Well, now time for a novel one: a design which isn’t complete fantasy but isn’t working on established ground either; a resurrection of an old, no longer extant race but also an element of
doing requests. I’ve been working on a lot of design ideas around Latin America lately, with their various smaller but passionate scenes of cycling. This is a race that I’ve had a lot of thoughts about for several years but never got something properly together on, and it’s also tying in to an idea that was floated in the thread by another, to see if any of the regular traceurs was interested in trying to put it together. And, having had a go at the Vuelta a la Independencia Nacional, and having had some Puerto Rican stage racing ideas in my mind as well following on from the progression of Abner González to the World Tour a few years ago, my mind was once more turned to the Caribbean region. And a race which hasn’t run for several years but had a long and honourable history - which also ties in to one of my particular cycling interests, that being the parallel history of cycling beyond the Iron Curtain. Of course, with those points in mind, there could be only one race of which I talk.
Libertine, Any chance of a hilly race(s) in Cuba?
Yup, we’re having a go at the Vuelta a Cuba. I mean, it’s not really doing requests when Zam has, in the time since making that request, gone through about four different account names on the forum, and we’ve all grown older by, well, about a decade. And after all, I’ve got a great fascination for the Eastern Bloc cycling world and have proven myself adept at Communist hagiography on a few races recently (HTV Cup, Tour of Sichuan, Ehemaliger DDR-Rundfahrt, Kroz Trka Bivšu Jugoslaviju). Cuba’s idiosyncratic and unusual history as well as its vibrant and individual cultural impact on the outside world has meant that this elongated island, the largest of the Greater Antilles, retains a significant fascination for many in the West in and of itself, whether that be with a rose-tinted, glamorous image patterned after its time spent as a haven for the American jet set in the first half of the 20th Century, of classic iced cocktails and cigars, or with the kind of revolutionary fervour of burgeoning left wing thinkers who are in love, if not with the regime it fathered, then at least with the spirit of revolution, as the millions of Che Guevara T-shirts and posters in circulation can attest; still others are enticed by the glimpse into the past with the 1950s “yank tanks” roaming the streets and the traditional fusion of music that was depicted in
Buena Vista Social Club. Cuban dance and music has moved with the times perhaps more than many other aspects of life on the island since the revolution, and remains vibrant and popular, and beloved of crate-diggers and Latin music specialists all over the world. Meanwhile, the enduring popularity of classic Cuban cocktails such as the daiquiri, along with the hipster adoption of the mojito and the internationalisation of Cuban rum brands, mean that the iconography and style of Cuba has become a popular theme for bars, clubs and discotheques across the globe, albeit patterned more after that image of pre-revolutionary glamour and largely offering a much more affluent ambiance than the austerity which is found in much of Cuba itself and which has largely fuelled the recent social unrest.
Stylised illustration map by Scott Schiller
Nevertheless, while Cuba’s particular culture and history does pique my interest, the most intriguing thing about Zam’s request for me, however, was that Cuba’s terrain makes for an interesting challenge to work with to create something like that; large parts of the island are pan-flat, and the lack of paving in much of the mountainous regions limits what the aspiring traceur has to work with, which meant trying to create a balanced race was somewhat more of a challenge, especially when trying to factor in some of the specific stage hosts I was hoping to incorporate for the narrative.
This geographical limitation, along with Cuba’s long, thin shape, has meant that the Vuelta a Cuba, during its run, had a tendency to follow a couple of set formulae, which does limit parcours proposals, much as the shape of Vietnam largely limits the opportunities for creativity in the format of the HTV Cup. Unlike a lot of the early races which were designed around selling newspapers, the Vuelta a Cuba was set up for a reason we see races created more frequently today, rather than back in the era when the race was first running; that being, to show off the infrastructure of the country. But unlike most races which are set up for this reason, which usually take place in up and coming destinations looking to promote tourism (hell, to be honest the first half of the El Correo-El Pueblo Vasco era Vuelta a España routes were for this reason, linking the beach resorts and trying to show off the developing Spain and drive both domestic and overseas tourism), the Vuelta a Cuba was more a race of restoration, with the target audience being local Cubans, with the revolution fresh in the memory and the newly-installed regime wishing to show off the progress that they had made. The traditional route of the Vuelta a Cuba is to start in a major city of the east of the island - since the opening of the much-hyped and celebrated La Farola road connecting it to the rest of the island, from which it had been cut off from land travel for many decades, Baracoa is the most common, but Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba are both also frequent - but there are a couple of occasions where a west-east route beginning in Havana is preferred, most notably in 1976 when the route was inverted. There are a couple of major mountaintop finishes which were regulars, and after the earliest provincial days, the field would usually be a series of regional teams representing the local provinces duking it out in February against the pre-season form of the Eastern Bloc teams, as well as visitors predominantly coming in from Colombia and Mexico, but also, especially later, from Italy and also occasionally from Spain.
After 1990, however, the race rather fell from glory - the support of the Soviet Union ceased to come in to help Cuba fund events such as this, and with the move to trade teams the prospect of a Cuban national team travelling to enliven the Peace Race was no longer such an attractive proposition, either to the hosts who had far more access to slicker, better-financed Western teams now, or to the Cubans, for whom travelling halfway across the world to shake around on Ostbloc cobbles in the rain was not exactly something they were queuing up to do now that they would not be being subsidised to do so. The Vuelta a Cuba, being an almost two-week event, was too much of a challenge in this environ, so it sat out the 1990s before re-emerging in 2000 in a new variety, which saw the Eastern Bloc extranjero teams largely replaced by neighbouring islands as Dominican and Puerto Rican teams competed, with their nations’ relationship with Cuba having thawed, alongside teams from Canada and Latin America. Early on, you even had Mapei-Quick Step using the race as part of their pre-season tune-up in the same kind of role as San Luís had recently and San Juan has now - and at one point even winning the GC with a 21-year-old débutante by the name of Filippo Pozzato.
The new version of the race was, route-wise at least, largely a faithful reproduction of the old format, although it not infrequently skipped one of the two mountains (usually Gran Piedra to avoid biasing the results too early in the race), resulting in a race which was largely settled in a series of sprints with one big TT and one big mountain stage, lending the race a less than stellar reputation for fireworks on the road. The advent of the ProTour meant that the points-paying Tour Down Under and other, shorter races with less political challenge attached, such as the Tour de San Luís, the Tour of California (in its pre-May days) and the Tropicale Amissa Bongo helped drive the value of riding the Vuelta a Cuba down for top teams, and it became a largely provincial affair which tended to be dominated by sprints - in its final edition, in 2010, no fewer than 11 of its 14 stages (13 days with one split stage with two semitappes) were settled in a bunch gallop. The race was increasingly struggling to attract international teams, and those that did turn up would increasingly tend to dominate the under-served and under-funded domestic teams, and so the Vuelta a Cuba disappeared into the ether once more, replaced by the .NE-level Clásico Nacional de Ciclismo de Cuba, a national teams-only stage race inaugurated in 2014 and growing to almost the size - and approximating the parcours of - later versions of the Vuelta a Cuba, but that has sadly not survived the Covid-19 pandemic, with the 2020 edition being cancelled and, as of yet, not getting back off the ground. With the Clásico Nacional having effectively turned into the same race only without international teams, and with the country having faced multiple deep-rooted protest movements and changes that are likely to result either in a rapprochement and a more internationalist outlook going forward, or an aggressive clamping down that re-asserts the Party’s control of the state, it remains to be seen whether the race will come back, and if it does, whether it will be a national or an international race. Once the political questions can be settled, however (and let’s face it, that’s the primary driver here), it’s high time to bring back the Vuelta a Cuba. But to entice people in, they need to offer something a bit more varied than the endless sprints. And that’s where I come in. Well, it’s where Zam comes in, but I’m the one that’s done the hard yards, so to speak.
My Vuelta a Cuba is like the real life counterpart: two weeks. The original race would fluctuate between 11 and 15 stages, but the re-created race of the 2000s settled on the 13-day format. I would expect a field along similar lines to those seen in the latter day races, with around half the field (8-10 teams) being local Cuban squads, and the remainder built up of national teams and Continental teams from neighbouring and allied nations. I would expect in particular some Venezuelan presence - at least the Venezuela País del Futuro team that also races in the Dominican Republic most years, but potentially others following logically on from the Vuelta al Tachirá. A couple of national teams from Central America and the Caribbean like Guatemala, Nicaragua (especially Nicaragua as they have reasonably close ties to Cuba and Venezuela) and the Dominican Republic would be realistic as well as the Mexican Continental teams like Petrolike. Bolivia also maintains strong relations with Cuba, and there’s also the possibility for national teams from Russia with their young prospects now that the post-Soviet relationship with Cuba is greatly improved and they are unwelcome in a majority of races elsewhere - even if bringing veterans like Cosmonaut Frolov would be more fun.
But my Vuelta a Cuba is also built around reflecting modern cycling, such that while there will be
some pan-flat rouleur stages, we nevertheless balance things out as increased professionalism - even in the amateur ranks - mean that too many pan-flat stages that end in sprints leads to repetitious races. Cuba, although it may not always show it in its real life races, does offer plenty for the parcours designer, if you know where to look. I have managed to shrink the race down to only
two pan flat stages that have absolutely no categorised climbs (although there’s a couple of others which will likely be sprints despite my best intentions). We get underway with a format which I personally do not enjoy, but that I feel has its reasons here in a way that in most races it simply doesn’t.
Stage 1: La Habana - La Habana, 16,2km (TTT)
You know my rules, but for those that have forgotten or are new, here we go. I despise the Team Time Trial in a stage race, and believe that it should be confined to the velodrome. There are only a small number of set circumstances where a Team Time Trial should be allowed in road cycling, and that number is three. These are those circumstances:
In standalone events like the Vårgårda TTT on the women’s calendar, or the old ProTour Eindhoven race
In communist countries
With 4 riders in national teams over a distance of 100km at the World Championships and Olympics.
As we all know, Cuba is a communist country, so it is acceptable to include a Team Time Trial. And, well, because everybody working together to a common goal is such an ingrained idealised vision of communism, teams classifications and team time trials held inflated importance in Ostbloc cycling back in the day, to the extent that the teams classification was the second most important thing in the Peace Race after the general classification - more important than stage wins or minor jerseys. We’ll throw in a bit of that vibe here, just like they do at the HTV Cup, for those few countries still flying the flag for Karl Marx.
We begin where most people’s thoughts of Cuba begin, and that is the capital city of Havana. Obviously this is counter to the traditions of the Vuelta a Cuba, which typically began on the east of the island, but fresh start, fresh thinking, and a west-to-east route beginning in Havana is not unprecedented, having been run a handful of times, most notably in 1976 as mentioned before. I am going to follow up with this style of route, as I believe this gives me a better set of options to create a hilly, varied race route. As a result, we’re starting in the western part of the island, setting the race off with a public relations bang by drawing attention to it - after all, it’s a relaunch - by starting in the beating heart of the island, Havana.
Around 2,1 million people live in Havana, which amounts to around 1/5 of the Cuban population. Or, alternatively, around 25.000 people live in Havana if you go by the original settlement; the name comes, like many cities in the region, from the chief of the local Taíno people, Habaguanex. Except that Habaguanex did not rule the area around modern day Havana, but rather a southern coastal location, where Velázquez de Cuéllar founded the original city of Havana as early maps show it on the south coast, however the city was resettled on the north coast, close to the Carenas bay, due to its excellent natural harbour, and it was dubbed San Cristóbal de la Habana. Although one of Spain’s oldest acquisitions in the Americas, Cuba had swiftly fallen from favour with the Spanish settlers, with sugar not yet introduced from elsewhere in the Caribbean, introduced crops providing inconsistent yields, and with hostile locals, and the island had quickly become little more than a transitory point for settlers aiming to make their fortunes in Mexico. However, placing such a port on the
north coast created a very valuable role as a trading route, with ships sailing from Spain to Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba, then south to Central and South America, then riches acquired from Mexico, Guatemala and further south being brought by small traders and then organised into large shipments from Havana back to Spain. However, this then made Havana an attractive target to pirates, privateers and corsairs from the British and French settlements on the Americas, leading to the construction of significant fortifications by the Spaniards, helping to develop the modern city, which rapidly expanded throughout the 17th Century. In fact, at the point of American independence, the city was larger than New York, becoming a thriving port city reliant on those enormous treasure fleets assembled to take the wealth of the New World back to Spain.
Aiding this expansion was the short period of British control experienced by the Habañeros during the Seven Years’ War, where the city was opened up to trading not just with the traditional Latin American clientele but also with the British and French North American colonies, both Caribbean and mainland, before it was returned to Spain in exchange for the British acquisition of Florida. After this embarrassment to their authority, the Spanish rapidly expanded the fortification of the city but kept up the trade with North America, which led to significant US interest in the colony during periods of civil unrest, with both the North Americans and the Spanish alarmed when the extent of the sugar plantations in the east and the continuation of the slave trade led to a population where African-imported slaves exceeded both natives and whites in number, which the colonial elites in Havana had not recognised. Many former plantation owners from the US relocated to Cuba in the wake of the American Civil War, since slavery was only abolished in 1886 on the island, and during the Cuban War of Independence it remained a bastion of Spanish elitist control, being the last outpost of Spanish colonialism in the Americas when they finally withdrew under pressure from the US.
Cuban anti-colonial dissidents had been split between those favouring union with the USA and those favouring independence, but the aftermath of the war of independence satisfied neither; the island remained under US occupation until 1902, with no formal union on the cards but with no genuine independence; while the establishment of the city as capital of the new republic ushered in a new era, Cuba remained something of a plaything for the Americans, a reputation which was ramped up during Prohibition, as it became an accessible destination for the North American elite where they could drink, gamble and do all manner of things at that time outlawed on the continental mainland, attracting celebrities but also prominent figures in organised crime, with both South American drug lords and North American mafiosos rubbing shoulders - in fact, Las Vegas played second fiddle to Havana at this time, and it was only with the Cuban Revolution putting all of the casinos and resorts out of reach for the US
haute monde that Vegas went from being a prominent gambling town to being
the gambling town par excellence.
This is the era of Havana that is often glamourised in the west, although it had a seedy, mob-led underbelly, and in fact in the immediate aftermath of the revolution rapid modernisation took place. Like the independence movement, the revolution had been fomented in the east of the island and spread westward to Havana, but as the economic centre of the island it was obviously targeted for large-scale improvement. Simultaneously, however, without the subsistence option in an urban environment and with the abrupt disappearance of the income generated by the tourism from the casinos and the American jet set, Havana was also hit particularly hard economically. Following a downturn economically as support from the USSR came to an end with the dissolution of that entity in the early 90s, Havana has opened up to tourism and a hospitality industry has been developed, but nevertheless in a show of irony, it is also home to great inequality, as efforts to attract tourist dolla… er… convertible pesos (pegged in value to the US dollar, they were introduced as one of a number of attempts by the government to stimulate an introduction of more foreign currency to the country’s coffers and simultaneously to try to reduce the reliance on American currency which had become prevalent in large parts of the country, especially those frequented by touriss, you see, before this parallel currency was unceremoniously phased out in 2021 and replaced by a similarly dollar-based digital currency for luxury items) have meant that the vast majority of the restoration efforts are based around a small, tourist-focused part of the city.
Of course, however, tourism is now one of the favourite reasons for hosting a bike race, and the Vuelta a Cuba would surely be no different, therefore my opening stage around Havana focuses on this area too.
I’ve picked up enough from my fixation with races in Communist countries to recognise the importance of starting in a big, imposing square flush with ideologically appropriate iconography. Therefore what site could be better than the enormous, open Plaza de la Revolución, with its huge murals depicting Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the two revolutionary icons of the nation, standing guard over the riders as they come in to finish on a broad, wide boulevard? I have largely steered clear of Habana Vieja, instead focusing on Centro and the Plaza de la Revolución districts, partly admittedly solely because when I originally intended to start with a road stage, it gave me something that was “just about enough” (it wasn’t) to enable me to give out the KOM jersey.
We begin outside the Capitólio Nacional building, a large public edifice on the Paseo del Prado which was constructed during the 1920s by the architect Eugenio Rayneri Piedra, a renowned figure responsible for many of Cuba’s most enduring structures, and marks the exact centre of Havana’s old town boundaries. It hosted the country’s Congress from its opening in 1929 until the revolution, after which it spent a long period in disrepair (however, it has undergone extensive renovation recently), and until 1956 was the tallest building in the city. It also houses the Statue of the Republic, the third largest indoor statue in the world. From here we head due north to the Straits of Florida and the mouth of the Port of Havana; turning left at the restored 16th Century fort that is
Castillo San Salvador de la Punta, we then head for almost half of the stage’s duration along the beachfront promenade that is the Malecón de La Habana.
A favourite meeting point for Habañeros, this esplanade was constructed in 1901, during the US military intervention on the island, and extended twice, in 1921 and 1952. It housed many landmarks that are now gone, such as the buildings of the old
barrio of San Lázaro, but also many iconic buildings like the Hotel Nacional. It has also played host to one of the most surreal motor races of all time, when in the late 1950s - yes, the late 1950s - Fulgencio Batista tried to encourage more tourism from the US by establishing a glamorous street circuit motor race intended as a North American counterpart to Monaco. While there were some decidedly mediocre local drivers, the head of the field included some big names like Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss and Carroll Shelby. The 1958 edition was an abject disaster, however; Fangio was kidnapped by revolutionaries before the race, and one of the gentleman drivers crashed on oil early in the race, spinning into the crowd and killing both himself and six spectators. There is a
mini-documentary on the event which is worth a look. The 1959 edition was unsurprisingly cancelled, but perhaps more surprisingly it
was brought back by the Communists in 1960 - however their version was a much less glamorous affair, with a bumpy concrete track around a military airfield with none of the character and out of the way for what few fans remained, and the event was swiftly euthanised while the PCC consolidated their power.
At the western tip of the Malecón, we pull a hairpin at the
Torreón de la Chorrera, a 17th Century fort built to protect the Almendares river from incursion. The current version dates from the late 18th Century, however, after the original was captured by the British in 1762 and upon reconsolidating their hold of Havana, the Spanish colonial powers that be decided that the tower required reinforcing. This hairpin then leads us inland as the right land follows straight on where the left lane hugs the coastline, and then we turn right onto Avenida Paseo, which takes us up to the Plaza de la Revolución, which we arrive at at the 11km mark after an uphill drag of about 2,5% for 1200m. Just before this we turn right as we aren’t finishing the stage yet, at the
Teatro Nacional, a brutalist-looking structure that despite appearances actually began work long before the revolution; the last 5km of the stage are a simple out and back on Avenida de la Independencia, heading from Plaza de la Revolución to the large roundabout at the Fuente Luminosa and back. Originally designed to be the Plaza Cívica as part of Batista’s regeneration program, its central features is the Memorial José Martí, a marble five-pointed star tower over 100m in height celebrating the national hero and which includes an elevator to enable panoramic views over the city and its surrounding area. Opposite this is the Ministry of the Interior, which has a vivid mural of Che Guevara on its walls facing into the Plaza.
Although the square may have been commissioned and many of its works completed, or at least commenced, before the Revolution, never accuse Communism of not standing on pageantry; a big wide monumental city square is a common feature of Communist town planning as can be seen all over the former USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam and so on; Plaza Cívica was therefore renamed Plaza de la Revolución and repurposed for the use of major parades and rallies; Fidel Castro would frequently use the square for these purposes, enabling him to address figures of allegedly up to a million bystanders.
Let’s face it: this is kind of an essential place in a race of this kind - handing out the first jersey to the strongest
team performance in the middle of a square honouring Communist revolution? It’s about as on-brand as it gets. But at 16km in length, hopefully the TTT shouldn’t create gaps that are too significant, and we can move on to bigger and better spectacles in the days to come. The real life race would frequently finish here, as it would typically see its finale in the capital, with winners including sprint icon Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, two-time Vuelta stage winner Asiat Saitov, winner of one of the most iconic Vuelta stages of all time Bert Dietz and former track world champion pursuiter Sergei Nikitenko during the first run of the race, and Kristijan Koren and Borut Božič in the reboot through the 2000s. The city has since held its own one-day races and held the national championships in 2010, 2014, and 2022 through 2024, as well as the Caribbean Championships in 2019 which saw local boy Félix Nodarse win the Road Race, and Bermuda’s Kaden Hopkins narrowly defeat former Movistar man Abner González in the Time Trial - so the city is still keen on the sport and happy to host, so just because it will be a team getting to celebrate rather than an individual should be no impediment - but I think it will be better to relaunch the race
starting here than finishing here, as it will attract more people to the roadside for the start and make things seem like a bigger deal. Why not, hey?
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