Nordic Series 28: Planica
I’ve covered a lot of venues throughout the Alps in my Nordic Series (I nearly said Alpine venues, but of course that’s then a double meaning, and that in and of itself automatically creates a certain ambiguity in that, well, an Alpine venue is the precise opposite of what these entries are about, from a skiing context!), through France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria. I’ve yet to go the German side of the Alps, but then there’s only a small number of venues that fit in the Alps in Germany, and in the case of Garmisch-Partenkirchen I’ve already used it in both a Giro and a Deutschlandtour route anyway.
But though I’ve done two Tours de Slovénie, and my first attempt at a Giro d’Italia visited the country, I haven’t gone into Slovenia for my Nordic Series yet. Which is pretty strange really, as I love the country, it is beautiful, it is scenic, it has some interestingly-located Nordic and biathlon venues, and it is very viable for use in pro racing. While places like Mora and Nizhny Tagil are way off the beaten track, and Otepää and Pyeongchang-Alpensia only have one viable race to go near them, and that seldom does, the fact that Slovenia is such a small country and is located off of Austria and Italy means that there are a few races that could feasibly cross the border to visit a Slovenian stage host. It has appeared in the Giro in the past, of course. Slovenia also has a deepening cycling interest; it has always been a cycling country, and was by far the largest cradle of the sport during the Yugoslavia days. But since independence, for the most part the riders created by Slovene cycling have been sprinters or ATVs. Although a few riders with good climbing skills have shown up on the scene, like Tadej Valjavec or Janež Brajkovič, Slovenia has never come to the forefront of the World Tour - or its predecessors - until now, with Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič taking 3 of the last 4 Grand Tours and 5 of the podium spots across them too. At the same time as this, it came to my attention (how could it not?) that the 2019 Giro d’Italia stage to Antholz-Anterselva was conjured up as an idea in order to promote the 2020 Biathlon World Championships.
These factors all convene to make Planica a really convenient potential place to host cycling. The famous venue has recently been reconfigured to improve its cross-country facilities, which has enabled it to win the right to host the 2023 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, which take in Ski Jumping, Cross-Country and Nordic Combined. As a result the venue and its amenities have been improved significantly, making it easily have the space and resources to host a major bike race. Hosting the Nordic Worlds in the near future at the same time as Slovenia has two of the best riders on the planet makes it a perfect cross-marketing opportunity, and that’s before we get to the fact that Primož Roglič was a ski jumper, which you’d be forgiven for not knowing, since it seldom gets mentioned. Although, if the organisers are hoping to get Rogla to show up, this mightn’t be the best venue to choose, since this was where his famous career-ending crash took place. However, with Planica being in a valley just off of the small village of Rateče, it is convenient for a number of races, given that it is literally the first village you will pass through in Slovenia after crossing the Italian-Slovene border near Tarvisio, and from Austria it is one village over from the first one you will meet after entering the country via Wurzenpass/Korensko Sedlo. If Planica were to be interested in hosting a bike race, it would be of good value to the Giro d’Italia, the Österreich Rundfahrt, the Tour de Slovénie, the Adriatica-Ionica Race, plus potentially the Girobio and even the Giro Rosa, which started with two stages in Slovenia in 2015.
Back where it all began
Although there have long been cross-country trails in Planica, the presence of the nearby Pokljuka plateau with its network of trails and its world-class biathlon facility has meant that actual FIS competition-homologated trails in Planica are a relatively recent development. However, this is the cradle of ski jumping in Slovenia, a country which goes crazy for the sport like no other save for Poland. And Slovenia also has a great history of ski flying, with a lot of their bigger names being people like Robert Kranjec who garnered reputations as flying specialists, who would be ever better the bigger a hill got. And that’s largely because they cut their teeth at Planica. Ski jumping has been contested in the valley since the early 1930s, and in 1934 the original flying hill, Bloudkova Velikanka, was completed. At the time, a K-80 was the largest that the FIS would allow, so the concept of ski flying was introduced for the K-106 slope that was proposed and constructed. That hill lasted until the early 2000s, before being rebuilt in 2012, and is now a fairly standard Large Hill competition jump of HS138. In the 1930s, however, that was
monolithic. It was here that Josef Bradl broke the 100m barrier for the first time in the sport’s history, in 1936. In 1980, it was the host of the first ever round of the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup, and hosted a round every year until 1998.
However, overlooking Bloudkova Velikanka, at the end of the 1960s, it was decided that a new, larger hill was required. The size of the traditional hill was no longer so spectacular and distances were growing ever longer. The Yugoslavians had their point of legend, that they had hosted the first 100m jump, and they wanted to see if they could win the race to 200m too. Letalnica bratov Gorišek (named for its architects and engineers, the Gorišek brothers) and they were bidding for the Ski Flying World Championships, which they won in 1972. A K-153 hill - enormous at the time - was inaugurated, but by the time of the championships it had already been enlarged to K-165. It was the main focus of the Werner Herzog documentary on the Swiss jumper Walter Steiner,
die große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner as the amateur ski jumper, a woodcarver by trade, went on a quest to hold the world record at the monster of Planica.
By 1985, the hill was a monstrous K-185, and it hosted the World Ski Flying Championships with over 150.000 spectators cramming into the valley to watch three World Records fall, as first Mike Holland of the USA, and then Matti Nykänen - twice - flew further than a man had ever done before. By the end of the championships the record was 191m, and FIS threw a spanner in the works of Planica’s operators by announcing the they would not recognise jumps above this distance and reworking the scoring system, for safety reasons given the risks jumpers were taking in pursuit of records (although Piotr Fijas recorded a 194m jump in Planica when the World Cup competed on the flying hill for the first time in 1987, which counted as a record distance but did not garner any points above 191m due to the regulations). In 1994, however, advances in technique and adaptation to the scoring system meant this rule could be relaxed, and when the Ski Flying World Championships were held in Planica that year, Andreas Goldberger duly obliged the eager organisers with a 202m jump, only to have to put his hands down to stabilise on landing, invalidating the jump. Only a few minutes later, however, Toni Nieminen successfully landed after flying for 203m, meaning the Slovenes were the home of true distance ski jumping, with both the hundred metre and two hundred metre barriers being broken on their soil. From the late 90s, spurred by the success of Primož Peterka, ski jumping went from being a popular sport in Slovenia to a national passion, and the World Cup was moved from the now rather passé large hill to the flying hill on a permanent basis (save for one year when the flying hill was being reprofiled to make it even larger - successive enlargements have seen it increased to HS225 and now to HS240, making it the second largest hill in the world). In 2015, the entirety of the modern Planica Nordic Centre was opened for the first time, making this the only centre in the world with no fewer than
eight ski jumps. Beginning with Birger Ruud’s 92m record in 1934, Planica has seen the World Record distance increased on its slopes 38 times between the two largest jumps, plus a further 19 record distances invalidated for touches or falls. The most recent of these was in March 2018, when Gregor Schlierenzauer tied the world record but crashed on impact. Since the reprofiling, there is now a zipline you can take over the flying hill in summer to experience the, well, experience that is ski jumping. For those less daredevil, you can always check the video below, as Jurij Tepeš shows us how it’s done:
So… that’s how it is for ski jumping. How is it for cycling? Well, it’s… not very difficult. Turning south from Rateče on the road through the Gorenje (Carniola) valley from Kranjska Góra to Tarvisio (which continues on within Slovenia to Jesenice and Kranj after passing to the north of Lake Bled), you go downhill for a couple of hundred metres to cross the river Sava, there are about 500m at about 2,5%, and then there’s about 1400m at 5%. And that’s it. Nothing more. It’s potentially good for puncheurs if there’s tough climbs beforehand, but it’s an uphill sprint of 60 or more people if it’s the only obstacle. Gradients are largely unthreatening, though the last 100m gets up to 8-9%. But that’s OK - because it means riders will have to look elsewhere to make a difference.
Proposal #1: Kranj - Planica, 228km
A three-country special for the Tour de Slovénie here, which would work as a final stage for any action to take place after a mountaintop finish, though it would need to be somewhere logical for a following stage to begin in Kranj I guess, which would suggest Krvavec, a ski resort which hosted the race three years running from 2008 to 2010 (won by Jure Golčer, Simon Špilak and Vincenzo Nibal) but hasn’t been seen in a decade. Nevertheless, a stage there to set up my Kranj - Planica stage would make for a great final weekend for the race. I’ve gone with all cat.2 climbs on this one because I used the Giro profiles, not because the climbs necessarily class as that easy - they would likely be mostly cat.1 climbs in the Tour de Slovénie. This is a long and winding stage that takes in four major climbs - I could have skipped the first two and instead gone over Passo Vršič north, but that would yield a stage some 60km shorter, but with Vršič being 80km from the finish, not all that much more likely to generate racing from distance, as well as the route I’ve gone for enabling less repetition in routes, making the early part of the stage tougher plus adding more distance to create legs that are more tired for the latter part of the stage.
The first part of the stage involves travelling along the Carniola Valley to the tourist magnet city of Bled, on the impossibly scenic lake of the same name. From here we trace some roads I know well, as we take the easy side of the climb up to Rudno Polje, on the Pokljuka plateau. This is the road that the shuttle buses take to take fans from Bled to the plateau if you go to watch the Biathlon World Cup at Pokljuka. The bus drivers are so used to these roads that even in the dead of winter they can happily sling the buses, jam packed with drunken Germans, round the lacets while answering their phones. Why not, ey? Either way, the climb is not the most dangerous you’ll ever see; we climb
this ascent as far as the junction for Bohinjska Bistrica - the rest of the climb is the false flat from the plateau to the biathlon stadium. The main body of the climb is the 9km @ 6,5% from Zatrnik to the pass. We then take a two-stepped descent to the shores of Lake Bohinj, less heralded than Bled but in actuality hardly any less scenic. Lakes and mountains - I’m a sucker for them.
This leads into the
more challenging northern face of Bohinjsko Sedlo. 13km at 5,9% is very much cat.1 territory, but given the Giro likes to give cat.2 to climbs like Passo Tonale when they’re a long way out I was stingy here. But with that last 4,5km averaging almost 9%, this one does have a case for being reclassified as a cat.1. This takes us into a long loop around the Soča Valley (the Valle d’Isonzo to Italians) via Kobarid (Caporetto to Italians, known for a 1917 battle immortalised by Ernest Hemingway in
A Farewell to Arms before we head towards Slovenia’s hardest single climb, the brutal Mangart.
Mangart is a dead end, though, so we skip away from that and cross the border into Italy via Predelsko Sedlo, or the Passo del Predil as it is better known, via its tougher Slovenian side which crests 47km from home.
The last 6,5km average nearly 8% before a gradual easing downhill into Tarvisio, which hosted the Winter Universiade in 2003 and so is a viable future location for investigation in the Nordic Series - the biathlon was held at Forni Avoltri, which I’ve already looked at, but the cross-country and ski jumping (and by proxy the Nordic Combined) were in Tarvisio itself. You
could turn eastward in Tarvisio to head for the border, cross over into Rateče and straight to Planica, which would leave the summit of Predil around 25km from the finish, but I thought that that would not result in much prior action because there would by proxy need to be a long amount of flat before Predil due to the features of that valley, so for the stage I was designing that was not the target. Instead we continue to head downhill through Coccau Valico into Austria, where we head towards Villach until Riegersdorf (sadly Dreiländereck is not paved on both sides), where we turn north over Wurzenpass/Korensko Sedlo, a genuine cat.2, a lopsided climb with some serious,
serious ramps on this northern side including the steepest kilometre averaging a La Camperona-tastic 16%, and cresting just 10km from the line.
After this, there’s just a 6km descent, a couple of kilometres heading along the valley westwards to Rateče and then the gradual uphill to Planica.
Proposal #2: Kranj - Planica, 181km
More border hopping, but we’re reversing the order here, and also including no fewer than four border crossings, beginning and ending in Slovenia, with a visit to Austria, returning to Slovenia, then visiting Italy and returning once more. There’s a bit of scaling up of the major climbs, but also moving the most selective ones further from home. Could this work as a last mountain stage the same as proposal #1? Not sure, but there is definitely the opportunity to do so.
This proposal moves over into Austria via a cat.2 border-hopping climb of Loiblpass, known to Slovenes as Ljubelj, via its easier southern side. This side ends with a 2km tunnel at the summit before a two stepped descent back down into Austria. We then spend a long stretch along the valley of the Drau river (Drava in Slovene), one of the longest tributaries of the Donau, before turning south to cross Wurzenpass as we did at the end of proposal #1. Instead of turning right in Podkoren to go directly toward Planica, however, we instead turn left at the end of the descent into the Alpine ski resort of Kranjska Gora. This enables us to take on that most famous of Slovene climbs, the legendary Prelaz Vršič, Passo della Moistrocca, Werschetzpass, call it what you will (it has passed into cycling parlance by the mixed title of “Passo Vršič” in the main, and has been a major mountain in the Tour de Slovénie on more occasions than any other. Pretty much every tracer knows this one.
From the south, it backs on to Planica near perfectly, but here we’re headed in the opposite direction. The north side of Prelaz Vršič has a final 10km at 7,7% and
the final 6km are at 9,3% with the final 1500m at 11%. 71km remain at the summit, but with Korensko Sedlo and this backing directly onto one another, it is definitely possible that in a short stage race, on the last day of the race (or at least the last
decisive day of the race, remembering Fuglsang on the Großglockner a few years ago), there could be some action seen. After this, we descend down into the Soča valley and rejoin the previous stage to continue through Log pod Mangartom and over the Passo del Predil to Tarvisio. This time, however, we do hang a right in Tarvisio to cross back over to Slovenia, which we enter with just 3,5km remaining - bearing in mind there’s 2,2km of the climb up to Planica, that’s how close Rateče is to the border. There’s also an uncategorised kilometre at 7% which ends 6km from the line, so that could be another spanner in the works, as the road from Tarvisio to Rateče is frustratingly uneven for those who have been going all out. Passo del Predil crests 25km from home and after that, save for the first couple of kilometres after the summit, there’s not really much to relax at all - it’s either up or down, seldom flat at all.
Proposal #3: Lienz - Planica, 197km
Very, very early in the Nordic Series project, when I’d only just started posting these, railxmig posted a few suggestions and ideas for the project, which were enumerated in
this post. Planica was one of four venues tackled or with suggestions provided for in that post, and railxmig came to the conclusion that the easy solution was to put the punchy climb up to Planica after a descent of the southern side of Prelaz Vršič. Which, to be honest, it is. I’ve done a few different routes to arrive at that finale, but felt no need to be too repetitious with things like Pokljuka and Bohinjsko Sedlo like in proposal #1, or alternatively do something resembling
this Tour de Slovénie stage I posted in 2015, but run in reverse.
In the end, I’ve come from Austria, so as to take over a few major climbs that we haven’t seen much of in major races; Lienz makes this a feasible Giro stage as it has hosted the race on a few occasions lately as well, most notably to return to Italy after the Großglockner MTF in 2011, arriving at the summit of the mighty Monte Zoncolan, a role it had also had in 2007. Even before the conversion into the Tour of the Alps it regularly hosted the Giro del Trentino, and it also frequently hosts the Österreich Rundfahrt, so we aren’t breaking too much with realism here.
This stage takes in a few little-heralded beasts. The first is the Passo di Pramollo, better known worldwide by its Austrian name, Naßfeldpass. The Italian side of the climb is 13km at 7,5% with 7km at almost 9% in the middle of it, but the Austrian side is
11,2km at 8,2%, the last 10km are at 8,6% and there’s a 5km at 10% section in the middle. This backs directly onto the 7,3km at 6,8% Sella di Cereschiatis, because I
could have gone direct to the Passo del Predil and done a whole section of the last stage in reverse, but you already saw that. Instead, let’s go for the monstrous Sella Carnizza.
You can see video of the Sella Carnizza
here - it’s 7km at 10,2%, but that only tells part of the story because this is one out of Javier Guillén’s dreams - or it would be if there was room for a finish at the summit, at least. We know Guillén doesn’t like descending or having to
think about his designs. The last 4km of this average 13% - successive kilometres are at 12,2%, 15,1%, 10,5% and 14,4%. Very, very unpleasant. This crests 77km from the line, though, before a long rumble through the Soča valley; as a result these are more here for showcase purposes, because the main event is the Slovenian beast that comes at less than 20km from the line.
Yup, a long, long valley drag, but then the last 10km average 9%, a very serious challenge which could serve as a genuine high mountain challenge in even the Giro d’Italia (which it has surprisingly never been seen in, although should RCS wish to tempt Pogačar or Roglič to give up their ambitions in France for a shot at the Corsa Rosa now that their legacies are established - remember Rogla had yet to win a Grand Tour when he capitulated in the Giro - then this could well be a finale they look at as an attraction for the Slovene audience, especially once crowds are allowed back on the roadside and we don’t have this careful locking off of mountaintops for security / health reasons like we saw at the Vuelta in 2020. I included this side of the climb in a stage into Kranjska Gora in my Trka Kroz Bivšu Jugoslaviju route, one of my favourite projects I’ve ever undertaken in this thread, and described it thus:
Under the watchful eye of Slovenia's national emblem, the three-peaked Triglav mountain, this 1611m pass is a strip of winding tarmac with occasional sections on smooth, well-aligned cobbles, along a ribbon known as Ruska cesta ("Russian Road") in honour of the forced labourers captured from Russian forces at the Battle of Isonzo, who constructed the road over an old, destroyed trade route at the behest of the Austro-Hungarian forces. It's a beast, and is the hardest climb of the race not considered to be HC. That is mainly because it is only 11km or so in length as a 'real' climb; another couple of kilometres at 8% and we'd really be in business, Alpe d'Huez style. By using the Coeficiente APM, we arrive at a difficulty rating of 242 for the final 11km; the PRC guys often use 240 or 250 as the cut-off for HC, so you know we're talking toughness here.
I would say that the closest comparison to Vršič from the Trenta valley that cycling fans may be more familiar with would be the Col de Menté by its harder, western face. In fact, in its characteristics from each side the Slovene monster resembles the Pyrenean challenge. The gradient is relatively consistent but it is consistently steep, being mostly around the 9% mark; coming off an almost complete cold open, in order to make this count, riders will want to have their teams hammer the tempo right from the bottom, and shed as many people as possible to prevent riders from catching back on on the descent into Kranjska Gora. Vršič was a common climb in the Tour of Yugoslavia, signalling the entry into the Gorenjska region when the race was spending time in the north of the country, and although its thunder has been stolen somewhat by the Rogla climb over near Maribor in recent years, that tradition was carried on by the Tour de Slovénie where instead of as a pass it was used as a mountaintop finish, such as for example in this 2013 stage which was won by Croat veteran Radoslav Rogina, the most recent summit finish there. Back through the 90s and early 2000s it was an annual queen stage extravaganza, with winners including Jure Golčer and pre-fame Przemysław Niemiec, and, most notably, in 2007 a young Italian upstart by the name of Vincenzo Nibali.
In recent years, being usurped by Rogla and with Gorenjska focusing more of its regional sports funding towards its multitude of wintersport needs, the climb has fallen off the menu; it has also somehow never been climbed in the few times the Giro d'Italia has been in the vicinity, which is a strange oversight. Nevertheless, the fact that it has fallen from favour makes it all the more interesting to include here, especially as it's in that sort of role of sorting the contenders from the pretenders without completely annihilating the field (which is why it's effectively a one-climb stage). The descent is also technical - very technical in fact, including scores of hairpin bends, lacets, twists and turns, so while it's very possible that the favourites may lay down their arms on the way down the climb, for those who are dropped to make it back to the others will take some effort that they probably would rather not expend. The first part of the descent is quite steep but it becomes more gradual, though while the road is sufficiently wide to take safely the cornering doesn't let up and continues all the way to the outskirts of the finishing town.
We extend the distance to the finish but not enough to really stop the climb from being important to the outcome - there’s about 6km of flat, just under, from Kranjska Gora to Rateče and then the 2km climb to Planica - so really, plenty of opportunity for it to still count. I can’t really see the extra few kilometres killing the action when the climb is this severe.
Proposal #4: Ljubljana - Planica, 140km
This one would be more of a mid-race kind of stage for the Tour de Slovénie, a slightly odd stage design with the difficult climbing placed mid-stage and only easy ones later on. It’s a Javier Guillén type of stage, in some respects, but it’s also something akin to something you might see in a smaller Spanish 2.1 kind of stage race, with tough climbs early on to try to put domestiques out the back door, before smaller obstacles later, designed so that gaps are not that big, but the leaders have to work on their own on the closing climb(s).
Bohinjsko Sedlo via Zali Log is a more interesting southern side of the climb than the more conventional Podbrdo side. This consists of a final 9,5km at 7,3%, with a steep first stretch of 2,7km at 8,3% into Spodnja Sorica, before a steadier final 5-6km. Then we descend into Bohinjska Bistrica via the route climbed in proposal #1, and then we climb up to Pokljuka. Instead of using the multi-stepped main road ascent on the 905 through Gorjuše, we can take one of two steeper routes through smaller roads connecting villages on the way to the plateau (we categorise as far as the village at Goreljek, as the last couple of kilometres of the route to the biathlon stadium is both a: very gradual, and b: a dead end). The more conservative option is
this route profiled by Quäl dich - which amounts to 11,7km @ 6,5% including a 2,2km at 9,6% stretch near the top - or, my personal preference, the side which goes through the village of Podljelje through a monstrous stretch of 3,3km at 11,3%, before joining partway through that super steep stretch mentioned above for 1900m at 8,8% later on in the climb. It’s 11,0km @ 6,9%, and it crests 58km from home before a few kilometres’ downhill false flat and a descent of the side of the climb from the first proposal.
This descent takes us into Krnica, but instead of continuing directly down the Radovna valley that we are shortly to head down, we take a little detour to Spodnje Gorje, which allows us to descend to the Radovna river at the entrance to one of the area’s finest tourist attractions, the Vintgar gorge. This lush walkway through a scenic gorge is open through the summer with beautifully mineral-rich water running through the valley and, if you’re ini decent shape, it’s easily walkable there and back from Bled or Radovljica. There’s an auberge or two at the southwestern entrance if you need a beer or two and a
Blejski Kremšnita to fuel the return trip, anyway. It is closed in winter, but in mild winters, some parts of it are passable if you’re daring (or indeed foolhardy) enough to ignore the warnings.
This then enables us to take a narrow, punchy ascent of 2,8km at 5,6% to Zgornje Laze, but that’s only part of the story, as ramps get up to 11-12% and the middle part is a kilometre at nearly 9%. We then head along the
Radovna valley on slightly uphill false flat for around 15km before a short steep jump up to Kosmačko Sedlo, marked with the village of Zgornja Radovna, a 1,2km at 7% puncheur climb 24km from the line, before descending into the Gorenje valley from Mojstrana towards the Italian border. This is a bit longer than the run from proposal #3 as we have 12-13 kilometres before we reach Kranjska Gora. As a result this is a route more likely to result in an uphill sprint at Planica, but the steep gradients from the earlier climbs should hopefully minimise the effectiveness of trains here. And hopefully give us something more exciting than your usual mass start men’s distance race in modern XC, at least when the Norwegians are slowing the pace at the front in the hope Johannes Høsflot Klæbo can sit in, then run in his painfully unattractive style up the final climb or outsprint a tactically inept Aleksandr Bolshunov at the last…
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