Stage 5a: Asunción (Velódromo Olímpico del Paraguay) - Asunción (Playa de la Costanera), 13,0km (CRI)
And so we come to the final day of racing, and as is probably no surprise to anybody, we’re heading to Asunción, by far the largest city in Paraguay. Officially only 550.000 people live in Asunción itself, but the conurbation and overall urban area extends to include other outlying towns and cities like Luque, Lambaré, Mariano Roque Alonso, San Lorenzo and Fernando de la Mora, even as far as Areguá, and the urban area therefore accounts for 2,7 million of the country’s seven and a half million inhabitants - just over a third of the country’s population, therefore, calls the Asunción metropolitan area their home.
As a result, therefore, Paraguayan urban, cultural, historical, economic and political life revolves largely around the city as you might expect. One of the oldest and most established cities in all of South America despite its seemingly remote inland location, it was the first city to be established in the Río de la Plata basin as the Spaniards worked their way southwards from the Andes, and it was from here that expeditions set out which led to the establishment of cities like Buenos Aires, Santa Fe de la Cruz and Córdoba in Argentina and Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. It is believed that its location was first settled by the conquistador Juan de Ayolas, but Asunción itself was established by the party sent to find the missing explorer who had vanished en route to finding a new route to the mines of what was then known as Alto Perú (roughly corresponding to the highland part of Bolivia). Salazar, the leader of the expedition, established a fort named Nuestra Señora Santa María de Asunción as a staging post, as the natives in the area were hospitable and accommodating so it could be fallen back on - which proved very helpful as natives soon kicked the Spanish out of some of their new planned towns and cities leading the population to swell as the pleasant fort with safe passage toward it became a haven for those Spaniards who had been displaced from their new homes by the previous occupants. The city became a major colonial centre and provisions were made to convert the local natives to Christianity in their own language.
Asunción was also the first place that saw a revolution by the
criollo and
mestizo communities against the colonial powers, a failed uprising in 1731. Although Bernardo de Velasco’s victory over the rebels at Paraguarí had succeeded in uniting Paraguay, it had not succeeded in uniting the nation
behind him, and later in 1811, the same year as his great triumph, Velasco was ambushed at his house and deposed by the independence leaders, and Juana María de Lara, the ringleader of the independence movement, proclaimed the nation of Paraguay into being by seceding from Spain. His home, from which the revolution had been planned, is now a museum known as the Casa de la Independencia.
Rapid urbanisation followed, with paved roads, schools, factories and even railroads introduced by successive presidencies Rodríguez de Francía and Carlos António López, but a lot of this progress was undone by López’ son’s disastrous provocation of the Paraguayan War; the city was occupied by the Brazilians in 1869, and they would remain there for seven years until the humiliating treaty that cost Paraguay large swathes of territory that ended it. It was one of the main cities to profit out of the late 19th Century declines of Empire, with many Ottoman Turks and other minorities from the area arriving in the country and catalysing urban redevelopment. One of the main urban parks is named for Carlos António López in honour of the largely lost development that he brought to the city. With the coming of aviation, Asunción was able to return to competitive status, but having fallen well behind the coastal cities for international trade in the intervening period and the oppressive policies of the Stroessner regime, Paraguay was always playing catch-up compared to Montevideo, Buenos Aires and other major cities of the region. In recent years this trend is being reversed, with favourable tax policies attracting overseas investment to the country, with Paraguay ranked as one of the best countries in the entire Latin world for investors, and a rapid improvement in the economic situation in the 2010s. Low prices relative to the rest of Latin America have started to attract retail tourism, and the well-preserved nature of the colonial architecture has brought tourism from outside South America in as well.
Palácio de los López, the seat of government in Paraguay
The city is also, pretty predictably, the heart of sport in Paraguay.
Estádio Defensores del Chaco is the national stadium, mainly configured for soccer as it is where the national team play (and has hosted the final of the Copa América in 1999), and has a capacity of 42.000 - this was previously over 50.000, but reprofiling for safety reasons has reduced the total - but other stadia for major teams are dotted all over the city, with Defensores del Chaco, which has no permanent club tenant, often stepping in as a de facto ground for large fixtures between teams in the Asunción metropolitan area where demand for seating would be at a premium, or when Paraguayan teams host large or attractive fixtures in the Copa Libertadores or Copa Sudamericana. The main team in the area is
Club Olímpia, Paraguay’s most historic and successful team, but
Club Libertad,
Guaraní,
Nacional de Asunción and
Cerro Porteño mean there is a healthy amount of major rivalry around Asunción. Also notice how Tigo - an offshoot of Luxembourgish telecommunications firm Millicom - sponsor nearly all of these teams, with a dominant market share in Paraguay.
We’re not so interested in the football stadia, however, as we are starting off at the national Olympic complex, Secretaría Nacional de Deportes. This large Parque Olímpico cluster is close to Asunción airport and technically speaking is in Luque although well within the Asunción urban sprawl, and played host to the majority of the events at the 2022 Juegos Suramericanos. This is a large complex with a number of indoor arenas, stadia, swimming pools etc. to create a full national sporting academy AND elite international venues. The national Olympic stadium was renovated for the competitions, while sports which were part of the program but underrepresented in Paraguay saw venues constructed. SND Arena was inaugurated in 2018 to provide a high quality indoor arena that could host sports like handball, basketball, volleyball, futsal and in-line skating (surprisingly popular as a participation sport in South America, makes you wonder whether speed skating could be rejuvenated with a venue or two), while crucially for our sport, a brand new velodrome - the first international standard indoor velodrome in the country - was constructed as part of the complex as well - and it is at this venue that we will start our final day’s work, with a short ITT in the morning which departs from the velodrome.
While the track events of the Juegos Suramericanos were held at the velodrome, the road events were held on the Avenida Costanera, which as its name suggests is a coastal thoroughfare which runs along the banks of the Río Paraguay and the Bahía de Asunción. You can see it in the foreground on the left of the cityscape photo above, in fact. It was the site of Paraguay’s great cycling triumph, in fact - with Colombia absolutely decimating the track competition and dominating most disciplines, Paraguay got a great boost when home athlete Agua Marina Espinola upset the favourites to take gold in the time trial, beating Lina Hernández of Colombia and mythical climber Lilibeth Chacón of Venezuela by almost a minute over 27,7km.
My TT is nothing like as long as that - it would totally overbalance a race with only a 2km HTF and one hilly stage - so I have gone with a pretty straightforward route from the velodrome to the Playa de la Costanera, maybe not by the most direct route, but by the quickest in terms of major routes with the minimum of disruption to a major capital city. We head via the Botanical Gardens toward the recently constructed
Puente Heróes del Chaco, before then following the coastal dual carriageway through the river wetlands reserve to the Bahía de Asunción where we finish at the Playa de la Costanera, on the Avenida José Asunción Flores, named for the great composer and songwriter who established the “Guaranía” genre of music, after being inspired to establish a variety of music that would uniquely synthesise the Spanish and wider Latin American styles with the native music of Paraguay, to distinguish it from the other regional varieties in South America at the time. It is distinguished by European-influenced accordion parts alongside melancholic chords and slow but propulsive rhythms driven by the style of playing the melodic instruments rather than percussion. It became popular for patriotic purposes and was widely disseminated during the Chaco War, and in 1944 Flores’ song
India was declared the Paraguayan national song. Flores however declined the National Order of Merit in 1949 in response to the killing of a student at a peaceful protest by governmental forces, and he was exiled from the country under Stroessner as a “national traitor” as a result. Although his music was banned, it remained widely disseminated as so many copies had been sold in the 1930s and 40s, but he never saw his homeland again, living in Buenos Aires until his death in 1972. In 1991, following the ousting of Stroessner, his remains were repatriated back to Paraguay and entombed in a square bearing his name.
My hope is that the time gaps in the race will not have grown so large that the TT cannot be decisive, but also that the TT being short will incentivise the stronger climbers to really make a big deal of stage 4 to put the flatter engines out of contention.
Stage 5b: Asunción (Playa de la Costanera) - Asunción (Playa de la Costanera), 104km
So, the time trial finished at the Playa de la Costanera, so I should give a bit of background on the reason for this as a location, since I am now finishing the race outright with a short, flat semitappe which is essentially a circuit race that starts and finishes at the same location as the ITT in the morning did.
The main reason is that this shoreline boulevard was the location of the 2022 Juegos Suramericanos road race, however sadly I was unable to locate footage of the races, other than
this short clip of the women’s road race finish. As with a few of these limited entry championship races, the small field and difference in levels between athletes results in more competitive races over such short or featureless circuits than might otherwise be the case (as cases in point see the Commonwealth Games RR in Delhi in 2010, or the European Games RR in Baku in 2015); the women’s race was only 82km in length and was settled by a group of six who escaped; Paraguay’s hopes were dashed with nobody making the selection and in fact Venezuela were the only team with two (neither of whom was Chacón!!!), which helped them to victory as Jennifer César won the sprint ahead of Colombian prospect Lina Marcela Hernández and now-European-based Chilean Aranza Villalón, while the men’s race over 164km was also won by Venezuela in the same fashion, this time from a somewhat larger group that splintered down late on and so the sprint was from a group of 5 where the Venezuelans were the best represented, with Caja Rural’s fast-finishing Orluís Aular victorious ahead of veteran Uruguayan Roderyck Ascóneguy; Leangel Linárez was able to hold on for bronze after leading Aular out, meaning Nelson Soto of Colombia - who lost his spot at Caja Rural when Aular was signed - was relegated to 4th.
Victory for Venezuela!
As you can see from the above photo, in the Juegos Suramericanos the city was to the riders’ right at the finish so they must have been headed eastbound. I am not doing that, because it would have either overbalanced the TT, or caused me to have to manually map the last stage in its entirety because of using the wrong side of the road, and frankly I couldn’t be bothered to do that for a circuit race. I have therefore placed the finish on the shoreline side of the road, adjacent to the Playa de la Costanera, the city’s main beach, a sandy expanse that runs along the Bahía de Asunción and offers a wide range of activities; with Paraguay being landlocked like it is, this shoreline beach and the width of the Río Paraguay at this point (maybe not akin to the St. Lawrence in my Tour de Québec, but wide enough to feel like a genuine shoreline even if there is no tide) and the tranquility of the lagoon, has become a major getaway and meeting spot for the great and good of Asunción. The Avenida José Asunción Flores runs along a brand new esplanade - completed in 2012 - and cafes, facilities providing Watersport activities and other amenities have sprung up along the shoreline as a result.
My circuit is much shorter than that which was seen in the Juegos Suramericanos; it is just a 6,9km circuit, rather than extending out as far as the Puente Heróes del Chaco, instead effectively serving as an out-and-back with its easternmost extent at the
Rotonda Costanera and its westernmost extent at the
Puerto de Asunción river port, from which passenger river trips that connect parts of the country and also connect Asunción with the wider continent, as well as freight and cargo, depart and arrive. However rather than being a pure out-and-back on the esplanade, on the western end of the circuit we do circle around the Palácio de los López in order to showcase some of the history of Asunción as well as its modern development; we then descend back to the shoreline at Plaza España - this enables us to use the spacious car parks on Avenida Río Ypané and the unused section of the eastbound carriageway of Avenida José Asunción Flores between Plaza España and the Puerto de Asunción to host team buses, podiums, and all of the other trappings of a race. You can see from
this picture what I mean here - we will ride up the right hand side at the start of the circuit, loop around a block and arrive back on the shoreline from the road on the left, affording the car park on the left and the left hand side of the esplanade carriageway for logistics.
Finish on the right hand carriageway here, probably using that widening in the middle ground as a location for the logistical needs of the finishing line
This will, basically, be a short and very flat circuit race. I’ve put in three intermediate sprints because I’ve put three intermediate sprints in all road stages; with 3, 2 and 1 seconds at each intermediate and 10 seconds for the win, in theory if you had somebody who could sprint who is also a pretty useful time triallist then maybe they would have a chance to use the 19 seconds of bonuses available here to overturn losses from stages 3 and 4, but most likely this will be a parade at the top end of the GC at least (some places might be up for grabs lower down I guess).
So there you have it - a five stage race, with the last day including two semitappes, which will hopefully offer a nice range of options for the riders; three likely sprints, two of which (the first and last stages) should be specialised to pure sprinters, and the third has that 700m at 6% ascent close to the line which gives us a bit of prospect for classics-types to succeed, or alternatively for the stage to suit a more versatile, stronger sprinter than the pure power guys. Then we have a short-to-mid-length ITT, and two hilly stages, one of which features short and very steep (and cobbled) climbing, the other features more conventional and less challenging, but much more frequent, climbing. Time gaps in this race ought to be relatively small so there ought to be something to play for all the time except possibly arguably the final circuit race - and hopefully, of course, it can help Paraguay capitalise on the investment that they have had to make in the sport as part of their commitments in hosting the South American Games, and make it worth their while. They’ve got a world class velodrome now so they can look to produce more successful track cyclists - let’s see what they can do about the road now.
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