nous, grit, determination, power, punch and quite probably a large dollop of luck. But there's no point where the riders can ease up as each stage has its reasons to break up the field, just in different ways.
 
Oct 4, 2015
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Got my computer back at last, so I can go back to posting my Tour.

Tour de France Stage 11: Aix-les-Bains - Alpe d'Huez, 180km
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Climbs: Champ-Laurent (10,6km @ 7,7%), Grand-Cucheron (3,8km @ 8,1%), Glandon (21km @ 7%), Alpe d'Huez (13,8km @ 8,2%)

The second week starts off with the hardest summit finish of the entire race, as well as the most famous by a mile. That's right, it's Alpe d'Huez time.
The starting town also featured the start of a well-known Alpe d'Huez stage (the 2001 stage, featuring Lance Armstrong's infamous "bluff", followed by him pretty much destroying all opposition at the final climb up the Alpe). This stage takes a different route, though.
After a hilly start, including the unrated Col du Frêne (also featured in the 2001 stage), riders keep heading south, to take on the first tough climb of the stage, the cat.1 Champ-Laurent.
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Right after Champ-Laurent there's a short descent, before taking on the last four kms of the Col du Grand-Cucheron, after which we start the actual descent into the Maurienne valley.
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After the descent, there's about 20 (mostly) flat kms along the valley, before the stage rejoins the 2001 stage route, at the foot of one of the French Alps's most well-known climbs, the Col du Glandon. With 21km at 7% (which include a flat 2km section near the middle of the climb), and the very steep final 3kms of the climb, this climb will most likely break up the peloton, even if only for a while.
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Riders will then take on Glandon's extremely irregular descent, followed by 20 flat kms until reaching the foot of the Alpe d'Huez (climbed until km 2,2 in the profile below)
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Most important attacks will probably be made at the final climb. With 13,8km at 8,2%, there's prenty of terrain to attack here. With this being the last alpine high mountain stage too, climbers will want to get as much time as possible here.
 
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Tour de France Stage 12: Le Bourg d'Oisans - Gap, 184km
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Climbs: Ornon (10,3km @ 6,2%), Sievoz (6,9km @ 4,6%), Malissol (4km @ 6,7%), Noyer (16,9km @ 4,2%), Chaillol (7,7km @ 7,5%), Manse N (5,7km @ 3,8%), Manse S (7,8km @ 6,4%)

There's still one last stage left in the Alps. and, while it may not feature high mountains, it happens to be a very tough medium mountain stage, with 8 categorized climbs overall between Le Bourg d'Oisans and Gap.
The first half of the stage features the difficult climb up the northern side of the Col d'Ornon right off the bat, followed by three easier climbs near La Mure. After the last of these climbs there's about 20km of respite, before entering the very difficult decisive half of the stage, with four climbs and little if any flat between them.
The first of these climbs is the long and irregular Col du Noyer.
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Then, we take on the toughest climb of the second half of the stage, the Col de Chaillol. Fairly regular, with 6km at 8% in the middle of the climb, more than enough to cause some heavy damage on the peloton.
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After the descent from Chaillol there's a last "easy" climb up the very shallow northern side of the Col de Manse, followed by the very fast descent into Gap... and then by a second climb up to Manse.
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There are many ways to go up the Col de Manse, with at least five "main" roads from the south (plus a few more from the north). Normally the Tour climbs up the westernmost road (which is also the widest road up) then descends down the second road from the east. This time, though, we climb through a somewhat steeper road, the third one from either side, to descend through the main road to the west. From this side the climb is fairly regular, staying around 6-7%, but with a steep middle km at almost 9%. With the climb coming so close to the end of the stage, riders looking to win the stage will try to make their moves here. Even some GC contenders looking to catch others by surprise will try something here, if they have energy left from the Alpe d'Huez stage the day before.
 
So I had a Tour all ready to go, but held off and did Belgium instead while bp92 did theirs. I was all about to start when they got their computer back; to save confusion and to keep my promise I'll therefore hold back on the Tour. While doing that somehow a whole Vuelta just came together. I have already done no fewer than six Vueltas, and yet because the real Vuelta doesn't really do all that great in terms of working with what it has at its disposal, there are still so many options I haven't utilized.

My Vueltas so far have varied in style. The first was a mish-mash of new climbs with traditional hosts, the second was a highly experimental one including the Balearic and Canary islands and the country's two North African exclaves. The third was more traditional, the fourth an experiment with a Moroccan start and a Catalan finish. The fifth was "the best medium mountain race in the world... ever!" and the most recent again reconciling these medium mountains with a more human GT, so less of the hellslopes like La Grandota, A Barranca and Fumanyà-Pradell. The last two have had almost all their major mountains up in the north of the country and utilized the lower but steeper mountain regions like Asturias and the Macizo Galaico, so it's high time we visited some areas not used in the key stages for a while. Remember, my rule is no repeat MTFs, so I cannot use any of the following as a finish:

Xorret del Catí, Haza del Lino, Monte Naranco, Fuente del Chivo, San Miguel de Áralar, Estación de Esquí Lunada, Lagunas de Neila, Font de Partagas, El Peñón de Gibraltar, Teide, Candanchú, Els Cortals d'Encamp, Alto da Torre, Costiña de Canedo, Anglirú, Puerto de la Morcuera, Cumbres Verdes, Santuário del Acebo, Lagos de Covadonga, Llac d'Engolasters, Coll de Pal, Valdelinares, Santuari de Queralt, Albergue de Ancáres, La Pandera, La Cobertoria, El Morredero.

Luckily there are still myriad possibilities, and also after a period of using short-to-mid-length climbs with brutal gradients, this time the Vuelta is going for some more traditional-styled ascents. Sometimes.

Stage 1: Salamanca - Salamanca, 8,2km (Contrarreloj por Equipos)

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With the exception of the fourth one, which started in Casablanca, all of my Vueltas have started in a historic Spanish city - Barcelona, Ávila, Santander, Sevilla and Toledo. Apart from the circuit race in Toledo they have all started with a chrono of some kind, whether individual or team. So why break with tradition? This is a super-short team time trial in one of Spain's most historic cities; I know, an 8km TTT, why bother? Certainly jens_attacks will hate it, but there's plenty to keep them happy elsewhere in the route. This should ideally mean we get a nice scenic beginning but without the time gaps being too big as we head into the next few stages.

The city of Salamanca is chosen because of its historical significance; the city's old town is a UNESCO World Heritage site, with beautiful historic monuments and buildings, cobbled streets and so on. The city also hosts the oldest university in Spain, and as a result of this twin claim to fame, students and tourism provide some of the main impetus behind its economy. With some inspiration taken from the 2012 stage 1 team time trial in Pamplona, which started from the central square, looped around the city before finishing at the city's other claim to fame, I therefore set the riders starting in the legendary Plaza Mayor, the city's central square.

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The riders will leave the square through one of those arches and then a short, narrow section through a couple of old town roads leads them out to the main beltways that encircle it; there is then a very much out-and-back loop around these roads, to allow power engines to take over. The riders pass the urban Parque de la Alamedilla before a U-turn at a roundabout just before reaching the river, at which point they return, and leave the wide open tarmac for the final run for home, which like the start of the route is technical. Gran Via is straightforward enough then there are two sharp corners, first right then left, into Plaza de Colón, then the riders have a short uphill finish on cobbles climbing in the last 500m on Calle Veracruz.

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The stage finish is at the meeting of Plaza de la Merced and Plaza Caídos, in front of the historic university buildings. A scenic place to start the Vuelta.

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Stage 2: Salamanca - Ciudad Rodrigo, 209km

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GPM:
Puerto de Perales (cat.2) 10,4km @ 5,1%

The second stage of the Vuelta is, as is so often the case in Grand Tours, a stage which is probably going to be won by a sprinter, whereas in my last couple of routes the sprinters didn't get their time to shine straight up; Vuelta #5 saw them having to survive the hilly Córdoba cicuit with the Alto del 14% like the Liquigas stage of 2011 and Vuelta #6 had a medium mountain stage there. Today we go back to a more typical GT route, although it's not the so often utilized "pan-flat with a token ascent so that somebody can wear the mountains jersey" stage from early in a GT, instead the sprinters have to be a bit more durable; this isn't a Kittel stage. Cav in his strongest days could do it but the Cav of nowadays possibly not. Bouhanni is a strong candidate, for example.

Although the stage is categorized as flat and only has the one categorized climb, there's a lot of rolling terrain as we head around the easternmost part of Castilla y León. The stage also includes the only incursion in the race into Extremadura, which hosted a couple of stages in the last route. There's not much "true" flat, especially in the middle period of the stage where there are a couple of uncategorized ascents.

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Starting in Salamanca, we head southwards towards the Sierra de Francía and the Las Batuecas area, although we aren't taking on any of the semi-famous climbs of the area (unlike stage 3 of my last Vuelta which used Las Batuecas and the Puerto de los Lobos), instead descending via this scenic road and spending much time along the valley floor of these rolling hills at the foot of the high mountains. That particular photo is from close at hand to Sotoserrano, which we pass through shortly before the halfway stage in the day's racing.

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The sierra serves as the boundary between Castilla y León, on the higher plain, and Extremadura, on the lower plain beneath it. This shift in altitude means some attractive scenery, such as the waterfall in the Las Hurdes area that we're passing through above. It's not an especially densely populated area but we should get some fabulous camera footage for the quiet part of the stage in the middle, then the cameras will pick up all of the important part if - as tends to be the case in recent years - the Vuelta only covers the last 90-120 mins of the stage. Despite there being no "true" climbs we'll be racing around towns like this so obviously there's the chance that the purer sprinters will suffer, especially if, as is often the case in Spain in August, the sun is beating down pretty aggressively.

We then have the one genuine obstacle of the day, the cat.2 Puerto de Perales. Unlike my 5th Vuelta which also had a cat.2 climb as the only one of the day on stage 2, this is far enough from the finish that it's unlikely to create too much action; it's also relatively benign as, apart from that kilometre at 8,6% at the halfway point, it's not too threatening; 10km at 5% with no true steep ramps. It's long enough to burn off some but shallow enough that it won't totally wreck the bunch, which should still have at least half the péloton in it in the run-in today. Especially as the summit is nearly 45km from the line and the roads are nice and wide.

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From here the run-in to Ciudad Rodrigo is pretty flat; mostly slightly downhill-tilted but very much flat, with a brief period of mild descent. Not really ideal for smaller groups of dropped riders chasing back on as momentum should be in favour of the bunch and there's not a sustained descent for them to make time.

I went through the recent history of Ciudad Rodrigo in La Vuelta in my more difficult stage from my last Vuelta here; the 1999 intermediate stage with the group of 20-25 led home by Jan Ullrich and the 2000 stage won by Vino and so on. In the parallel universe in which my Vueltas exist, of course, this is the second year in a row that the city has hosted the race. The run-in is a bit different this time however, as we're approaching from a different direction to in that stage (and to the real-life stages in '99 and 2000) and also should have a larger bunch so have to take that into consideration as well as we head into the historic and scenic walled city.

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Sweeping into the city from the south, the riders have two right hand corners in the last kilometre, one with about 800m to go and one at around 550m to go. Both are quite wide open and shouldn't cause major problems. The former is a roundabout onto Avenida de España, one of the city's main thoroughfares, and the latter is a shallow corner you can see at the bottom right of that picture of the city there - yes, we've found a finishing straight that takes us into the city walls; the road then slightly tilts left, to a finish just inside the walls at Plaza Mazarrasa, which you can see from the picture below is plenty wide enough for a safe sprint. And really, how awesome will it be to see the sprint opening up and the camera change to the shot from behind the finishing line and see the whole péloton sprint through this and emerge sprinting through this?

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