- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Lovely second half there. Braus-Castillon-La Madone-the steeper side of Quatre Chemins has always been how I frame the Nice-Nice stage whenever I try to 'do' Paris-Nice.
- Apr 30, 2011
- 47,141
- 29,772
- 28,180
With the success of Peille, and especially so with the steep southern side of Èze afterwards, I think the balance is very good right now. I fear Madone would make it easier for the strongest rider to just attack there and win the race in the last stage. But other than the removal of 4-chemins (and then Saint-Roch before Peille) that I had in my PN route last year, I'm also working on another edition of the race where the southern side is done in full.
- Apr 30, 2011
- 47,141
- 29,772
- 28,180
Monday | 
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 1 | Sant Feliu de Guíxols > Sant Feliu de Guíxols | 193 km |
Tuesday | 
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 2 | Granollers > Molins de Rei | 171 km |
Wednesday |
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 3 | Tarragona > Lleida | 158 km |
Thursday | 
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 4 | Artesa de Segre > La Seu d'Urgell | 192 km |
Friday | 
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 5 | Alp > La Molina (Alp) | 13.2 km |
Saturday |
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 6 | Berga > Queralt | 145 km |
Sunday |
| Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, stage 7 | Barcelona > Barcelona | 94.5 km |
- Apr 30, 2011
- 47,141
- 29,772
- 28,180
Tuesday |
| Tour de Romandie, prologue | Yverdon-les-Bains > Yverdon-les-Bains | 4.5 km |
Wednesday |
| Tour de Romandie, stage 1 | Yverdon-les-Bains > Delémont | 200 km |
Thursday |
| Tour de Romandie, stage 2 | Delémont > Fribourg | 188 km |
Friday |
| Tour de Romandie, stage 3 | Fribourg > Fribourg | 21 km |
Saturday |
| Tour de Romandie, stage 4 | Fribourg > Champéry - Les Crosets (Les Portes du Soleil) | 155 km |
Sunday |
| Tour de Romandie, stage 5 | Lausanne > Genève | 153 km |
| 
|
| 
|
| 
|
- Apr 10, 2019
- 12,075
- 15,990
- 23,180
Nice one, hold my Beer!
https://www.cronoescalada.com/tracks/view/Romandie+queenstage_80025
- Apr 10, 2019
- 12,075
- 15,990
- 23,180
Tbf, there is that wineyard Murito with 2kms at 20% right before it, so I didn't want to throw in much more than Ovronnaz right before that.
I need to start posting some of my races again, I hope that I get to start with my version of the Tour of the Republic of China/Taiwan today.
- Apr 30, 2011
- 47,141
- 29,772
- 28,180
My Tour de Romandie was also mainly an excuse to post a Genève final stage with Salève, as I think that'd be a very cool finish to the race. The rest got traced to fit that.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
A little while ago I was in the US, rebuilding the Tour of Colorado to be more of an homage to the Coors Classic. I did have some thoughts about some other US ideas (I have had many, but not been up to publishing most thus far) and looking through history had me of course go back to things like the Tour of California, but digging further back, things like the Tour of Georgia. But then I got distracted by something else - what about a Tour of the other Georgia? You know, the country?
Located in the Caucasus, Georgia has been on something of a cultural crossroads for a long time. Is it Europe? Is it Asia? Definitions always seem to shift. One thing is for sure though - it is an area of untapped potential for cycling. After all, just look at a relief map of the country - the whole area offers huge terrain variety and could produce some great racing. And it’s full of beautiful scenery and under-used tourist potential (which we’ll see some of while I work my way around it, I’m sure). However, a variety of reasons have meant that the nation has been a total backwater to the sport of cycling. A lack of infrastructure for paved roads in many of the mountainous regions of the country during Soviet times, issues with the frozen conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the proximity to conflicts in Caucasian Russian republics and Armenia/Azerbaijan, all of these are part of why not even Dewielersite which tracks amateur and hobbyist races as well as pro ones is able to evidence any racing in Georgia other than national championships, and the only Georgian rider even back during Soviet times that I was able to garner any real evidence on was former Olympic bronze medal track sprinter Omar Pkhakadze, who entered the Olympics in 1968, 1972 and 1976, with the middle one of those providing his medal, the first USSR medal to be won in the match sprint. He died youngish, though, in 1993, so the only prominent historic cyclist in the country’s history has been dead and buried for almost the entirety of the nation’s independent history.
For the most part, though, despite the altitude and the mountains, the Georgians are known more for their sporting prowess in power fields; many mountainous areas see the sporting credentials split between the smaller, endurance types, and the rugged mountain folk; think of how alongside cycling and mountaineering, one of the most popular historic Basque competitive pastimes is that of the aizkolari. Georgia is similar, except most all of the nation’s sporting success has been from the latter kind; weightlifting, wrestling and similar. One of the country’s most popular stars has in fact been Tochinoshin Tsuyoshi (born Levan Gorgadze), a sumo wrestler who rose to the rank of ozeki, the second highest in the sport, and was hugely popular for his powerhouse techniques and his willingness to 100% embrace all of the trappings of the sumo lifestyle as a gaijin wrestler[/i]. Team sports are dominated by rugby union, where the team are multi-time European Champions and contend among the best teams outside of the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship and the northern hemisphere Six Nationas Championship - it’s an odd sport to have adopted, but it has a lot of similarities to a Georgian traditional sport called lelo burti. With other national sporting successes coming from the likes of basketball, if you weren’t a bit strong guy, then your best hopes of any sporting joy in Georgia would be soccer, or possibly chess, which the nation has a pretty good record in, the highest-rated player having been Sergei Movsesian, who now represents Armenia; Baadur Jobava is the current highest-rated Georgian player, while on the women’s side the top performer is Nana Dzagnidze, though perhaps more notable is Maia Chiburdanidze, women’s world #1 for almost the entirety of the 1980s and for many years the youngest ever woman to hold the Grandmaster title.
But as the country has rapidly developed infrastructure and looked to host other sports events and attract tourism in recent years, a bike race would be a great next step. Georgia is a beautiful country, and a bike race is a great way to show that. I think this would need to be at around the 2.2 level at first, and would look at some of those random Turkish short stage races to see who would turn up - probably national teams for Georgia, and a few other countries in the Caucasus and around the Black Sea (Bulgaria, Ukraine, maybe Greece), plus the Turkish continental teams, a few of those based in the Balkans (there are two Romanian-based teams and Novapor-Speedbike based in North Macedonia), maybe some of those from Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the likes of China Glory and Terengganu when they are on their mini-seasons in Turkey. It shouldn’t be super high level at first, so that the local guys can get through the race - national championship races seem to last about 3,5-4 hours so aren’t super long, so this kind of thing will be a real endurance test for the domestic pros.
Stage 1: Batumi - Batumi, 12,3km (ITT)
The race starts on the Black Sea coast on the western extremity of Georgia, with a time trial around Georgia’s second largest city. Home to around 300.000 people in its metropolitan area, Batumi is also the nation’s main port, although its coastal position and warm climate led it to develop a touristic bent during Soviet times, and since the independence of Georgia it has developed a culture around beach tourism and gambling; since 2010 heavy investment has seen much of the old shipbuilding and industrial side of the city revitalised and restoration of much of the traditional centre that had been neglected during Communism.
The city lies on the site of an old Greek colonial city called Bathys, or “deep harbour”, and converted into a Roman fortress town under Hadrian as the Empire expanded eastward. It was superseded by nearby Lazica and came under Abkhazian control when the Byzantines lost Lazica in 780. After the union of the Georgian monarchy the area was held by Georgia until the Ottoman expansion in the 15th Century, however following several exchanges by force between Georgia and the Turks, it was only in 1703 that the latter were able to establish lasting control. The Ottomans developed the city greatly to enable its convenient harbour to be used as a major provincial port for the eastern part of their empire, and the city was greatly Islamized before the Imperial Russian takeover in the late 19th Century. This brought prosperity through infrastructure, with the railway connecting the city with Tbilisi and Baku, and subsequently the oil pipeline from the Caspian to the Black Seas making Batumi into Russia’s main western oil port, with assistance from the British Rothschilds, in whose refinery a young Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili worked; you may recognise him more from the Russified transcription of his name as Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, or even more so by his later adopted surname of Stalin. The city was ceded to the Ottomans indirectly (via a British protectorate and the short-lived Autonomous Democratic Republic of Georgia) in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk after the Russian Revolution, but the ailing empire was unable to hold it, and Atatürk ceded it back to the Soviets in 1921.
The actual route of the time trial is more about showing off the modern developments than anything else, although I did at one point moot a road stage here that would include flat circuits but with a final diversion up to the top cable car station as this runs all the way to the coastline and offers remarkable views down across the Black Sea.
Instead of this, however, we start near the base and have a pan-flat out-and-back along the coastal boulevards where the modern developments are, and serving as the great divider between the resorts, casinos and tourist attractions of the coastline and the classical chic of the old town. The start/finish is effectively at the base of the cable car, and just off of Piazza Square, the city’s main central hub which is a recently-restored Italian-style piazza (hence the tautologous name) with a recently installed mosaic, and can be used for the presentations. We will pass the Chacha Tower, a replica of the İzmir clock tower constructed in 2012 as part of redevelopment plans, the Neptune Fountain, and then along Batumi Boulevard, from the old town to the new high-rises.
Aside from a double-90º corner resembling an oversized chicane at the rather grandiose, ostentatious and (let’s be honest) rather silly-looking Alliance Centropolis, it’s mostly a very straight out-and-back, passing the Ardagani Lake before another, wider-radius, left-right flick-flack around the public park named for Lech and Maria Kaczyński, the Polish president and his wife who died in a plane crash in Smolensk in 2010; a former member of Solidarność, Kaczyński’s presidency saw him work to establish greater relations between the Caucasus states and Europe and he was greatly revered in Georgia as a result. At the far end of the park, before we get to the airport (Georgia’s second largest), we reach a roundabout where we pull a 180, and return from whence we came.
This is a time trial too long to be a prologue, but it’s here for at least some balance, as well as to ease the péloton into the race. It’s a tough race for much of the likely field, but a pan-flat 12km should be something that most riders are capable of at any level, let alone a pro-am field.
Located in the Caucasus, Georgia has been on something of a cultural crossroads for a long time. Is it Europe? Is it Asia? Definitions always seem to shift. One thing is for sure though - it is an area of untapped potential for cycling. After all, just look at a relief map of the country - the whole area offers huge terrain variety and could produce some great racing. And it’s full of beautiful scenery and under-used tourist potential (which we’ll see some of while I work my way around it, I’m sure). However, a variety of reasons have meant that the nation has been a total backwater to the sport of cycling. A lack of infrastructure for paved roads in many of the mountainous regions of the country during Soviet times, issues with the frozen conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the proximity to conflicts in Caucasian Russian republics and Armenia/Azerbaijan, all of these are part of why not even Dewielersite which tracks amateur and hobbyist races as well as pro ones is able to evidence any racing in Georgia other than national championships, and the only Georgian rider even back during Soviet times that I was able to garner any real evidence on was former Olympic bronze medal track sprinter Omar Pkhakadze, who entered the Olympics in 1968, 1972 and 1976, with the middle one of those providing his medal, the first USSR medal to be won in the match sprint. He died youngish, though, in 1993, so the only prominent historic cyclist in the country’s history has been dead and buried for almost the entirety of the nation’s independent history.
For the most part, though, despite the altitude and the mountains, the Georgians are known more for their sporting prowess in power fields; many mountainous areas see the sporting credentials split between the smaller, endurance types, and the rugged mountain folk; think of how alongside cycling and mountaineering, one of the most popular historic Basque competitive pastimes is that of the aizkolari. Georgia is similar, except most all of the nation’s sporting success has been from the latter kind; weightlifting, wrestling and similar. One of the country’s most popular stars has in fact been Tochinoshin Tsuyoshi (born Levan Gorgadze), a sumo wrestler who rose to the rank of ozeki, the second highest in the sport, and was hugely popular for his powerhouse techniques and his willingness to 100% embrace all of the trappings of the sumo lifestyle as a gaijin wrestler[/i]. Team sports are dominated by rugby union, where the team are multi-time European Champions and contend among the best teams outside of the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship and the northern hemisphere Six Nationas Championship - it’s an odd sport to have adopted, but it has a lot of similarities to a Georgian traditional sport called lelo burti. With other national sporting successes coming from the likes of basketball, if you weren’t a bit strong guy, then your best hopes of any sporting joy in Georgia would be soccer, or possibly chess, which the nation has a pretty good record in, the highest-rated player having been Sergei Movsesian, who now represents Armenia; Baadur Jobava is the current highest-rated Georgian player, while on the women’s side the top performer is Nana Dzagnidze, though perhaps more notable is Maia Chiburdanidze, women’s world #1 for almost the entirety of the 1980s and for many years the youngest ever woman to hold the Grandmaster title.
But as the country has rapidly developed infrastructure and looked to host other sports events and attract tourism in recent years, a bike race would be a great next step. Georgia is a beautiful country, and a bike race is a great way to show that. I think this would need to be at around the 2.2 level at first, and would look at some of those random Turkish short stage races to see who would turn up - probably national teams for Georgia, and a few other countries in the Caucasus and around the Black Sea (Bulgaria, Ukraine, maybe Greece), plus the Turkish continental teams, a few of those based in the Balkans (there are two Romanian-based teams and Novapor-Speedbike based in North Macedonia), maybe some of those from Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the likes of China Glory and Terengganu when they are on their mini-seasons in Turkey. It shouldn’t be super high level at first, so that the local guys can get through the race - national championship races seem to last about 3,5-4 hours so aren’t super long, so this kind of thing will be a real endurance test for the domestic pros.
Stage 1: Batumi - Batumi, 12,3km (ITT)
The race starts on the Black Sea coast on the western extremity of Georgia, with a time trial around Georgia’s second largest city. Home to around 300.000 people in its metropolitan area, Batumi is also the nation’s main port, although its coastal position and warm climate led it to develop a touristic bent during Soviet times, and since the independence of Georgia it has developed a culture around beach tourism and gambling; since 2010 heavy investment has seen much of the old shipbuilding and industrial side of the city revitalised and restoration of much of the traditional centre that had been neglected during Communism.
The city lies on the site of an old Greek colonial city called Bathys, or “deep harbour”, and converted into a Roman fortress town under Hadrian as the Empire expanded eastward. It was superseded by nearby Lazica and came under Abkhazian control when the Byzantines lost Lazica in 780. After the union of the Georgian monarchy the area was held by Georgia until the Ottoman expansion in the 15th Century, however following several exchanges by force between Georgia and the Turks, it was only in 1703 that the latter were able to establish lasting control. The Ottomans developed the city greatly to enable its convenient harbour to be used as a major provincial port for the eastern part of their empire, and the city was greatly Islamized before the Imperial Russian takeover in the late 19th Century. This brought prosperity through infrastructure, with the railway connecting the city with Tbilisi and Baku, and subsequently the oil pipeline from the Caspian to the Black Seas making Batumi into Russia’s main western oil port, with assistance from the British Rothschilds, in whose refinery a young Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili worked; you may recognise him more from the Russified transcription of his name as Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, or even more so by his later adopted surname of Stalin. The city was ceded to the Ottomans indirectly (via a British protectorate and the short-lived Autonomous Democratic Republic of Georgia) in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk after the Russian Revolution, but the ailing empire was unable to hold it, and Atatürk ceded it back to the Soviets in 1921.
The actual route of the time trial is more about showing off the modern developments than anything else, although I did at one point moot a road stage here that would include flat circuits but with a final diversion up to the top cable car station as this runs all the way to the coastline and offers remarkable views down across the Black Sea.
Instead of this, however, we start near the base and have a pan-flat out-and-back along the coastal boulevards where the modern developments are, and serving as the great divider between the resorts, casinos and tourist attractions of the coastline and the classical chic of the old town. The start/finish is effectively at the base of the cable car, and just off of Piazza Square, the city’s main central hub which is a recently-restored Italian-style piazza (hence the tautologous name) with a recently installed mosaic, and can be used for the presentations. We will pass the Chacha Tower, a replica of the İzmir clock tower constructed in 2012 as part of redevelopment plans, the Neptune Fountain, and then along Batumi Boulevard, from the old town to the new high-rises.
Aside from a double-90º corner resembling an oversized chicane at the rather grandiose, ostentatious and (let’s be honest) rather silly-looking Alliance Centropolis, it’s mostly a very straight out-and-back, passing the Ardagani Lake before another, wider-radius, left-right flick-flack around the public park named for Lech and Maria Kaczyński, the Polish president and his wife who died in a plane crash in Smolensk in 2010; a former member of Solidarność, Kaczyński’s presidency saw him work to establish greater relations between the Caucasus states and Europe and he was greatly revered in Georgia as a result. At the far end of the park, before we get to the airport (Georgia’s second largest), we reach a roundabout where we pull a 180, and return from whence we came.
This is a time trial too long to be a prologue, but it’s here for at least some balance, as well as to ease the péloton into the race. It’s a tough race for much of the likely field, but a pan-flat 12km should be something that most riders are capable of at any level, let alone a pro-am field.
- Apr 10, 2019
- 12,075
- 15,990
- 23,180
Yeah, for me it's a bit like that with the Tour of Indonesia I have in the backlog, I want to post this one:
https://www.cronoescalada.com/tracks/viewTour/1957/10582
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 2: Batumi - Zugdidi, 182km
GPM:
Mtsvane Kontskhi (cat.3) 3,1km @ 5,0%
Tsalenjikha-Holy Archangel Church (cat.3) 2,2km @ 5,4%
The second stage of the Tour of Georgia is also the longest, so at 182km you can be well aware we are going to be managing stage length for difficulty here as it’s likely to be at, at most, the 2.1 level and more likely 2.2. We’re still very much heading along the western extremities of the country, taking in some tourist sites that the race can use in its promotional hype, and this will be the main ‘stage for the sprinters’. There are other stages that sprinters should be able to contest, but these will depend on the way the race pans out; this is the main one that should be a bunch gallop on nine out of ten occasions (at the lower level you do get more baroudeur action, especially when there are smaller-sized teams on the startline).
Another factor for that is that the course should incentivise a decent break of the day, seeing as we are almost literally starting with a climb straight out of the gate; no transfer at all seeing as we’re starting in Batumi again, but taking the old road (rather than the highway through the tunnel) around Mtsvane Kontskhi, an outlying part of town with a tall outcrop over the coast, and a botanical garden at the summit. Mtsvane Kontskhi translates as “green cape” and… well, you can see why - this is the view from the botanical garden:
After this and a second, smaller and more gradual rise and fall, we arrive in the central flatlands carved by the Rioni floodplain. Much like the Po valley in Italy, this pan-flat expanse in the centre of the country has yielded much fertile land and prosperity, but offers little of geographical interest for cycling. So we’re sticking to the coast and hoping for the wind to give us some assistance as the prevailing wind tends to come from the west here. We go through coastal resorts like Kobuleti, especially popular with Armenian tourists and known as Çürüksü to the Turks; this is how Çürüksulu Mahmut Paşa - a prominent Ottoman general and statesman who opposed participation in WWI and fought alongside the Young Turks - got his name. We then pass Shekvetili, a long stretch of coastline and former fortress town being dotted with resorts and development for similar purpose; for the moment it is best known for Miniature Park, a theme park with scale models of the country’s landmarks, and for Black Sea Arena, a 10.000-capacity indoor stadium used primarily for concerts and indoor sports, though it also held the 2018 Chess Olympiad (officially billed as being in Batumi, but most of the events were held at the Black Sea Arena) where the hosts secured a bronze medal in the women’s event. I’ve located an early intermediate sprint by the stadium.
After passing the Tskaltsminda theme park, we then head on into Poti, one of Georgia’s oldest cities, named for the Greek settlement of Phasis on the site of which it stands. It is now the main headquarters of the Georgian navy, and its history is similar to that of Batumi, being established by the Greeks, controlled by the Romans, attacked by Persian forces before being liberated by the locals in the Lazic wars; then being under Georgian control for several centuries before a power struggle with the Ottomans from the mid-16th to the early 18th Century; becoming heavily fortified and developed at this time (it was also the site of a major slave market), then captured in the 19th Century by Russia, where it was added to the railway network and briefly serving from 1918-21 as the briefly-independent Georgia’s main window to Europe (as during this period the Ottomans controlled Batumi). It did come under attack from Russia more recently, this being in 2008 during the South Ossetia War, but the Russians withdrew after holding the city for a month and retreating to the current disputed border with Abkhazia.
From here we head inland to Senaki, where the second intermediate sprint is held. Situated at the base of a hill between the Tsivi and Tsekhuri rivers, two tributaries of the Rioni, this is an important station in the east-west logistical transport lines in Georgia, an important cultural and educational centre which also hosts the Menji balneological resort and sanatorium, a famous health retreat in Soviet times, during which the city was renamed “Mikha Tskhakaya” (until 1975) and “Tskhakaya” (from 1976 to 1989) in honour of a Georgian Bolshevik leader born in nearby Martvili.
From here the stage becomes more rolling, though apart from that first 1-2km out of Senaki (that average ~4%) there’s nothing that really constitutes a “climb”; heading towards the Samegrelo Planned National Park in the Caucasus foothills we do see a gradual uphill sauntering, but climbing 250 altitude metres in 40km is an average of 0,6% - let’s be real here, this isn’t going to do much for splitting up the bunch. The only real climbing comes after passing through the small city of Tsalenjikha, home of around 4.000 people and the birthplace of a couple of notable people in Georgian modern history - the noted early 20th-Century poet Terenti Kvirkvelia (better known by the pen name Graneli) and the Olympic silver medal-winning Greco-Roman wrestler Giorgi Tsurtsumia - who despite his origins in rural Georgia has spent his whole career representing Kazakhstan.
Up on the ridges to the west of the city lies the Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel, with its site overlooking the city - as is common with religious buildings built to be closer to God - giving us a meaningful ascent of 5,4% for 2,2km. This is at 23km from the line so in theory some moves could be made here if the bunch is that small or weak, but in most levels of racing this should not be enough to hang on, especially as there’s no descent to speak of, just a 12km plateau and then a downhill sauntering at 1-2% until we arrive in our finishing town of Zugdidi, which we circumnavigate for a few kilometres to ensure a safe run-in.
And what a bizarre little run-in it is, due to the odd geography of the city’s centre. Meaning “big hill” in Mingrelian, the city is, in fact, flat - the hill refers to the one we’ve just descended down from. Home to a little over 40.000 in its urban centre, it’s the sixth largest city in the country and the capital of the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region. It is also the hometown of chess player Nona Gaprindashvili, a predecessor of Maia Chiburdanidze who is perhaps less distinguished, but equally notable as the first female to achieve the Grandmaster title. But more crucially for our run-in, it is the central capital of the Samegrelo (Mingrelia) region, which was a principality independent of Georgia from 1557 until its absorption into the Russian Empire in 1803. It remained a principality within Russia until the deposition of Prince Niko I Dadiani, the final ruler of Mingrelia, and was a district state within the Russian Empire until the 1917 Revolutions, after the consolidation of which it became part of the Georgian SSR. This regal history has led to a large expanse of greenery in the city centre, surrounded by wide boulevards, that allow for a dramatic but safe sprint in the kind of overly-wide plaza that we might ordinarily see (ok, I might ordinarily see) in the HTV Cup.
Zugdidi from the air
Dadiani Palace
Zugdidi Botanical Garden
We essentially arrive in the crucial final stages of the day at 3,3km to go when we arrive in the city centre at the northeastern corner of the former palatial grounds. The palace is actually relatively new; previous palaces had been restored or rebuilt in more modern, regal fashion in 1840, and a large botanical garden constructed on the land of earlier housings of the royal family to the rear. The current version was built later on in the 19th Century, during the period between the ransacking of the city by Ottoman forces in the Crimean War and the end of the royal family of Mingrelia in 1867. It has been a museum since 1921 when the Georgian SSR was officially founded, and the corner by its entrance is at 2,6km from the line. At 1,9km and 1,8km from the line there are two 90º corners, these are on very wide (four to six lanes) boulevards and are designed to slow the péloton down before they swoop around the 180º curve shown in the aerial vista above. This is at 1500m from the line and is wide enough radius to be negotiated safely with the reduced speed from the previous corners, was my thinking. A whole péloton rushing into this unencumbered might have been more of a concern. The final proper corner is a 90º right at 1100m from home, and then there’s just a kink at 750m from home before a long and wide open, slightly uphill sprint to the line along the rear of the botanical gardens, before finishing at a broad plaza. There aren’t too many sprinters’ opportunities here, so they’ll need to make the most of this.
GPM:
Mtsvane Kontskhi (cat.3) 3,1km @ 5,0%
Tsalenjikha-Holy Archangel Church (cat.3) 2,2km @ 5,4%
The second stage of the Tour of Georgia is also the longest, so at 182km you can be well aware we are going to be managing stage length for difficulty here as it’s likely to be at, at most, the 2.1 level and more likely 2.2. We’re still very much heading along the western extremities of the country, taking in some tourist sites that the race can use in its promotional hype, and this will be the main ‘stage for the sprinters’. There are other stages that sprinters should be able to contest, but these will depend on the way the race pans out; this is the main one that should be a bunch gallop on nine out of ten occasions (at the lower level you do get more baroudeur action, especially when there are smaller-sized teams on the startline).
Another factor for that is that the course should incentivise a decent break of the day, seeing as we are almost literally starting with a climb straight out of the gate; no transfer at all seeing as we’re starting in Batumi again, but taking the old road (rather than the highway through the tunnel) around Mtsvane Kontskhi, an outlying part of town with a tall outcrop over the coast, and a botanical garden at the summit. Mtsvane Kontskhi translates as “green cape” and… well, you can see why - this is the view from the botanical garden:
After this and a second, smaller and more gradual rise and fall, we arrive in the central flatlands carved by the Rioni floodplain. Much like the Po valley in Italy, this pan-flat expanse in the centre of the country has yielded much fertile land and prosperity, but offers little of geographical interest for cycling. So we’re sticking to the coast and hoping for the wind to give us some assistance as the prevailing wind tends to come from the west here. We go through coastal resorts like Kobuleti, especially popular with Armenian tourists and known as Çürüksü to the Turks; this is how Çürüksulu Mahmut Paşa - a prominent Ottoman general and statesman who opposed participation in WWI and fought alongside the Young Turks - got his name. We then pass Shekvetili, a long stretch of coastline and former fortress town being dotted with resorts and development for similar purpose; for the moment it is best known for Miniature Park, a theme park with scale models of the country’s landmarks, and for Black Sea Arena, a 10.000-capacity indoor stadium used primarily for concerts and indoor sports, though it also held the 2018 Chess Olympiad (officially billed as being in Batumi, but most of the events were held at the Black Sea Arena) where the hosts secured a bronze medal in the women’s event. I’ve located an early intermediate sprint by the stadium.
After passing the Tskaltsminda theme park, we then head on into Poti, one of Georgia’s oldest cities, named for the Greek settlement of Phasis on the site of which it stands. It is now the main headquarters of the Georgian navy, and its history is similar to that of Batumi, being established by the Greeks, controlled by the Romans, attacked by Persian forces before being liberated by the locals in the Lazic wars; then being under Georgian control for several centuries before a power struggle with the Ottomans from the mid-16th to the early 18th Century; becoming heavily fortified and developed at this time (it was also the site of a major slave market), then captured in the 19th Century by Russia, where it was added to the railway network and briefly serving from 1918-21 as the briefly-independent Georgia’s main window to Europe (as during this period the Ottomans controlled Batumi). It did come under attack from Russia more recently, this being in 2008 during the South Ossetia War, but the Russians withdrew after holding the city for a month and retreating to the current disputed border with Abkhazia.
From here we head inland to Senaki, where the second intermediate sprint is held. Situated at the base of a hill between the Tsivi and Tsekhuri rivers, two tributaries of the Rioni, this is an important station in the east-west logistical transport lines in Georgia, an important cultural and educational centre which also hosts the Menji balneological resort and sanatorium, a famous health retreat in Soviet times, during which the city was renamed “Mikha Tskhakaya” (until 1975) and “Tskhakaya” (from 1976 to 1989) in honour of a Georgian Bolshevik leader born in nearby Martvili.
From here the stage becomes more rolling, though apart from that first 1-2km out of Senaki (that average ~4%) there’s nothing that really constitutes a “climb”; heading towards the Samegrelo Planned National Park in the Caucasus foothills we do see a gradual uphill sauntering, but climbing 250 altitude metres in 40km is an average of 0,6% - let’s be real here, this isn’t going to do much for splitting up the bunch. The only real climbing comes after passing through the small city of Tsalenjikha, home of around 4.000 people and the birthplace of a couple of notable people in Georgian modern history - the noted early 20th-Century poet Terenti Kvirkvelia (better known by the pen name Graneli) and the Olympic silver medal-winning Greco-Roman wrestler Giorgi Tsurtsumia - who despite his origins in rural Georgia has spent his whole career representing Kazakhstan.
Up on the ridges to the west of the city lies the Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel, with its site overlooking the city - as is common with religious buildings built to be closer to God - giving us a meaningful ascent of 5,4% for 2,2km. This is at 23km from the line so in theory some moves could be made here if the bunch is that small or weak, but in most levels of racing this should not be enough to hang on, especially as there’s no descent to speak of, just a 12km plateau and then a downhill sauntering at 1-2% until we arrive in our finishing town of Zugdidi, which we circumnavigate for a few kilometres to ensure a safe run-in.
And what a bizarre little run-in it is, due to the odd geography of the city’s centre. Meaning “big hill” in Mingrelian, the city is, in fact, flat - the hill refers to the one we’ve just descended down from. Home to a little over 40.000 in its urban centre, it’s the sixth largest city in the country and the capital of the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region. It is also the hometown of chess player Nona Gaprindashvili, a predecessor of Maia Chiburdanidze who is perhaps less distinguished, but equally notable as the first female to achieve the Grandmaster title. But more crucially for our run-in, it is the central capital of the Samegrelo (Mingrelia) region, which was a principality independent of Georgia from 1557 until its absorption into the Russian Empire in 1803. It remained a principality within Russia until the deposition of Prince Niko I Dadiani, the final ruler of Mingrelia, and was a district state within the Russian Empire until the 1917 Revolutions, after the consolidation of which it became part of the Georgian SSR. This regal history has led to a large expanse of greenery in the city centre, surrounded by wide boulevards, that allow for a dramatic but safe sprint in the kind of overly-wide plaza that we might ordinarily see (ok, I might ordinarily see) in the HTV Cup.
Zugdidi from the air
Dadiani Palace
Zugdidi Botanical Garden
We essentially arrive in the crucial final stages of the day at 3,3km to go when we arrive in the city centre at the northeastern corner of the former palatial grounds. The palace is actually relatively new; previous palaces had been restored or rebuilt in more modern, regal fashion in 1840, and a large botanical garden constructed on the land of earlier housings of the royal family to the rear. The current version was built later on in the 19th Century, during the period between the ransacking of the city by Ottoman forces in the Crimean War and the end of the royal family of Mingrelia in 1867. It has been a museum since 1921 when the Georgian SSR was officially founded, and the corner by its entrance is at 2,6km from the line. At 1,9km and 1,8km from the line there are two 90º corners, these are on very wide (four to six lanes) boulevards and are designed to slow the péloton down before they swoop around the 180º curve shown in the aerial vista above. This is at 1500m from the line and is wide enough radius to be negotiated safely with the reduced speed from the previous corners, was my thinking. A whole péloton rushing into this unencumbered might have been more of a concern. The final proper corner is a 90º right at 1100m from home, and then there’s just a kink at 750m from home before a long and wide open, slightly uphill sprint to the line along the rear of the botanical gardens, before finishing at a broad plaza. There aren’t too many sprinters’ opportunities here, so they’ll need to make the most of this.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 3: Poti - Kutaisi, 149km
GPM:
Gvashtibi (cat.3) 2,0km @ 5,2%
Zemo Chuneshi (cat.3) 1,1km @ 5,5%
Mtavarangelozi Church (cat.3) 1,6km @ 5,8%
We head back to the Black Sea coast for a start in Poti, which I passed through briefly in the previous stage, which as mentioned is one of the oldest cities in Georgia, constructed on the site of an old Greek city called Phasis. As the home of the Georgian Navy, it is first attested all the way back in 700 BC, believed however to be the name of a river or an estuary village at that stage. A city was established by the 6th Century BC, and it appears in several myths and legends, including that of Jason and the Argonauts; it is also believed to be part of the India-Black Sea trade route of the era, being mentioned in the works of Pliny the Elder. It was also a centre of a Greek diocese after the introduction of Christianity, and even had a brief period under Genoese control before its Ottoman period.
Originally I had a major mountain stage here with an HC finish at Bakhmaro (22km at 7%), then another with an even tougher HC finish at Khvamli, north of Kutaisi (11km at 10%) but I’ve decided to go with a more practical route here that will be more appropriate for the kind of level of péloton we would see here. There will still be climbing in the race, but we don’t plan to eradicate half the péloton early in the race here. Instead we will retrace part of our route from yesterday, following the route from Poti to Senaki, but where we turned northwards there yesterday, instead we continue eastward and inland with our overall course direction being eastward.
The first intermediate sprint comes just before the halfway point, in the town of Khoni. Briefly - from 1936 until the dissolution of the USSR - named Tsulukidze after the Georgian Marxist revolutionary Aleksandr Tsulukidze, it is a gateway to the Imereti region and home to just under 8.000 people, largely known for production of tea during Soviet times. Here we turn north into the foothills of the mountains, but there aren’t really any significant climbs here, just some short cat.3 risers as we climb out of the Tskhenitsqali river valley.
From here, we travel southwards, after two cat.3 climbs, into Tskaltubo, a spa town built on mineral springs which was established as a popular recreational/restorative site during the middle ages, but really rose to prominence in Soviet times, thanks largely to the patronage of Josef Stalin who had a dacha on a hill above the town and used a particular complex, specifically spring #6 - which honours him to this day with a large ornate frieze depicting less-than-kindly old Uncle Joe, although this was not on-site before the redevelopment of the site into a large wellness tourism complex that followed his death; tourism burgeoned and the small town would receive 125.000 visitors a year, a figure which has dropped to barely 1% of that number as the bathhouses have fallen into disrepair since the fall of the USSR; a plan is afoot to restore these and try to bring back some of the city’s former glories, but at present it’s very much another - albeit more ornate and dramatic - Soviet ghost town, with the vast complexes more the preserve of urban spelunkers and adventure tourists.
From here, it’s a short run on to a finish in one of Georgia’s biggest and best-known cities, Kutaisi. One of the oldest cities in the area, the city is attested from at latest the 6th Century BC, as it had already grown to become the capital and cultural centre of the Colchis region by this time. Kutaisi was treated as the final destination of the Argonauts in their quest for the golden fleece, and was the home of the mythical (but possibly based on a real monarch, attestations are poor and sources conflicting) King Aeëtes. After the collapse of Colchis, the Romans moved in and founded the province of Lazica, of which Kutaisi remained the capital, retaining its Greek name of Kotayon. It was briefly won by the Arabs in the 8th Century, which resulted in the successful independence of the region from the Byzantine Empire once the Arabs had been beaten back, and the union of the Georgian nations of Lazica and Abasgia (Abkhazia) to create the first Georgian state, with Kutaisi at its centre and serving as its capital through the 11th and 12th Centuries. It is from this era that the city’s most iconic landmarks derive, such as the recently renovated Bagrati Cathedral which had lain in ruins and decay for centuries, and the UNESCO-inscribed Gelati Monastery.
Bagrati Cathedral
Gelati Monastery
After the dissolution of the united Georgia into a group of kingdoms after this era, Kutaisi served as the capital of Imeretia all the way until 1810, through a long period of independence followed by an equally lengthy occupation by the Ottomans, despite many attempts by the Imeretians to organise pan-Georgian opposition to Turkish rule, or to solicit support from the Russian Empire. After absorption in to the Tsar’s dominions following their victory in the Russo-Turkish wars, it became the capital of the Kutais Governate, which contained most of western Georgia. Its convenient location on the Rioni and at a key point which pretty much all of Russia’s possessions south of the Caucasus Mountains needed to pass through to access the Black Sea and the major cities of western Russia, it became a key trade point and industrial centre in latter Imperial and throughout Soviet times. Since independence this took a significant blow with manufacturing trades particularly hard-hit, but latter-day economic free industrial zones have been established attracting major manufacturing concerns from Egypt, China and Germany to set up shop in Kutaisi and bringing prosperity back.
Kutaisi also has a proud history of sport, being home to a number of stars over the years, such as David Khakhaleishvili, a judoka who won Olympic gold for the Unified Team in 1992 and then three European titles for independent Georgia through the 1990s, and two members of the 1972 Olympic basketball gold medal team, famous for their last second triumph over the USA that resulted in a spectacular level of tantrum-throwing after a controversial decision late in the game; along with Otar Korkia, a legend of the sport voted one of FIBA’s 50 greatest players of all time in 1991 after his death, and also voted the greatest Georgian sportsman of the 20th Century. Torpedo Kutaisi spent 35 years as one of the top division teams in Soviet soccer before going on to dominate Georgian domestic racing in the late 90s and early 2000s, while AIA Kutaisi won three back to back Soviet rugby championships in the late 80s as well as dominating the local competitions during that era; they have won three domestic titles since independence as well, most recently in 2021, as the Georgians continue to be the rugby team in this part of the world. Away from the world of sport, it is also the birthplace of offensively inoffensive nu-easy-listening singer Katie Melua.
The first time we cross the finishing line, at the Colchis Fountain, there are 17,3km remaining. We actually arrive close by a couple of kilometres earlier, but I decided to loop around to the south toward the train station so that the final kilometre or so remains intact, saving on logistics as then the square to the west of the fountain can be used for podium trappings and team buses etc.. rather than being raced within 20km of the line. The circuit is bumpy but not super hard, opening with a 600m at 5,5% repecho, then a downhill stretch followed by the main climb of the circuit, a 1,6km at 5,8% puncheur special (starting with a kilometre at 7% before easing up toward the summit) to the Ancient Basilica of the Archangels that overlooks the city from its east. This crests 12,1km from the line, so the rest of the route is a roughly triangular loop around to the south of the city, which should favour the sprinters to some extent if they have survived the hilly terrain so far, but not to such an extent that there isn’t the point in trying to foil them. We pass Kutaisi Sports Palace on the way back into town, home of the city’s volleyball, basketball and handball sides, ahead of a series of curves culminating in a roundabout at 3,5km from the line. The last true corner is about 1600m from the line, but there is then a very long, sweeping double-apex left hander past the station that the riders will likely be accelerating through if any attacks have been caught as they plan the sprint; else wise this will be the best chance for any escapees to stay out of sight of the bunch. There is a slight rightwards kink to the finishing straight about 200m from the line, but it’s a barely perceptible one in terms of requiring any technical expertise. This one could be for the sprinters or it could be for the puncheurs. It’s difficult to tell whether the bunch would catch attackers, who are more likely to succeed in smaller or lower-level pélotons or races with smaller team sizes - and I envision this one could be both.
GPM:
Gvashtibi (cat.3) 2,0km @ 5,2%
Zemo Chuneshi (cat.3) 1,1km @ 5,5%
Mtavarangelozi Church (cat.3) 1,6km @ 5,8%
We head back to the Black Sea coast for a start in Poti, which I passed through briefly in the previous stage, which as mentioned is one of the oldest cities in Georgia, constructed on the site of an old Greek city called Phasis. As the home of the Georgian Navy, it is first attested all the way back in 700 BC, believed however to be the name of a river or an estuary village at that stage. A city was established by the 6th Century BC, and it appears in several myths and legends, including that of Jason and the Argonauts; it is also believed to be part of the India-Black Sea trade route of the era, being mentioned in the works of Pliny the Elder. It was also a centre of a Greek diocese after the introduction of Christianity, and even had a brief period under Genoese control before its Ottoman period.
Originally I had a major mountain stage here with an HC finish at Bakhmaro (22km at 7%), then another with an even tougher HC finish at Khvamli, north of Kutaisi (11km at 10%) but I’ve decided to go with a more practical route here that will be more appropriate for the kind of level of péloton we would see here. There will still be climbing in the race, but we don’t plan to eradicate half the péloton early in the race here. Instead we will retrace part of our route from yesterday, following the route from Poti to Senaki, but where we turned northwards there yesterday, instead we continue eastward and inland with our overall course direction being eastward.
The first intermediate sprint comes just before the halfway point, in the town of Khoni. Briefly - from 1936 until the dissolution of the USSR - named Tsulukidze after the Georgian Marxist revolutionary Aleksandr Tsulukidze, it is a gateway to the Imereti region and home to just under 8.000 people, largely known for production of tea during Soviet times. Here we turn north into the foothills of the mountains, but there aren’t really any significant climbs here, just some short cat.3 risers as we climb out of the Tskhenitsqali river valley.
From here, we travel southwards, after two cat.3 climbs, into Tskaltubo, a spa town built on mineral springs which was established as a popular recreational/restorative site during the middle ages, but really rose to prominence in Soviet times, thanks largely to the patronage of Josef Stalin who had a dacha on a hill above the town and used a particular complex, specifically spring #6 - which honours him to this day with a large ornate frieze depicting less-than-kindly old Uncle Joe, although this was not on-site before the redevelopment of the site into a large wellness tourism complex that followed his death; tourism burgeoned and the small town would receive 125.000 visitors a year, a figure which has dropped to barely 1% of that number as the bathhouses have fallen into disrepair since the fall of the USSR; a plan is afoot to restore these and try to bring back some of the city’s former glories, but at present it’s very much another - albeit more ornate and dramatic - Soviet ghost town, with the vast complexes more the preserve of urban spelunkers and adventure tourists.
From here, it’s a short run on to a finish in one of Georgia’s biggest and best-known cities, Kutaisi. One of the oldest cities in the area, the city is attested from at latest the 6th Century BC, as it had already grown to become the capital and cultural centre of the Colchis region by this time. Kutaisi was treated as the final destination of the Argonauts in their quest for the golden fleece, and was the home of the mythical (but possibly based on a real monarch, attestations are poor and sources conflicting) King Aeëtes. After the collapse of Colchis, the Romans moved in and founded the province of Lazica, of which Kutaisi remained the capital, retaining its Greek name of Kotayon. It was briefly won by the Arabs in the 8th Century, which resulted in the successful independence of the region from the Byzantine Empire once the Arabs had been beaten back, and the union of the Georgian nations of Lazica and Abasgia (Abkhazia) to create the first Georgian state, with Kutaisi at its centre and serving as its capital through the 11th and 12th Centuries. It is from this era that the city’s most iconic landmarks derive, such as the recently renovated Bagrati Cathedral which had lain in ruins and decay for centuries, and the UNESCO-inscribed Gelati Monastery.
Bagrati Cathedral
Gelati Monastery
After the dissolution of the united Georgia into a group of kingdoms after this era, Kutaisi served as the capital of Imeretia all the way until 1810, through a long period of independence followed by an equally lengthy occupation by the Ottomans, despite many attempts by the Imeretians to organise pan-Georgian opposition to Turkish rule, or to solicit support from the Russian Empire. After absorption in to the Tsar’s dominions following their victory in the Russo-Turkish wars, it became the capital of the Kutais Governate, which contained most of western Georgia. Its convenient location on the Rioni and at a key point which pretty much all of Russia’s possessions south of the Caucasus Mountains needed to pass through to access the Black Sea and the major cities of western Russia, it became a key trade point and industrial centre in latter Imperial and throughout Soviet times. Since independence this took a significant blow with manufacturing trades particularly hard-hit, but latter-day economic free industrial zones have been established attracting major manufacturing concerns from Egypt, China and Germany to set up shop in Kutaisi and bringing prosperity back.
Kutaisi also has a proud history of sport, being home to a number of stars over the years, such as David Khakhaleishvili, a judoka who won Olympic gold for the Unified Team in 1992 and then three European titles for independent Georgia through the 1990s, and two members of the 1972 Olympic basketball gold medal team, famous for their last second triumph over the USA that resulted in a spectacular level of tantrum-throwing after a controversial decision late in the game; along with Otar Korkia, a legend of the sport voted one of FIBA’s 50 greatest players of all time in 1991 after his death, and also voted the greatest Georgian sportsman of the 20th Century. Torpedo Kutaisi spent 35 years as one of the top division teams in Soviet soccer before going on to dominate Georgian domestic racing in the late 90s and early 2000s, while AIA Kutaisi won three back to back Soviet rugby championships in the late 80s as well as dominating the local competitions during that era; they have won three domestic titles since independence as well, most recently in 2021, as the Georgians continue to be the rugby team in this part of the world. Away from the world of sport, it is also the birthplace of offensively inoffensive nu-easy-listening singer Katie Melua.
The first time we cross the finishing line, at the Colchis Fountain, there are 17,3km remaining. We actually arrive close by a couple of kilometres earlier, but I decided to loop around to the south toward the train station so that the final kilometre or so remains intact, saving on logistics as then the square to the west of the fountain can be used for podium trappings and team buses etc.. rather than being raced within 20km of the line. The circuit is bumpy but not super hard, opening with a 600m at 5,5% repecho, then a downhill stretch followed by the main climb of the circuit, a 1,6km at 5,8% puncheur special (starting with a kilometre at 7% before easing up toward the summit) to the Ancient Basilica of the Archangels that overlooks the city from its east. This crests 12,1km from the line, so the rest of the route is a roughly triangular loop around to the south of the city, which should favour the sprinters to some extent if they have survived the hilly terrain so far, but not to such an extent that there isn’t the point in trying to foil them. We pass Kutaisi Sports Palace on the way back into town, home of the city’s volleyball, basketball and handball sides, ahead of a series of curves culminating in a roundabout at 3,5km from the line. The last true corner is about 1600m from the line, but there is then a very long, sweeping double-apex left hander past the station that the riders will likely be accelerating through if any attacks have been caught as they plan the sprint; else wise this will be the best chance for any escapees to stay out of sight of the bunch. There is a slight rightwards kink to the finishing straight about 200m from the line, but it’s a barely perceptible one in terms of requiring any technical expertise. This one could be for the sprinters or it could be for the puncheurs. It’s difficult to tell whether the bunch would catch attackers, who are more likely to succeed in smaller or lower-level pélotons or races with smaller team sizes - and I envision this one could be both.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 4: Zestaponi - Borjomi, 122km
GPM:
Rikoti Pass (cat.2) 8,7km @ 5,6%
St Seraphim of Sarov (cat.3) 3,7km @ 5,1%
Tba (cat.3) 1,8km @ 7,4%
As we continue to head eastward we have our first stage to ramp up the climbing a bit, starting in a city around 40km southeast of yesterday’s stage host of Kutaisi. This city of 20.000 inhabitants in the Kolkheti lowlands is called ზესტაფონი, which is variously transliterated as Zestaponi, Zestaphoni and Zestafoni. The city is attested since the 16th Century and is mostly a metallurgical industrial centre, also known for its viticulture, but outside of Georgia it might be better known as the birthplace of the Russophone author of detective fiction, Boris Akunin. Perhaps more notably, however, is that it is the gateway to the nearby small town of Shorapani, which it has now more or less engulfed, which is home to a ruined fortress and complex dating back to the 3rd Century BC. It is believed that this is the town of Sarapanis which appears in the works of Strabo and the legend of Jason and the Argonauts. Aside from this, however, Zestaponi is one of the more unassuming stage hosts. The stage wouldn’t have been overlong if we had started back in Kutaisi - just over 170km - but given the level of the péloton we’re likely to see here and the stages I have coming up, I figured a short stage here would be more prudent.
Zestaponi
This stage is a little more tough than its predecessors, including more sustained climbs and an uphill finish, but the first part is relatively comfortable flat riding, before the river we are following, the Dzirula, splits into the Upper Dzirula and the Chkherimela, with us following the former, more northerly path. Our route will head back south again, but for the time being it’s river gorges.
Eventually we cross the border from Imereti into the Shida Kartli region, where the two roads that follow the two river valleys will meet one another once more, after deviating from their riverside routes and ascending up mountain passes in the Likhi Range, an odd mountainous spur that forms an effective isthmus between the Greater and Lesser Caucasian ranges. The Chkherimela road crests Surami Pass, while the Dzirula road crests the more significant (from a cycling climb point of view) Rikoti Pass. Historically this was the most significant divide between East and West in Georgia, and perhaps the most notable waypoint on the ს1 (S1) highway from Tbilisi to Kutaisi. Since 1982 the upper part of the pass has been replaced by a tunnel, but the old road is still there and enables scenic views into the plains of each side of the country. The country planned extensive renovations to the highway, including several bridges and tunnels being constructed, to increase the speed of the transfer by widening and straightening the route, and this work was mostly undertaken from 2020 to 2023 on the Dzirula side. We will be minimising our disruption by sticking to the valley road because it’s nicer and only the 13km from Khunevi to the start of the tunnel 2km before the summit will see us converge on the highway traffic. This includes all the technical corners in both the ascent and descent. The climb is 8,7km at 5,6% so it’s hardly a worldbeater but it’s a solid cat.2, and its historic status and position in the country made it a necessary inclusion.
Rikoti Pass is a lopsided ascent, as the plateau on the Shida Kartli side is higher than that on the Imereti side. This isn’t quite lopsided like, say, Puerto del Escudo or Urkiola, but it is definitely noticeable. We have an intermediate sprint here at the halfway point in the stage, in the city of Khashuri, the 9th largest in Georgia, which expanded out of a former agricultural village when the railways were built in the 19th Century. Originally called Mikhailovo after an Imperial Russian Grand Duke, it was given its current name in 1917 when Imperial names were phased out, but was then renamed Stalinisi in honour of the most famous (and infamous) of all Georgians from 1928 until 1934. This is actually the easternmost part of the stage - and the race will continue eastward of this so after the stage will transfer back in this direction - as we then turn southwest into the Lesser Caucasian mountains and the Kura river valley.
Just under 30km of river valley riding takes us to our stage finish town of Borjomi, although like with Kutaisi yesterday we do not finish here immediately. The edge of a national park that it serves as a gateway to and at the mouth of its eponymous gorge, the town, home to 11.000 people, was originally a fortress town that became abandoned after Ottoman incursion, but was redeveloped and rose to some prestige after Russian control was asserted in Georgia during the Imperial era; it is well renowned throughout Georgia and much of the former USSR as a health resort and for its landscapes and cleanliness; Borjomi mineral water is one of the most famous brands all over the former Soviet Union, and it is also a major stopping point and hub for those visiting the Romanov summer palace at Likani, home to several Viceroys of the Caucasus, or the ski resort at Bakuriani; the former has, like all of the aristocratic mansions of the Lesser Caucasian Range, been turned into a sanatorium during Soviet times, and the latter has been the centre of a somewhat fanciful Georgian bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. This bid failed, of course, and the city had been eliminated before it hit its other Olympic heritage - when Borjomi native Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in his final training run for the luge at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, being thrown from the course in the final corner and striking a steel guard post. The 21-year-old became the fourth Winter Olympian and sixteenth Olympian overall - and at time of writing the most recent - to die while actively competing at the Games. It was also the first fatality in luge for 35 years. Borjomi was also the birthplace of WWII flying ace Otto Smik, a Slovak of Jewish origin whose father had been captured during WWI and imprisoned in Georgia by the Imperial Russian forces. The family were allowed to relocate back to Slovakia in 1934, and due to their Jewish background Smik fled first to France, then Hungary and finally Yugoslavia when the Nazis moved into their homeland. Joining first the Czechoslovak and then French government-in-exile flying forces, he eventually found his way into the British RAF and became a flying ace in the iconic Spitfire fighters; he is credited with the confirmed shooting down of three V-1 flying bombs and 13 Luftwaffe planes, plus many others that he contributed to. He would eventually be shot down himself over the Netherlands in November 1944.
Romanov palace at Likani
Borjomi Gorge
There are two roads up from Borjomi to the Bakuriani ski resort. The bigger and more commonly used actually branches off the main Borjomi road before the town itself, and is the highway route to the ski resort, passing the mineral water bottling plant. The other, older road ascends from the town itself via a few ascents and flats through a shorter distance, with the two converging at the village of Tsemi, under Libani (which is the main destination of this road before the construction of the highway, after which the road through Tsemi, a former branch off of it, became a link road to the highway and the fastest route to Libani), and between Tba and Tsagveri. After the intermediate sprint in Borjomi, we take a hairpin left and start to climb, but the climb is broken up into three distinct ascents, which I’ve subsequently broken up into two categorised climbs, as the first two are more or less one climb with a brief respite, then there is a significant break before the next ascent.
These amount to 1,6km @ 5,8% on the way out of the town, then a short flat to the cable car station and a further 1,1km @ 6,5% which then ends with some false flat to the Temple of St. Seraphim of Sarov. The overall climb totals 3,7km @ 5,1% and could have been categorised separately but it didn’t seem worth it. After 2,5-3km of flat, there is then a second, steeper ramp up to the village of Tba, which opens up with 800m at 9% and then totals 1,8km at 7,4%. Cresting with 21km remaining, it’s likely to see a bit of action as breakaways and attacks form, not least because the vast majority of the remaining stage distance is taken up by the descent into Borjomi once more. This is a fast and fluent descent through the valley of the Gujaretistskali river, with a 2-3% kind of gradient for much of it, so this shouldn’t be too tricky, fast enough to make it hard for the péloton to chase escapees, but with most corners being sweeping and wide rather than twisty and technical. But I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve; the finish is, in fact, not at the intermediate sprint, but we continue through it and where we turned left for the loop previously, instead this time we continue straight on for a finish at the lower cable car station, just outside Borjomi Central Park.
Foreground section of town is where we finish
This is a simple and fairly direct chase up to the finish, but it has two distinct characteristics. Firstly, that it climbs 41m in the last 650m, so averaging around the 7% mark. Secondly, that it’s cobbled.
Is this a particularly challenging finish? No, not really. It’s not all that different to something fairly gentle or straightforward that we might be familiar with from Classics season, such as, say, Tiegemberg or perhaps better as a descriptor, a slightly tougher version of the Nokereberg finish from Nokere Koerse. This is something like a puncheur stage but not totally obviously so, and the cobbles and the short distance of the finale will favour a bit more power - but there are those steeper ascents in the late going of the stage. This is possibly the end of the chances for the faster guys, however, at least for a while, so they’ll probably want to make the most of it…
GPM:
Rikoti Pass (cat.2) 8,7km @ 5,6%
St Seraphim of Sarov (cat.3) 3,7km @ 5,1%
Tba (cat.3) 1,8km @ 7,4%
As we continue to head eastward we have our first stage to ramp up the climbing a bit, starting in a city around 40km southeast of yesterday’s stage host of Kutaisi. This city of 20.000 inhabitants in the Kolkheti lowlands is called ზესტაფონი, which is variously transliterated as Zestaponi, Zestaphoni and Zestafoni. The city is attested since the 16th Century and is mostly a metallurgical industrial centre, also known for its viticulture, but outside of Georgia it might be better known as the birthplace of the Russophone author of detective fiction, Boris Akunin. Perhaps more notably, however, is that it is the gateway to the nearby small town of Shorapani, which it has now more or less engulfed, which is home to a ruined fortress and complex dating back to the 3rd Century BC. It is believed that this is the town of Sarapanis which appears in the works of Strabo and the legend of Jason and the Argonauts. Aside from this, however, Zestaponi is one of the more unassuming stage hosts. The stage wouldn’t have been overlong if we had started back in Kutaisi - just over 170km - but given the level of the péloton we’re likely to see here and the stages I have coming up, I figured a short stage here would be more prudent.
Zestaponi
This stage is a little more tough than its predecessors, including more sustained climbs and an uphill finish, but the first part is relatively comfortable flat riding, before the river we are following, the Dzirula, splits into the Upper Dzirula and the Chkherimela, with us following the former, more northerly path. Our route will head back south again, but for the time being it’s river gorges.
Eventually we cross the border from Imereti into the Shida Kartli region, where the two roads that follow the two river valleys will meet one another once more, after deviating from their riverside routes and ascending up mountain passes in the Likhi Range, an odd mountainous spur that forms an effective isthmus between the Greater and Lesser Caucasian ranges. The Chkherimela road crests Surami Pass, while the Dzirula road crests the more significant (from a cycling climb point of view) Rikoti Pass. Historically this was the most significant divide between East and West in Georgia, and perhaps the most notable waypoint on the ს1 (S1) highway from Tbilisi to Kutaisi. Since 1982 the upper part of the pass has been replaced by a tunnel, but the old road is still there and enables scenic views into the plains of each side of the country. The country planned extensive renovations to the highway, including several bridges and tunnels being constructed, to increase the speed of the transfer by widening and straightening the route, and this work was mostly undertaken from 2020 to 2023 on the Dzirula side. We will be minimising our disruption by sticking to the valley road because it’s nicer and only the 13km from Khunevi to the start of the tunnel 2km before the summit will see us converge on the highway traffic. This includes all the technical corners in both the ascent and descent. The climb is 8,7km at 5,6% so it’s hardly a worldbeater but it’s a solid cat.2, and its historic status and position in the country made it a necessary inclusion.
Rikoti Pass is a lopsided ascent, as the plateau on the Shida Kartli side is higher than that on the Imereti side. This isn’t quite lopsided like, say, Puerto del Escudo or Urkiola, but it is definitely noticeable. We have an intermediate sprint here at the halfway point in the stage, in the city of Khashuri, the 9th largest in Georgia, which expanded out of a former agricultural village when the railways were built in the 19th Century. Originally called Mikhailovo after an Imperial Russian Grand Duke, it was given its current name in 1917 when Imperial names were phased out, but was then renamed Stalinisi in honour of the most famous (and infamous) of all Georgians from 1928 until 1934. This is actually the easternmost part of the stage - and the race will continue eastward of this so after the stage will transfer back in this direction - as we then turn southwest into the Lesser Caucasian mountains and the Kura river valley.
Just under 30km of river valley riding takes us to our stage finish town of Borjomi, although like with Kutaisi yesterday we do not finish here immediately. The edge of a national park that it serves as a gateway to and at the mouth of its eponymous gorge, the town, home to 11.000 people, was originally a fortress town that became abandoned after Ottoman incursion, but was redeveloped and rose to some prestige after Russian control was asserted in Georgia during the Imperial era; it is well renowned throughout Georgia and much of the former USSR as a health resort and for its landscapes and cleanliness; Borjomi mineral water is one of the most famous brands all over the former Soviet Union, and it is also a major stopping point and hub for those visiting the Romanov summer palace at Likani, home to several Viceroys of the Caucasus, or the ski resort at Bakuriani; the former has, like all of the aristocratic mansions of the Lesser Caucasian Range, been turned into a sanatorium during Soviet times, and the latter has been the centre of a somewhat fanciful Georgian bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. This bid failed, of course, and the city had been eliminated before it hit its other Olympic heritage - when Borjomi native Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in his final training run for the luge at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, being thrown from the course in the final corner and striking a steel guard post. The 21-year-old became the fourth Winter Olympian and sixteenth Olympian overall - and at time of writing the most recent - to die while actively competing at the Games. It was also the first fatality in luge for 35 years. Borjomi was also the birthplace of WWII flying ace Otto Smik, a Slovak of Jewish origin whose father had been captured during WWI and imprisoned in Georgia by the Imperial Russian forces. The family were allowed to relocate back to Slovakia in 1934, and due to their Jewish background Smik fled first to France, then Hungary and finally Yugoslavia when the Nazis moved into their homeland. Joining first the Czechoslovak and then French government-in-exile flying forces, he eventually found his way into the British RAF and became a flying ace in the iconic Spitfire fighters; he is credited with the confirmed shooting down of three V-1 flying bombs and 13 Luftwaffe planes, plus many others that he contributed to. He would eventually be shot down himself over the Netherlands in November 1944.
Romanov palace at Likani
Borjomi Gorge
There are two roads up from Borjomi to the Bakuriani ski resort. The bigger and more commonly used actually branches off the main Borjomi road before the town itself, and is the highway route to the ski resort, passing the mineral water bottling plant. The other, older road ascends from the town itself via a few ascents and flats through a shorter distance, with the two converging at the village of Tsemi, under Libani (which is the main destination of this road before the construction of the highway, after which the road through Tsemi, a former branch off of it, became a link road to the highway and the fastest route to Libani), and between Tba and Tsagveri. After the intermediate sprint in Borjomi, we take a hairpin left and start to climb, but the climb is broken up into three distinct ascents, which I’ve subsequently broken up into two categorised climbs, as the first two are more or less one climb with a brief respite, then there is a significant break before the next ascent.
These amount to 1,6km @ 5,8% on the way out of the town, then a short flat to the cable car station and a further 1,1km @ 6,5% which then ends with some false flat to the Temple of St. Seraphim of Sarov. The overall climb totals 3,7km @ 5,1% and could have been categorised separately but it didn’t seem worth it. After 2,5-3km of flat, there is then a second, steeper ramp up to the village of Tba, which opens up with 800m at 9% and then totals 1,8km at 7,4%. Cresting with 21km remaining, it’s likely to see a bit of action as breakaways and attacks form, not least because the vast majority of the remaining stage distance is taken up by the descent into Borjomi once more. This is a fast and fluent descent through the valley of the Gujaretistskali river, with a 2-3% kind of gradient for much of it, so this shouldn’t be too tricky, fast enough to make it hard for the péloton to chase escapees, but with most corners being sweeping and wide rather than twisty and technical. But I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve; the finish is, in fact, not at the intermediate sprint, but we continue through it and where we turned left for the loop previously, instead this time we continue straight on for a finish at the lower cable car station, just outside Borjomi Central Park.
Foreground section of town is where we finish
This is a simple and fairly direct chase up to the finish, but it has two distinct characteristics. Firstly, that it climbs 41m in the last 650m, so averaging around the 7% mark. Secondly, that it’s cobbled.
Is this a particularly challenging finish? No, not really. It’s not all that different to something fairly gentle or straightforward that we might be familiar with from Classics season, such as, say, Tiegemberg or perhaps better as a descriptor, a slightly tougher version of the Nokereberg finish from Nokere Koerse. This is something like a puncheur stage but not totally obviously so, and the cobbles and the short distance of the finale will favour a bit more power - but there are those steeper ascents in the late going of the stage. This is possibly the end of the chances for the faster guys, however, at least for a while, so they’ll probably want to make the most of it…
- Jul 16, 2024
- 1,873
- 2,105
- 5,680
A return to Gent hosting both the start and finish of Vlaanderens Mooiste:
ridewithgps.com
Ronde van Vlaanderen | Gent - Gent
250.8 km, +2200 m. Bike ride in Gent, Vlaams Gewest
ridewithgps.com
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 5: Gori - Mtatsminda Park, 177km
GPM:
Trialeti-Didgori (HC) 21,3km @ 5,7%
Kojori (cat.1) 15,9km @ 6,3%
Shindisi (cat.2) 5,5km @ 7,8%
Stage 5 is the queen stage, where we have our biggest amount of climbing and our hardest climbs of the race. The stage starts a little east of the easternmost point stage 4 reached, in the city of Gori, the regional capital of Shida Kartli and, with over 40.000 inhabitants, the 5th largest city in Georgia. Located at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Didi Liakhvi rivers, the area on which the city - whose name translates as ‘hill’, from a Russian loanword into Georgian - stands has been populated since the Bronze Age, and artefacts of Ancient Greek cultural origin have been found in the area. The official founding of the modern town of Gori is dated to the reign of King David IV at the turn of the 12th Century, however there was a fortress attested on the site since at least four hundred years earlier. It has, as a strategic site with a hill and a river confluence, frequently come under attack during periods of volatility, being seized by the north Caucasian Alans (no, really) who were being driven southward by Mongol incursions, the Turkomans, the Persians, the Ottomans and the Russians at various occasions - the Persians and the Ottomans traded the town between the two of them multiple times, punctuated by occasional periods of national independence for the Georgian people as well. Being close to the South Ossetian internal border, where the breakaway Republic under Russian supervision’s extent ends, the city has continued in conflict to recent times, being occupied by the Russians briefly in August 2008; this has also restricted its transport importance with railroad routes and highways into South Ossetia falling into disrepair and disuse, as well as increasing its military presence with NATO-standard bases located nearby to ward against future incursion, but it remains a stopping point on the main east-west transportation routes in the country nonetheless.
The old city was destroyed to a great extent in 1920 by earthquakes, and rebuilt under Soviet supervision in the ensuing years. The city has become a sporting hub for Georgians, focusing primarily on combat sports; several Olympians and successful fighters in a variety of disciplines have come from Gori, including judokas Lasha Shavdatuashvili (a World, Olympic and European champion who has won three Olympic medals, one of each colour, from 2012 to 2021) and Giorgi Tenadze (a World and Olympic bronze medalist in the 80s), amateur freestyle wrestlers Geno Petriashvili (also a World, Olympic and European champion, who has three world titles, and a medal of every colour in the Olympics, upgrading a Rio bronze to a Tokyo silver and eventually a Paris gold) and Vladimir Khinchegashvili (who won silver in London and gold in Rio) and World gold medalist super heavyweight amateur boxer Georgi Kandelaki.
But let’s be honest… one man from Gori is rather a bit more famous than them: Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known to the rest of the world as kindly old Uncle Joe himself, Joseph Stalin. You’ve probably heard of him.
I’m not going to go through a potted history of Stalin, after all while I have discussed many of the dictators, revolutionaries and despots of history through many of my races through Asia and especially Latin America, I think Stalin is well known enough to most not to really need much more than the cursory acknowledgement that a genuine case could be made for his being the most evil man of the 20th Century, and think of the ground that that covers. His political manoeuvring, relentless self-propagandising, penchant and talent for rewriting history to his own benefit, and ruthless elimination of his enemies, both real and perceived, threw an intense shadow over the Soviet Union that required a formal and official policy of “De-Stalinization” following his death. Gori, as his birthplace, is one of the few places that retained a statue of the man following the fall of the USSR, and although it was removed in 2010, the townsfolk voted to restore it two years later, not necessarily in honour of their more famous local celebrity, but more in an attempt not to airbrush the city’s history in what would have been a very Stalin-like manner. A museum of the life of the dictator is the city’s biggest tourist attraction to overseas visitors, although the hilltop fortress that has such national history and prestige tends to take precedence for Georgian domestic guests.
The first 40km or so are a gentle, rolling welcome into the stage, but in the small town of Saskhori, we take a right hand turn and forge our way headlong into the Trialeti mountains, as we are heading along the Nichbisi-Didgori-Didi Toneti road, one of Georgia’s toughest paved roads and a monster climb that is a legitimate hors catégorie ascent in anybody’s language. Climbing over 1200m in just over 20 kilometres, this is the single toughest climb of the race, and as I’ve chosen to omit the Russian Military Road up to Stepantsminda and Gudauri, the ceiling of the race. This is, in fact, a multi-stepped ascent, with three distinct stretches of climbing broken up with short plateaus, but it’s not as immediately obvious as you might see from , say, the Col de la Croix de Fer or the main road to El Morredero. Rather, the first 12km or so from Saskhori average 7% (easing into the climb, as the last 9,5km of this average almost 8%); then after a short interlude, a short ramp of 3km at 7% ensues, before a shallow final climb to the high point of the road at just under 5% for the final 4,2km.
Didgori Battle Monument on the Nichbisi-Didgori-Didi Toneti Road
Short drone video showing monument and upper sections of the road
The three summits of the three sub-climbs are Nat’beuri (a summit near the end of the main 12km stretch), Didgori (a summit which is right at the end of the second ascent) and finally Shisani (the summit close to the ridge we cross at the high point of the road). Although not the highest of these, the summit of Didgori is by far the most famous, owing to a legendary 1121 battle through these mountains which was decisively won by the Georgian King David IV, aka David the Builder, defeating a large Seljuk force (historic mythologising has seen fantastic suggestions of upward of half a million troops, but more modern historiography tends to place it at between 100.000 and 200.000) led by the venerated military commander Ilghazi, and enabled the Georgians to retake Tbilisi and make it into their capital once more. The Georgians had 56.000 men at their disposal (mostly Georgian but also including Alans, Kipchaks and Franks), and knew they had to cut off the attacks of the Seljuks before they reached Tbilisi, so enticed them into the rugged terrain of the Trialeti range. Islamic sources suggest that a small Kipchak force was sent and perceived to be deserters, leading the Seljuks to gratefully accept them only to then see attacks on their commanders precipitate an ambush from the Georgian forces. Georgian sources, however, suggest that the small group of Kipchaks was disguised as retreating stragglers, leading the Seljuk forces to chase them into a narrow mountain pass whereby they were ambushed from both sides. Either way, the retreating Seljuks numbered so many that captives were being taken for over a week afterward, and the loss of so many high ranking commanders and officials had such an effect that David was able to liberate almost all of Georgia and even make incursions into Seljuk territory. August 12, the date of the battle, is now an annual celebration day in the country. Following the restoration of Georgian independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a large and imposing monument was erected at the site of the pass, although the overall battlefield stretches over several nearby meadows, and is now a popular tourist spot, although as mentioned, it is not the high point of the road, which comes a few kilometres later.
We are, however, still over 100km from the line at the summit, so while this is the hardest climb of the entire race, it’s not going to decide the stage. Instead we will descend down onto an intermediate plateau through the spa resort of Orbeti, and then after some rolling terrain there, a more concentrated descent of 12,7km at 6% takes us into the country’s erstwhile capital for the first time, passing the Mikheil Meskhi Stadium, the second largest in the country, previously known as Lokomotivi Stadium, but renamed after the great winger for Dynamo and Lokomotiv Tbilisi Mikheil Meskhi, a Georgian winger of the 50s and 60s known as the “Georgian Garrincha”, who played in the 1960 European Championships and 1962 World Cup for the USSR and was invited to play on the World XI for its first fixture in 1963, only for the USSR authorities to decline the invitation on his behalf on account of a fictitious injury without notifying the player.
Our first trip to the capital is fleeting, however, with just an intermediate sprint at 62km from the line, so I’ll cover it in more detail later. We cross the Kura river and head through the newer parts of town, until we reach the Palace of Rituals, a modern “palace” designed as a wedding venue which is often used for ceremonies (not just marital) and has been on the itinerary of many a celebrity visitor to Tbilisi in later Soviet times. Used as a personal residence by a Georgian oligarch in the early 21st Century, it has now been restored to its role as a function hall.
Re-traversing the river, we now head on to our penultimate climb of the day, and the first part of it in particular needs noting by the riders since it will also serve as the final one. There are two parallel roads that leave Tbilisi towards the hilltop suburb of Shindisi; one that leaves Tbilisi Old Town, and one that leaves the further southern district of Ortachala. We are, of course, taking the Ortachala one because it’s more direct, including steeper gradients. The two routes converge after around 6km on the Ortachala route and ~7,5km on the Old Town route, meaning the former averages around 7,5% and the latter averages around 6%. But, crucially, the first 2,8km of that ascent from Ortachala average 9,4% which makes them key for creating time gaps. After we pass through Shindisi, though, we continue up the hill, over a grinding 10km at 5,4% up to the summit, shortly after the outlying escape of Kojori, for a total climb of almost 16km at 6% - cat.1 for me as it is clearly less challenging than the HC climb over Didgori, but most definitely a worthwhile challenge. The summit of the climb comes at 43km from the line, and with the HC climb behind us and the kind of péloton that would be likely to race this race, we are going to likely see significant moves here. Kojori is only 40 minutes from Tbilisi by car, by either route, but it feels like you’ve left civilisation long behind, with the clean air, cool climate and insane views on offer from this retreat. As a result of this it has become known as a health resort and has a climate that encourages restorative properties. It also has a fortress believed to date to the 11th Century and a monastery.
We have a short descent and then a plateau before we rejoin the route from earlier and descend back into Tbilisi via the same road we took earlier. And just like before, we have a second intermediate sprint on the same road in Tbilisi we had earlier, around 15km from the line, and then continue on our way to Ortachala, and turn right for that first, difficult stretch of the climb to Shindisi. You can see it on streetview, albeit added by a private individual rather than scanned by the Google car, nevertheless you can see this is a very solid little climb and, with all the climbing already done today and the péloton that has been facing it, I foresee a very select group that arrive together at the bottom of the final climb. And as this is 5,5km at 7,8% and includes that first half at 9,4% (which means you can figure out the second half is a little over 6%), and the summit is only 6km from the line, this is hopefully going to see significant action.
When we reach the end of this parallel road and reach the junction with the other, main road from Tbilisi Old Town, where we turned left before to continue climbing, this time we turn right, descending around 2,6km at about 4% with three hairpin bends, but rather than continue down into the city, we then hook a right-hander and have a slightly uphill drag - very short but a sort of mini-Aprica at 2-3% which takes us to a Georgian tourist favourite, Mtatsminda Park.
This landscape park, theme park and resort area on a crest overlooking the heart of Tbilisi is considered the highest point within the city itself, at 770m above sea level, and is at one end of the most popular hiking route for the outdoor-minded people of Tbilisi, which connects Turtle Lake at the north and heads over the crest of the Nightingales Valley with a significant climb up to a popular viewpoint before descending down to either end, with the Mtatsminda Park end finishing at the station of a funicular, which was opened in 1905 to give access to the people of the city to the Okrakana district, including St. David’s church and a cemetery which is the final resting place of many significant Georgian cultural figures. The overall park was developed by the Soviets at the summit of the funicular in the 1930s, and a few years later the cemetery was developed into a pantheon with the construction of significant (and somewhat ostentatious in their own Soviet way) monuments, conflicting with the earlier Didube Pantheon in the city, which was almost destroyed as a result and saw many of its most important figures’ remains repatriated at the Mtatsminda Pantheon. Strangely, the pantheon has retained this status after the end of the USSR, so we now see prominent Soviet-era dissidents like Merab Kostava and Kakutsa Cholokashvili, and exiled heroes of independent Georgia like Giorgi Kvinitadze, buried alongside prominent Bolsheviks and the mother of Stalin.
With the independence of Georgia following the dissolution of the USSR, the bombastic complex attached to the pantheon became surplus to requirements, and investment from the billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili seeing the construction of today’s theme park, in the early 21st Century Mtatsminda became a place of joy as well as remembrance, and visits to the mountaintop became recreational rather than sombre. The biggest attractions are a 65m-diameter ferris wheel and a three-storey ghost castle ride which was purchased from LunEur, Italy’s oldest amusement park. Legal wranglings following the death of the patron resulted in the park being in limbo for several years but following a resolution of this dispute, the park remains an attraction in private hands but on public land overlooking the city. The finish being so close to the final climb should mean a very competitive finale and some severe time gaps on this one that will make for exciting viewing in the last few days as the GC starts to settle.
GPM:
Trialeti-Didgori (HC) 21,3km @ 5,7%
Kojori (cat.1) 15,9km @ 6,3%
Shindisi (cat.2) 5,5km @ 7,8%
Stage 5 is the queen stage, where we have our biggest amount of climbing and our hardest climbs of the race. The stage starts a little east of the easternmost point stage 4 reached, in the city of Gori, the regional capital of Shida Kartli and, with over 40.000 inhabitants, the 5th largest city in Georgia. Located at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Didi Liakhvi rivers, the area on which the city - whose name translates as ‘hill’, from a Russian loanword into Georgian - stands has been populated since the Bronze Age, and artefacts of Ancient Greek cultural origin have been found in the area. The official founding of the modern town of Gori is dated to the reign of King David IV at the turn of the 12th Century, however there was a fortress attested on the site since at least four hundred years earlier. It has, as a strategic site with a hill and a river confluence, frequently come under attack during periods of volatility, being seized by the north Caucasian Alans (no, really) who were being driven southward by Mongol incursions, the Turkomans, the Persians, the Ottomans and the Russians at various occasions - the Persians and the Ottomans traded the town between the two of them multiple times, punctuated by occasional periods of national independence for the Georgian people as well. Being close to the South Ossetian internal border, where the breakaway Republic under Russian supervision’s extent ends, the city has continued in conflict to recent times, being occupied by the Russians briefly in August 2008; this has also restricted its transport importance with railroad routes and highways into South Ossetia falling into disrepair and disuse, as well as increasing its military presence with NATO-standard bases located nearby to ward against future incursion, but it remains a stopping point on the main east-west transportation routes in the country nonetheless.
The old city was destroyed to a great extent in 1920 by earthquakes, and rebuilt under Soviet supervision in the ensuing years. The city has become a sporting hub for Georgians, focusing primarily on combat sports; several Olympians and successful fighters in a variety of disciplines have come from Gori, including judokas Lasha Shavdatuashvili (a World, Olympic and European champion who has won three Olympic medals, one of each colour, from 2012 to 2021) and Giorgi Tenadze (a World and Olympic bronze medalist in the 80s), amateur freestyle wrestlers Geno Petriashvili (also a World, Olympic and European champion, who has three world titles, and a medal of every colour in the Olympics, upgrading a Rio bronze to a Tokyo silver and eventually a Paris gold) and Vladimir Khinchegashvili (who won silver in London and gold in Rio) and World gold medalist super heavyweight amateur boxer Georgi Kandelaki.
But let’s be honest… one man from Gori is rather a bit more famous than them: Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known to the rest of the world as kindly old Uncle Joe himself, Joseph Stalin. You’ve probably heard of him.
I’m not going to go through a potted history of Stalin, after all while I have discussed many of the dictators, revolutionaries and despots of history through many of my races through Asia and especially Latin America, I think Stalin is well known enough to most not to really need much more than the cursory acknowledgement that a genuine case could be made for his being the most evil man of the 20th Century, and think of the ground that that covers. His political manoeuvring, relentless self-propagandising, penchant and talent for rewriting history to his own benefit, and ruthless elimination of his enemies, both real and perceived, threw an intense shadow over the Soviet Union that required a formal and official policy of “De-Stalinization” following his death. Gori, as his birthplace, is one of the few places that retained a statue of the man following the fall of the USSR, and although it was removed in 2010, the townsfolk voted to restore it two years later, not necessarily in honour of their more famous local celebrity, but more in an attempt not to airbrush the city’s history in what would have been a very Stalin-like manner. A museum of the life of the dictator is the city’s biggest tourist attraction to overseas visitors, although the hilltop fortress that has such national history and prestige tends to take precedence for Georgian domestic guests.
The first 40km or so are a gentle, rolling welcome into the stage, but in the small town of Saskhori, we take a right hand turn and forge our way headlong into the Trialeti mountains, as we are heading along the Nichbisi-Didgori-Didi Toneti road, one of Georgia’s toughest paved roads and a monster climb that is a legitimate hors catégorie ascent in anybody’s language. Climbing over 1200m in just over 20 kilometres, this is the single toughest climb of the race, and as I’ve chosen to omit the Russian Military Road up to Stepantsminda and Gudauri, the ceiling of the race. This is, in fact, a multi-stepped ascent, with three distinct stretches of climbing broken up with short plateaus, but it’s not as immediately obvious as you might see from , say, the Col de la Croix de Fer or the main road to El Morredero. Rather, the first 12km or so from Saskhori average 7% (easing into the climb, as the last 9,5km of this average almost 8%); then after a short interlude, a short ramp of 3km at 7% ensues, before a shallow final climb to the high point of the road at just under 5% for the final 4,2km.
Didgori Battle Monument on the Nichbisi-Didgori-Didi Toneti Road
The three summits of the three sub-climbs are Nat’beuri (a summit near the end of the main 12km stretch), Didgori (a summit which is right at the end of the second ascent) and finally Shisani (the summit close to the ridge we cross at the high point of the road). Although not the highest of these, the summit of Didgori is by far the most famous, owing to a legendary 1121 battle through these mountains which was decisively won by the Georgian King David IV, aka David the Builder, defeating a large Seljuk force (historic mythologising has seen fantastic suggestions of upward of half a million troops, but more modern historiography tends to place it at between 100.000 and 200.000) led by the venerated military commander Ilghazi, and enabled the Georgians to retake Tbilisi and make it into their capital once more. The Georgians had 56.000 men at their disposal (mostly Georgian but also including Alans, Kipchaks and Franks), and knew they had to cut off the attacks of the Seljuks before they reached Tbilisi, so enticed them into the rugged terrain of the Trialeti range. Islamic sources suggest that a small Kipchak force was sent and perceived to be deserters, leading the Seljuks to gratefully accept them only to then see attacks on their commanders precipitate an ambush from the Georgian forces. Georgian sources, however, suggest that the small group of Kipchaks was disguised as retreating stragglers, leading the Seljuk forces to chase them into a narrow mountain pass whereby they were ambushed from both sides. Either way, the retreating Seljuks numbered so many that captives were being taken for over a week afterward, and the loss of so many high ranking commanders and officials had such an effect that David was able to liberate almost all of Georgia and even make incursions into Seljuk territory. August 12, the date of the battle, is now an annual celebration day in the country. Following the restoration of Georgian independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a large and imposing monument was erected at the site of the pass, although the overall battlefield stretches over several nearby meadows, and is now a popular tourist spot, although as mentioned, it is not the high point of the road, which comes a few kilometres later.
We are, however, still over 100km from the line at the summit, so while this is the hardest climb of the entire race, it’s not going to decide the stage. Instead we will descend down onto an intermediate plateau through the spa resort of Orbeti, and then after some rolling terrain there, a more concentrated descent of 12,7km at 6% takes us into the country’s erstwhile capital for the first time, passing the Mikheil Meskhi Stadium, the second largest in the country, previously known as Lokomotivi Stadium, but renamed after the great winger for Dynamo and Lokomotiv Tbilisi Mikheil Meskhi, a Georgian winger of the 50s and 60s known as the “Georgian Garrincha”, who played in the 1960 European Championships and 1962 World Cup for the USSR and was invited to play on the World XI for its first fixture in 1963, only for the USSR authorities to decline the invitation on his behalf on account of a fictitious injury without notifying the player.
Our first trip to the capital is fleeting, however, with just an intermediate sprint at 62km from the line, so I’ll cover it in more detail later. We cross the Kura river and head through the newer parts of town, until we reach the Palace of Rituals, a modern “palace” designed as a wedding venue which is often used for ceremonies (not just marital) and has been on the itinerary of many a celebrity visitor to Tbilisi in later Soviet times. Used as a personal residence by a Georgian oligarch in the early 21st Century, it has now been restored to its role as a function hall.
Re-traversing the river, we now head on to our penultimate climb of the day, and the first part of it in particular needs noting by the riders since it will also serve as the final one. There are two parallel roads that leave Tbilisi towards the hilltop suburb of Shindisi; one that leaves Tbilisi Old Town, and one that leaves the further southern district of Ortachala. We are, of course, taking the Ortachala one because it’s more direct, including steeper gradients. The two routes converge after around 6km on the Ortachala route and ~7,5km on the Old Town route, meaning the former averages around 7,5% and the latter averages around 6%. But, crucially, the first 2,8km of that ascent from Ortachala average 9,4% which makes them key for creating time gaps. After we pass through Shindisi, though, we continue up the hill, over a grinding 10km at 5,4% up to the summit, shortly after the outlying escape of Kojori, for a total climb of almost 16km at 6% - cat.1 for me as it is clearly less challenging than the HC climb over Didgori, but most definitely a worthwhile challenge. The summit of the climb comes at 43km from the line, and with the HC climb behind us and the kind of péloton that would be likely to race this race, we are going to likely see significant moves here. Kojori is only 40 minutes from Tbilisi by car, by either route, but it feels like you’ve left civilisation long behind, with the clean air, cool climate and insane views on offer from this retreat. As a result of this it has become known as a health resort and has a climate that encourages restorative properties. It also has a fortress believed to date to the 11th Century and a monastery.
We have a short descent and then a plateau before we rejoin the route from earlier and descend back into Tbilisi via the same road we took earlier. And just like before, we have a second intermediate sprint on the same road in Tbilisi we had earlier, around 15km from the line, and then continue on our way to Ortachala, and turn right for that first, difficult stretch of the climb to Shindisi. You can see it on streetview, albeit added by a private individual rather than scanned by the Google car, nevertheless you can see this is a very solid little climb and, with all the climbing already done today and the péloton that has been facing it, I foresee a very select group that arrive together at the bottom of the final climb. And as this is 5,5km at 7,8% and includes that first half at 9,4% (which means you can figure out the second half is a little over 6%), and the summit is only 6km from the line, this is hopefully going to see significant action.
When we reach the end of this parallel road and reach the junction with the other, main road from Tbilisi Old Town, where we turned left before to continue climbing, this time we turn right, descending around 2,6km at about 4% with three hairpin bends, but rather than continue down into the city, we then hook a right-hander and have a slightly uphill drag - very short but a sort of mini-Aprica at 2-3% which takes us to a Georgian tourist favourite, Mtatsminda Park.
This landscape park, theme park and resort area on a crest overlooking the heart of Tbilisi is considered the highest point within the city itself, at 770m above sea level, and is at one end of the most popular hiking route for the outdoor-minded people of Tbilisi, which connects Turtle Lake at the north and heads over the crest of the Nightingales Valley with a significant climb up to a popular viewpoint before descending down to either end, with the Mtatsminda Park end finishing at the station of a funicular, which was opened in 1905 to give access to the people of the city to the Okrakana district, including St. David’s church and a cemetery which is the final resting place of many significant Georgian cultural figures. The overall park was developed by the Soviets at the summit of the funicular in the 1930s, and a few years later the cemetery was developed into a pantheon with the construction of significant (and somewhat ostentatious in their own Soviet way) monuments, conflicting with the earlier Didube Pantheon in the city, which was almost destroyed as a result and saw many of its most important figures’ remains repatriated at the Mtatsminda Pantheon. Strangely, the pantheon has retained this status after the end of the USSR, so we now see prominent Soviet-era dissidents like Merab Kostava and Kakutsa Cholokashvili, and exiled heroes of independent Georgia like Giorgi Kvinitadze, buried alongside prominent Bolsheviks and the mother of Stalin.
With the independence of Georgia following the dissolution of the USSR, the bombastic complex attached to the pantheon became surplus to requirements, and investment from the billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili seeing the construction of today’s theme park, in the early 21st Century Mtatsminda became a place of joy as well as remembrance, and visits to the mountaintop became recreational rather than sombre. The biggest attractions are a 65m-diameter ferris wheel and a three-storey ghost castle ride which was purchased from LunEur, Italy’s oldest amusement park. Legal wranglings following the death of the patron resulted in the park being in limbo for several years but following a resolution of this dispute, the park remains an attraction in private hands but on public land overlooking the city. The finish being so close to the final climb should mean a very competitive finale and some severe time gaps on this one that will make for exciting viewing in the last few days as the GC starts to settle.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 6: Rustavi - Sighnaghi, 139km
GPM:
Sighnaghi (Wall)(cat.2) 7,0km @ 6,6%
Sighnaghi (St. Nino’s)(cat.1) 5,5km @ 8,9%
Yes, we have our one and only mountaintop finish stage, and it’s not truly a mountaintop finish, and it’s a short stage, and it’s in an actual town. Go figure. This should, nevertheless, be an interesting stage with a tough finale that allows time gaps especially given there should be some tired legs after yesterday. They’ll be happy, therefore, that there’s really not much of a transfer - in fact since every location left in the race is within a couple of hours of Tbilisi, they can probably stay in the same hotel for the rest of the race for added comfort and logistical simplicity.
Located around 20km south of the capital, Rustavi is, with its population of a little under 150.000, the fourth largest city in Georgia. It is, however, not one of the main jewels of the nation’s touristic crown, despite its ancient history; that is largely because the original city, founded as Bostan-Kalaki (translating as “city of gardens”) and attested as early as the times of Alexander the Great (although some of the claims chronicled for the city’s history from this time would appear to be either fabricated, exaggerated or conflated with other similarly-named cities elsewhere in antiquity), was razed almost to the ground by the Turco-Mongol Timurid Empire in the late 14th Century. The original city had an imposing castle and was an important administrative centre for the region of Iberia, changing hands several times between the Georgians, the Persians (under the Sassanid Empire especially), the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs and the Seljuk Turks; its decline was accelerated heavily during times of Muslim rule as it was subsumed under the Emirate of Tbilisi; it was important as a border town for David the Builder, but its importance relative to its neighbour had signed its death warrant as a central economic driver of the region.
Modern Rustavi
Now after many centuries of relative quiet, as a small satellite town of Tbilisi, Rustavi has risen again, thanks primarily to the most notorious Georgian of all time. The city served as a useful transport hub just south of Tbilisi for goods being transported in from elsewhere in the Soviet Caucasus, with it essentially serving as a gateway town to both the Armenian and Azeri internal borders. Stalin saw this as an opportunity for his accelerated industrialisation policy to bear fruit, and various ironworks, steelworks, metal processing and chemical manufacturing plants sprang up in the town almost overnight, with a large workforce being imported from all over the Georgian SSR to service it. New roads and other infrastructure followed, and its expansion was largely furthered by forced labour by German POWs in the latter days of World War II and the following years. This dependency on Soviet metallurgy, however, has led to a rapid and precipitous decline of the city since 1991; no longer able to rely on a steady stream of metal ores arriving from Azerbaijan, almost two thirds of industry closed down leaving the city a decaying, empty husk, similar to many post-Soviet ghost towns. Corrective measures since the financial crisis in the late 2000s have seen the city start to rebound, and the city has even revamped its motor racing circuit, the only significant FIA-graded circuit in Georgia and the last of the USSR’s ventures into trying to entice higher level motorsport to their nation, most notably hosting the opening round of the 2017 TCR International Series, a successor to the World Touring Car Championship, along with two Georgian-based teams, running Alfa Romeos, entering the series that year.
The majority of this stage could be described best as rolling; there’s a lot of undulation but without any serious climbing or descending until late on, as we follow one of the main connective routes that links the Tbilisi metropolitan area and its surroundings with the country’s eastern edges, the Kakheti region and the Alazani floodplain. For example, the route climbs just over 400m in the first 19km, but apart from the final 1500m into Mukhrovani, which average 5,3%, it’s all low gradient grinding and false flat, with an overall average just topping 2%. There is now a highway (the S5) which runs alongside the old railway tracks through this area, but we follow the old route through the towns, such as Sagarejo, Tokhliauri and Badiauri on the way, with some gradual ups and downs characterising it, before the new road and old road converge near Kakhreti, a small town which now hosts a hard court event on the ATP Challenger Tour.
We then traverse the relatively low-lying Tsiv-Gombori mountain range, which is home to our finish town of Sighnaghi, through a low pass which is uncategorised; it is a little over 4km averaging around 4%, then follows the Chalaubniskhevi river down to Bakurtsikhe, a small satellite town of Gurjaani, the centre of Georgia’s most famous wine-making region, and home to chess WGM (woman grandmaster, a slightly lower title than overall GM) Maka Purtseladze. We then follow along a ridge road that tracks the lower slopes of the mountains, with an uphill kicker into Anaga and then a more sustained 4-5km descent into Tsnori - a town where marked evidence of Kurgan culture (not to be confused with the Highlander, here we are talking burial mounds archetypal of the ancient culture now believed to have been the source of most Indo-European languages and peoples) has been found - where we have our first intermediate sprint. From here, we start to climb up towards our stage town of Sighnaghi for the first time. Tsnori is actually three times the size of Sighnaghi in terms of population, but is much less well known, and sees much of its population travel up the mountain to Sighnaghi to work servicing the tourists that pass through the region.
With a reputation as the prettiest town in Kakheti (and holding said reputation for a reason), Sighnaghi is a popular tourist destination among those who make it to this part of the world, and is also famous among Georgians as a site to elope to; many Georgians from Tbilisi and the surrounding areas will travel to Sighnaghi to marry. The permanent population here is only around 1500, but seasonally this swells to manage the vineyards and the service industries around hotels and day trippers and it was more like 10.000 during Soviet times. The name is a translation of a Turkic term meaning “shelter”, and historically the locals called this site Kisikhi. It has also been for a long time one of the primary centres for Armenian culture within Georgia; during the 19th Century the former vastly outnumbered the Georgians in the town, although that balance has been redressed over time and the number of Armenian churches in the town have dwindled, with the structures remaining but the function changing with time. In fact, for many decades the town’s most famous inhabitant was an Armenian - the painter Gevorg Bashinjaghian, whose landscape painting was a major influence in the art of the Caucasus region in his time - though he has arguably been surpassed by the Chiladze brothers, Tamaz and Otar, who were among the most influential figures in the rejuvenation of literature and poetry in the Georgian language in the post-Stalin Soviet period, and the so-called “Georgian Nightingale”, Vano Sarajishvili, an operatic tenor who worked in St Petersburg and Italy at the turn of the 20th Century and became a legendary cultural figure for Georgians of the time.
There are multiple roads up to Sighnaghi and something that the above photo won’t have shown you is that this is kind of like a Mont Cassel or Ávila on steroids; the upper parts of the town and the area around its historic walls are all cobbled and have beautiful, pristine preserved city walls as well. The main road up to the town is the most modern highway route, and that is the side we will descend because, duh, it’s on pristine and well-paved tarmac, and so means no descending on cobbles. The next main route is the route up to the city wall directly from Tsnori, which we climb and then crest at 21km from the line. This ascent is a pretty classic cat.2 kind of size, 7km at 6,6%, with six hairpins and a last 1200m or so on cobbles. Perhaps a more accurate comparison point would be the Muro di Motovun from the Istrian Spring Trophy, for those who’ve seen that, but again the climb is a bit longer.
Part of the climb
Entering the city walls at the summit
Sinuous descent back down to Tsnori
Instead of heading through the town, however, we hang a right and descend back down toward Anaga and Vakiri, where we rejoin the route we took earlier, descending down into Tsnori, and have our second intermediate sprint, on exactly the same spot as the first. Again we have a sharp 135º right near the train station and start climbing, but this time we turn left just before the city’s stadium, rather than continuing on the direct route to Sighnaghi. This alternative route actually takes us through more of the city’s fortifications, but is perhaps better established as the road to the Bodbe Monastery, a 9th-Century (rebuilt 17th-Century) monasterial complex (of course) which is one of the country’s most prominent pilgrimage sites; it is now, despite its name, a nunnery, and houses the relics of St. Nino, a Greek-speaking Georgian born in Cappadocia who travelled extensively through the Caucasus in the 4th Century and is held as largely responsible for the Christianization of Iberia (Kartli, as opposed to Spain/Portugal, of course). The nunnery was initially constructed around the site where she was buried, and stands on the shoulders of a hill which is known as St. Nino’s Hill, itself a lower summit within the Tsiv-Gombori range, but close to the summit of this hill (around a kilometre up from Bodbe), the road past the monastery/nunnery links up with the main road through Sighnaghi and traversing the range, which reaches its summit point at Nukriani.
Bodbe Monastery
We will not be continuing all the way up to Nukriani, however, but instead we will turn right at the linking of the road near St. Nino’s summit, and this will give us a bit of that kind of finale that those of you that know Spanish cycling will likely be familiar with, as this is very similar characteristic-wise to the finishes at the sanctuary at Arrate, going over Usartza via the classic route, or the concreted route used one year (rather than the route which climbs up through the sanctuary to the opposite summit, which is called Krabelin and has been in vogue in the Itzulia lately). This second summit is both a steeper road, and cresting 30m higher up than the first climb, and this one is passed just 1700m from the finish, which means that this effectively serves as the nearest thing to a mountaintop finish in my race, since I felt it would be overkill for this level of péloton to include Khvamli or Bakhmaro as mentioned in earlier stages. This climb also is not an unreasonable size for creating gaps in this level of péloton while simultaneously not being totally decisive, but since there should be a good amount of fatigue in the bunch after yesterday’s arduous stage, there should be some good action here.
The climb is actually a lot like the traditional side of Arrate in its characteristics, with a steeper middle section and shorter gradual parts leading into and out of that section. The overall statistics are 5,5km at 8,9%, which puts it in the same kind of category of ascent as things like La Planche des Belles Filles (5,8km @ 8,5%), Peña Cabarga (5,6km @ 9,4%) or Basilica di Supergà (4,9km @ 9,1%), but perhaps its most perfect analogue in terms of raw stats is Alto del Cordal in Asturias, which is almost invariably used as the lead-in ascent to Anglirú. As a result of that, however, we don’t really get to see how decisive it can be in and of itself, since Anglirú tends to nullify racing on earlier climbs for obvious reasons. The obvious comparison, of course, as already mentioned, is Arrate. The climb to Bodbe and St. Nino’s from Tsnori is a little over 1,5km at 6,7%, before it ramps up severely, with the next 3km averaging 10,5% as far as the monastery, then another kilometre at 7% at the end up to the summit, so like Arrate, the steep part is in the middle, but if anything this one is slightly steeper in that section, hence the higher average (although Arrate has that false flat between the road that branches off the Ixua, and the summit of the road at Usartza). And then the 1700m or so to the line. This consists of a little bit of flat and rolling, 700m at 6,7% downhill into the middle of Signaghi again, and then the cobbles begin again at the final part of this, into a final uphill 150-200m cobbled repecho up to the line at the town square.
Final ramp
Finishing square at rear of shot
After this stage, the GC should be seriously broken up, but there’s still a chance. I thought this would be a more appropriately-sized “MTF” for the type of race than an HC monolith like Khvamli at 10% for 11km, or an Alpine-sized behemoth like Bakhmaro being 7% for over 20km, and wouldn’t completely overbalance the race, as well as giving the Georgians a chance to show off one of their more beautiful sites in a less famous mountain range.
GPM:
Sighnaghi (Wall)(cat.2) 7,0km @ 6,6%
Sighnaghi (St. Nino’s)(cat.1) 5,5km @ 8,9%
Yes, we have our one and only mountaintop finish stage, and it’s not truly a mountaintop finish, and it’s a short stage, and it’s in an actual town. Go figure. This should, nevertheless, be an interesting stage with a tough finale that allows time gaps especially given there should be some tired legs after yesterday. They’ll be happy, therefore, that there’s really not much of a transfer - in fact since every location left in the race is within a couple of hours of Tbilisi, they can probably stay in the same hotel for the rest of the race for added comfort and logistical simplicity.
Located around 20km south of the capital, Rustavi is, with its population of a little under 150.000, the fourth largest city in Georgia. It is, however, not one of the main jewels of the nation’s touristic crown, despite its ancient history; that is largely because the original city, founded as Bostan-Kalaki (translating as “city of gardens”) and attested as early as the times of Alexander the Great (although some of the claims chronicled for the city’s history from this time would appear to be either fabricated, exaggerated or conflated with other similarly-named cities elsewhere in antiquity), was razed almost to the ground by the Turco-Mongol Timurid Empire in the late 14th Century. The original city had an imposing castle and was an important administrative centre for the region of Iberia, changing hands several times between the Georgians, the Persians (under the Sassanid Empire especially), the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs and the Seljuk Turks; its decline was accelerated heavily during times of Muslim rule as it was subsumed under the Emirate of Tbilisi; it was important as a border town for David the Builder, but its importance relative to its neighbour had signed its death warrant as a central economic driver of the region.
Modern Rustavi
Now after many centuries of relative quiet, as a small satellite town of Tbilisi, Rustavi has risen again, thanks primarily to the most notorious Georgian of all time. The city served as a useful transport hub just south of Tbilisi for goods being transported in from elsewhere in the Soviet Caucasus, with it essentially serving as a gateway town to both the Armenian and Azeri internal borders. Stalin saw this as an opportunity for his accelerated industrialisation policy to bear fruit, and various ironworks, steelworks, metal processing and chemical manufacturing plants sprang up in the town almost overnight, with a large workforce being imported from all over the Georgian SSR to service it. New roads and other infrastructure followed, and its expansion was largely furthered by forced labour by German POWs in the latter days of World War II and the following years. This dependency on Soviet metallurgy, however, has led to a rapid and precipitous decline of the city since 1991; no longer able to rely on a steady stream of metal ores arriving from Azerbaijan, almost two thirds of industry closed down leaving the city a decaying, empty husk, similar to many post-Soviet ghost towns. Corrective measures since the financial crisis in the late 2000s have seen the city start to rebound, and the city has even revamped its motor racing circuit, the only significant FIA-graded circuit in Georgia and the last of the USSR’s ventures into trying to entice higher level motorsport to their nation, most notably hosting the opening round of the 2017 TCR International Series, a successor to the World Touring Car Championship, along with two Georgian-based teams, running Alfa Romeos, entering the series that year.
The majority of this stage could be described best as rolling; there’s a lot of undulation but without any serious climbing or descending until late on, as we follow one of the main connective routes that links the Tbilisi metropolitan area and its surroundings with the country’s eastern edges, the Kakheti region and the Alazani floodplain. For example, the route climbs just over 400m in the first 19km, but apart from the final 1500m into Mukhrovani, which average 5,3%, it’s all low gradient grinding and false flat, with an overall average just topping 2%. There is now a highway (the S5) which runs alongside the old railway tracks through this area, but we follow the old route through the towns, such as Sagarejo, Tokhliauri and Badiauri on the way, with some gradual ups and downs characterising it, before the new road and old road converge near Kakhreti, a small town which now hosts a hard court event on the ATP Challenger Tour.
We then traverse the relatively low-lying Tsiv-Gombori mountain range, which is home to our finish town of Sighnaghi, through a low pass which is uncategorised; it is a little over 4km averaging around 4%, then follows the Chalaubniskhevi river down to Bakurtsikhe, a small satellite town of Gurjaani, the centre of Georgia’s most famous wine-making region, and home to chess WGM (woman grandmaster, a slightly lower title than overall GM) Maka Purtseladze. We then follow along a ridge road that tracks the lower slopes of the mountains, with an uphill kicker into Anaga and then a more sustained 4-5km descent into Tsnori - a town where marked evidence of Kurgan culture (not to be confused with the Highlander, here we are talking burial mounds archetypal of the ancient culture now believed to have been the source of most Indo-European languages and peoples) has been found - where we have our first intermediate sprint. From here, we start to climb up towards our stage town of Sighnaghi for the first time. Tsnori is actually three times the size of Sighnaghi in terms of population, but is much less well known, and sees much of its population travel up the mountain to Sighnaghi to work servicing the tourists that pass through the region.
With a reputation as the prettiest town in Kakheti (and holding said reputation for a reason), Sighnaghi is a popular tourist destination among those who make it to this part of the world, and is also famous among Georgians as a site to elope to; many Georgians from Tbilisi and the surrounding areas will travel to Sighnaghi to marry. The permanent population here is only around 1500, but seasonally this swells to manage the vineyards and the service industries around hotels and day trippers and it was more like 10.000 during Soviet times. The name is a translation of a Turkic term meaning “shelter”, and historically the locals called this site Kisikhi. It has also been for a long time one of the primary centres for Armenian culture within Georgia; during the 19th Century the former vastly outnumbered the Georgians in the town, although that balance has been redressed over time and the number of Armenian churches in the town have dwindled, with the structures remaining but the function changing with time. In fact, for many decades the town’s most famous inhabitant was an Armenian - the painter Gevorg Bashinjaghian, whose landscape painting was a major influence in the art of the Caucasus region in his time - though he has arguably been surpassed by the Chiladze brothers, Tamaz and Otar, who were among the most influential figures in the rejuvenation of literature and poetry in the Georgian language in the post-Stalin Soviet period, and the so-called “Georgian Nightingale”, Vano Sarajishvili, an operatic tenor who worked in St Petersburg and Italy at the turn of the 20th Century and became a legendary cultural figure for Georgians of the time.
There are multiple roads up to Sighnaghi and something that the above photo won’t have shown you is that this is kind of like a Mont Cassel or Ávila on steroids; the upper parts of the town and the area around its historic walls are all cobbled and have beautiful, pristine preserved city walls as well. The main road up to the town is the most modern highway route, and that is the side we will descend because, duh, it’s on pristine and well-paved tarmac, and so means no descending on cobbles. The next main route is the route up to the city wall directly from Tsnori, which we climb and then crest at 21km from the line. This ascent is a pretty classic cat.2 kind of size, 7km at 6,6%, with six hairpins and a last 1200m or so on cobbles. Perhaps a more accurate comparison point would be the Muro di Motovun from the Istrian Spring Trophy, for those who’ve seen that, but again the climb is a bit longer.
Part of the climb
Entering the city walls at the summit
Sinuous descent back down to Tsnori
Instead of heading through the town, however, we hang a right and descend back down toward Anaga and Vakiri, where we rejoin the route we took earlier, descending down into Tsnori, and have our second intermediate sprint, on exactly the same spot as the first. Again we have a sharp 135º right near the train station and start climbing, but this time we turn left just before the city’s stadium, rather than continuing on the direct route to Sighnaghi. This alternative route actually takes us through more of the city’s fortifications, but is perhaps better established as the road to the Bodbe Monastery, a 9th-Century (rebuilt 17th-Century) monasterial complex (of course) which is one of the country’s most prominent pilgrimage sites; it is now, despite its name, a nunnery, and houses the relics of St. Nino, a Greek-speaking Georgian born in Cappadocia who travelled extensively through the Caucasus in the 4th Century and is held as largely responsible for the Christianization of Iberia (Kartli, as opposed to Spain/Portugal, of course). The nunnery was initially constructed around the site where she was buried, and stands on the shoulders of a hill which is known as St. Nino’s Hill, itself a lower summit within the Tsiv-Gombori range, but close to the summit of this hill (around a kilometre up from Bodbe), the road past the monastery/nunnery links up with the main road through Sighnaghi and traversing the range, which reaches its summit point at Nukriani.
Bodbe Monastery
We will not be continuing all the way up to Nukriani, however, but instead we will turn right at the linking of the road near St. Nino’s summit, and this will give us a bit of that kind of finale that those of you that know Spanish cycling will likely be familiar with, as this is very similar characteristic-wise to the finishes at the sanctuary at Arrate, going over Usartza via the classic route, or the concreted route used one year (rather than the route which climbs up through the sanctuary to the opposite summit, which is called Krabelin and has been in vogue in the Itzulia lately). This second summit is both a steeper road, and cresting 30m higher up than the first climb, and this one is passed just 1700m from the finish, which means that this effectively serves as the nearest thing to a mountaintop finish in my race, since I felt it would be overkill for this level of péloton to include Khvamli or Bakhmaro as mentioned in earlier stages. This climb also is not an unreasonable size for creating gaps in this level of péloton while simultaneously not being totally decisive, but since there should be a good amount of fatigue in the bunch after yesterday’s arduous stage, there should be some good action here.
The climb is actually a lot like the traditional side of Arrate in its characteristics, with a steeper middle section and shorter gradual parts leading into and out of that section. The overall statistics are 5,5km at 8,9%, which puts it in the same kind of category of ascent as things like La Planche des Belles Filles (5,8km @ 8,5%), Peña Cabarga (5,6km @ 9,4%) or Basilica di Supergà (4,9km @ 9,1%), but perhaps its most perfect analogue in terms of raw stats is Alto del Cordal in Asturias, which is almost invariably used as the lead-in ascent to Anglirú. As a result of that, however, we don’t really get to see how decisive it can be in and of itself, since Anglirú tends to nullify racing on earlier climbs for obvious reasons. The obvious comparison, of course, as already mentioned, is Arrate. The climb to Bodbe and St. Nino’s from Tsnori is a little over 1,5km at 6,7%, before it ramps up severely, with the next 3km averaging 10,5% as far as the monastery, then another kilometre at 7% at the end up to the summit, so like Arrate, the steep part is in the middle, but if anything this one is slightly steeper in that section, hence the higher average (although Arrate has that false flat between the road that branches off the Ixua, and the summit of the road at Usartza). And then the 1700m or so to the line. This consists of a little bit of flat and rolling, 700m at 6,7% downhill into the middle of Signaghi again, and then the cobbles begin again at the final part of this, into a final uphill 150-200m cobbled repecho up to the line at the town square.
Final ramp
Finishing square at rear of shot
After this stage, the GC should be seriously broken up, but there’s still a chance. I thought this would be a more appropriately-sized “MTF” for the type of race than an HC monolith like Khvamli at 10% for 11km, or an Alpine-sized behemoth like Bakhmaro being 7% for over 20km, and wouldn’t completely overbalance the race, as well as giving the Georgians a chance to show off one of their more beautiful sites in a less famous mountain range.
- May 5, 2010
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Here's a bit of an idea I've had: An Opposite Four Days of Dunkerque.
It is four days, but it takes place around Perpignan.
Do with that as you want!
(Yes, I know the city council of Dunkerque wouldn't be too happy with the idea; presumably they'd want to be showcased in a race that carry their name. Also, if it had to be really opposite Dunkerque, I guess it would have to be in the middle of the Pacific, which is just a really impractical place for a bike race...)
It is four days, but it takes place around Perpignan.
Do with that as you want!
(Yes, I know the city council of Dunkerque wouldn't be too happy with the idea; presumably they'd want to be showcased in a race that carry their name. Also, if it had to be really opposite Dunkerque, I guess it would have to be in the middle of the Pacific, which is just a really impractical place for a bike race...)
I should be posting over the next few weeks a set of one-day races across England and Wales, a sort of Anglo-Welsh rival to the Coupe de France. The races are all based in areas of either sporting or natural interest, so I have avoided the entirety of the Midlands south of the Peak District and all of East Anglia (flat).
Here's a preview:
Here's a preview:
- Feb 16, 2010
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Historical maps (UK) for retro race designs?
cyclemaps.blogspot.com
DEVELOPMENT OF CYCLING
Development of Cycling and how maps adapted to suit Whilst two-wheeled devices go back to the start of the 19th century, these were mere ...
cyclemaps.blogspot.com
Not anything original or something but I think the route of the 2011 Tour de France could have been improved significantly by several changes whilst keeping the same start and finish towns. It is also a easy task for me in terms of returning to route design so:
Stage 2 Les Essarts - Les Essarts 42.8 KM ITT
Basically making this a ITT and a long one.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 4 can have 2 ascents of Mur de Bretagne, similar to this year but too lazy to draw up a profile.
Stage 9 Issoire - Saint-Flour 222.4 KM
First change is climbing Neronne(2) before last 5.5 km of Pas de Peyrol (1/2) like in 2016 or 2024. The other change is moving Prat de Bouc from finish at 29 km to go, although it probably still does not change the racing.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 12 Limoux - Plateau de Beille 125.1 KM
First change is starting from Limoux (depart of stage 15) and the stage has Paliheres(HC) before Plateau de Beille(HC), basically similar to 2007. Since the finishing climb is hard enough and not really well connected with other climbs, I put it as the first mountain stage.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 13 Saint-Gaudens - Luz Ardiden 170.9 KM
Start of stage 14 becomes depart of stage 13, and stage climbs Peyresourde(1) and Azet(1) before Ancizan(1)-Tourmalet(HC)-Luz Ardiden(HC) like in stage 12 of 2011.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 14 Pau - Lourdes 205.9 KM
So stage 13 becomes stage 14, but with big changes, with Soudet(HC), Ichere(3), Marie Blanque(1) before Aubisque(HC) and Spandelles(1) afterwards. This is the last mountain stage in Pyrenees to invite long range attacks.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 15 Cugnaux - Montpellier 248.9 KM
Given that Cugnaux has to be used as a stage start, so this is the best option, a long sprint stage.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 19 Modane - Alpe d' Huez 128.9 KM
The 2011 stage was good, but just not tough enough to drop riders and with a very long valley to discourage attacks from succeeding as seen by the bunch entering the Alpe. So this stage starts with Beau Plan(1) before Telegraphe(1)-Galibier(HC) and goes to Alpe d' Huez via Sarenne(1/HC). This way Galibier is closer to the finish line to encourage attacks there. And it also follows the long stage-short stage format given that it comes after stage 18 of the 2011 Tour that was a 200 km stage with 3 HC climbs.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 20 Grenoble - Grenoble 135.0 KM
I actually thought of a mountain stage 20 around Grenoble because there are loads of options. This one is not very original (saw it on legruppetto in the past) but thought is a very good mountain stage inviting long range attacks with Laffrey(1), Chamrousse via Luitel(HC) before Coq(HC), last 8 kms of Col de Porte(2) before finish at Grenoble. There are lots of options for a mountain stage around Grenoble, this is just one of them.
ridewithgps.com
Stage 21 Creteil - Paris (Champs-Elysees) ITT 27.7 KM
Final stage becomes an ITT to balance the mountains (worth noting that both TTs are flat for specialists unlike the Grenoble TT that was hilly-ish). Not too long to encourage attacks in the previous stages.
ridewithgps.com
So overall
ITT kilometers: 42.5 -> 70.5 (also flatter) and from 1 stage to 2
TTT is removed.
1 less sprint stage, 1 more mountain stage
New climbs cat. 2 or above:
Neronne, Paliheres, Peyresourde, Azet, Soudet, Marie Blanque, Spandelles, Beau Plan, Sarenne, Laffrey, Chamrousse, Coq, Porte
Removed climbs cat.2 or above:
Portet-d'Aspet, Core, Latrape, Agnes, Alpe d'Huez
I think with these changes it would have been a significantly better route.
If ITT at stage 21 is an issue for previous stages, make stage 2 longer and make stage 21 a sprint but I'm okay with this one. Some of the first week stages (stage 1 and 4 for example) can be shortened if the maximum length becomes a problem.
Stage 2 Les Essarts - Les Essarts 42.8 KM ITT
Basically making this a ITT and a long one.
Les Essarts ITT
Tour de France 2011 Stage 2 Alternative - 42.8 km, +285 m. Bike ride in Sainte-Florence, Pays de la Loire
ridewithgps.com
Stage 4 can have 2 ascents of Mur de Bretagne, similar to this year but too lazy to draw up a profile.
Stage 9 Issoire - Saint-Flour 222.4 KM
First change is climbing Neronne(2) before last 5.5 km of Pas de Peyrol (1/2) like in 2016 or 2024. The other change is moving Prat de Bouc from finish at 29 km to go, although it probably still does not change the racing.
Issoire - Saint-Flour
Tour de France 2011 Stage 9 Alternative - 222.4 km, +4888 m. Bike ride in Issoire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
ridewithgps.com
Stage 12 Limoux - Plateau de Beille 125.1 KM
First change is starting from Limoux (depart of stage 15) and the stage has Paliheres(HC) before Plateau de Beille(HC), basically similar to 2007. Since the finishing climb is hard enough and not really well connected with other climbs, I put it as the first mountain stage.
Limoux - Plateau de Beille
Tour de France Stage 12 Alternative - 125.1 km, +4004 m. Bike ride in Limoux, Occitanie
ridewithgps.com
Stage 13 Saint-Gaudens - Luz Ardiden 170.9 KM
Start of stage 14 becomes depart of stage 13, and stage climbs Peyresourde(1) and Azet(1) before Ancizan(1)-Tourmalet(HC)-Luz Ardiden(HC) like in stage 12 of 2011.
Saint-Gaudens - Luz Ardiden
Tour de France 2011 Alternative Stage 13 - 170.9 km, +5462 m. Bike ride in St.-Gaudens, Occitanie
ridewithgps.com
Stage 14 Pau - Lourdes 205.9 KM
So stage 13 becomes stage 14, but with big changes, with Soudet(HC), Ichere(3), Marie Blanque(1) before Aubisque(HC) and Spandelles(1) afterwards. This is the last mountain stage in Pyrenees to invite long range attacks.
Pau - Lourdes
Tour de France 2011 Alternative Stage 14 - 205.9 km, +5494 m. Bike ride in Pau, Nouvelle-Aquitaine
ridewithgps.com
Stage 15 Cugnaux - Montpellier 248.9 KM
Given that Cugnaux has to be used as a stage start, so this is the best option, a long sprint stage.
Cugnaux - Montpellier
Tour de France 2011 Stage 15 Alternative - 248.9 km, +1560 m. Bike ride in Cugnaux, Occitanie
ridewithgps.com
Stage 19 Modane - Alpe d' Huez 128.9 KM
The 2011 stage was good, but just not tough enough to drop riders and with a very long valley to discourage attacks from succeeding as seen by the bunch entering the Alpe. So this stage starts with Beau Plan(1) before Telegraphe(1)-Galibier(HC) and goes to Alpe d' Huez via Sarenne(1/HC). This way Galibier is closer to the finish line to encourage attacks there. And it also follows the long stage-short stage format given that it comes after stage 18 of the 2011 Tour that was a 200 km stage with 3 HC climbs.
Modane - Alpe d'Huez
Modane Valfrejus - Alpe d'Huez - 128.9 km, +4179 m. Bike ride in Modane, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
ridewithgps.com
Stage 20 Grenoble - Grenoble 135.0 KM
I actually thought of a mountain stage 20 around Grenoble because there are loads of options. This one is not very original (saw it on legruppetto in the past) but thought is a very good mountain stage inviting long range attacks with Laffrey(1), Chamrousse via Luitel(HC) before Coq(HC), last 8 kms of Col de Porte(2) before finish at Grenoble. There are lots of options for a mountain stage around Grenoble, this is just one of them.
Grenoble - Grenoble
Tour de France 2011 Alternative Stage 20 - 135.0 km, +4116 m. Bike ride in Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
ridewithgps.com
Stage 21 Creteil - Paris (Champs-Elysees) ITT 27.7 KM
Final stage becomes an ITT to balance the mountains (worth noting that both TTs are flat for specialists unlike the Grenoble TT that was hilly-ish). Not too long to encourage attacks in the previous stages.
Creteil - Paris ITT
Tour de France 2011 Stage 21 Alternative - 27.7 km, +233 m. Bike ride in Créteil, Île-De-France
ridewithgps.com
So overall
ITT kilometers: 42.5 -> 70.5 (also flatter) and from 1 stage to 2
TTT is removed.
1 less sprint stage, 1 more mountain stage
New climbs cat. 2 or above:
Neronne, Paliheres, Peyresourde, Azet, Soudet, Marie Blanque, Spandelles, Beau Plan, Sarenne, Laffrey, Chamrousse, Coq, Porte
Removed climbs cat.2 or above:
Portet-d'Aspet, Core, Latrape, Agnes, Alpe d'Huez
I think with these changes it would have been a significantly better route.
If ITT at stage 21 is an issue for previous stages, make stage 2 longer and make stage 21 a sprint but I'm okay with this one. Some of the first week stages (stage 1 and 4 for example) can be shortened if the maximum length becomes a problem.
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- Feb 20, 2010
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As sure as the sun rising in the East and night following day, I will go back to the well and make more Vueltas. Even as Spanish cycling discovers more and more of what the country has to offer, it still lags way behind the opportunities the country presents, and I keep finding new and intriguing (for me at least) ideas as well as seeking ways to crowbar in places or ideas that I’ve had for a long time. I don’t set out to keep making more and more Vueltas, but it just kind of happens, things come together and areas long left behind in my ideas need bringing back, or I’m hit by a piece of inspiration and want to build around it, or I’m investigating an area for another race and something that I couldn’t fit into that idea is left over and reused, etc. etc.. I’ve posted 11 Vuelta on this thread (this will be the 12th) plus have had a couple of other either near-completed or partially-completed routes that have then been abandoned, cannibalised or simply are awaiting my finding a way to hang them fully together into a cohesive whole because something is missing from it in my opinion, or there’s a transfer necessity or awkward route pacing that I don’t like and want to improve before I’ll be happy to post.
The self-imposed no-repetitions rule is making things increasingly challenging too, of course. Not for areas like Asturias, País Vasco or Andalucía where I still have myriad options (or there are climbs that I’ve used that have multiple sides allowing me more flexibility for the future), but certainly in the Sistema Central and in Aragón things are getting a little more challenging. But there’s still a lot out there, especially when you consider that, not bound by the realia of actual pro cycling, I can be a bit more experimental. After all, I’ve had an edition with the final five stages in the Canaries, a Grand Départ in Morocco (and one in Melilla), and now it’s time for us to - for the first time since my second Vuelta which was posted a decade ago - investigate the Balearic Islands, as I’m going to start the race in non-contiguous Spain for the first time since that Melilla route.
I’ve also tried to be a bit more brief, because these descriptions had swollen during the pandemic to the point where they were a much heavier undertaking than the design itself and while that was fine during the pandemic era, it’s now an impediment, so although the first couple of stages feature extensive descriptions of that kind, the rest of the race should give you a better idea of what to expect going forward - it’s not brief, but we’re not deep-diving into history and culture of every small town we go into anymore, or delivering eight-paragraph hagiography dedicated to revolutionaries, politicians and local riders, just giving a nod to them.
Stage 1: Ciutadella de Menorca - Santuário de la Virgen del Toro, 152km
GPM:
Alt de Sa Roca (cat.3) 2,1km @ 6,8%
Santuário de la Virgen del Toro (cat.3) 3,1km @ 9,1%
The Vuelta has been less keen than the Tour or the Giro to use overseas starts (having one in Portugal in the 90s before the modern era; since then we have had 2009 in the Netherlands, 2017 in Nîmes, 2022 in the Netherlands again (the Utrecht start had been planned for 2020 and had to be postponed) and then in 2024, when Lisbon again was the host, while 2025 will start in Italy to continue this increasing trend. On two other occasions, however, “overseas” starts have been more literal - being in parts of Spain requiring travel by sea; Tenerife hosted the Gran Partida in 1988, and Palma de Mallorca in 1986. That Gran Partida is the only time Las Canarias have been included in the race at all, but Mallorca has cropped up more regularly, thanks to its well-established role within cycling as a favourite training ground of many pros and also hosting the season-opening Trofeo Mallorca series of one-day races, which have long served as an early February tune-up for riders at all levels after their introduction in 1992. A collection of the great and good of cycling past and present can be found among the winners’ list of the various one-day races, where teams will frequently nominate around 12 riders and then choose their lineup according to parcours, fitness, training aims and indeed injuries on the road. The likes of Erik Zabel, Óscar Freire, Philippe Gilbert, André Greipel, John Degenkolb, Peter van Petegem, Robbie McEwen, Laurent Jalabert, Mario Cipollini, Alejandro Valverde, Paolo Bettini, Fabian Cancellara, Michał Kwiatkowski, Rui Costa and Luís León Sánchez have all won races among these events, but perhaps none were more popular than António Colóm, a local to Bunyola on Mallorca, who won two editions of the Trofeo Sollér and one of the Trofeo Deia before having his career quietly erased for doping offences.
That 1986 Vuelta départ saw a prologue and a road stage both starting and finishing in Palma de Mallorca, with Thierry Marie winning the former and Marc Gomez the latter. 1991 saw the riders return, with them completing stage 6 in Valencia before being shunted onto a ferry to do a road stage around Palma de Mallorca and an ITT in Cala d’Or before returning to the mainland. Jesper Skibby won the road stage and, because it was 1991, eventual GC winner Melcior Mauri won the chrono. 1998 was the last time the race headed over, with the second weekend spent on Mallorca with a road stage which was flat in the first half then bumpy in the second and was won by Fabrizio Guidi, then an ITT won - just like in 1991 - by the eventual GC winner, this time Abraham Olano.
One thing that is clear, however, is that cycling in the Balearic Islands to all intents and purposes means cycling in Mallorca. Pretty much every cyclist from the islands to reach any level of prominence has come from the largest of the islands. There is, however, but one exception: veteran endurance track specialist turned road rouleur [img=[URL]https://men.gsstatic.es/sfAttachPlugin/getCachedContent/id/2423103/width/425/height/284/crop/1]Albert[/URL] Torres[/img], who hails from Menorca. After a successful junior career largely on the boards and in time trials, he won a world title in the Madison alongside neighbouring Mallorcan David Muntaner, before establishing in 2015 the partnership that has largely carried Spanish track cycling for the last decade, with Sebastián Mora, a pairing that has carried them to three European championships. Alone, he has also added two European titles in the omnium, and two silver medals in the Worlds, one in the scratch and one in the points race. His road career has largely been secondary as a result; after going pro with Team Ecuador, one of those odd overseas-registered but Spanish-based teams that include some development riders from the registration state padded out by ex-amateurs from Spain, he followed his running buddy to Team Raleigh-GAC in 2016, before a stint with Inteja in the Dominican Republic. Movistar signed him in 2020, however, having priced themselves out of most of their existing domestique corps in their determination to sign Mikel Landa, and already having Mora on the books made him an easy target. However, while Mora has since moved on, Torres has carved out a new niche on the road with Movistar, doing four Giri and a Tour for the outfit, who he rides for to this day. He will therefore be the only rider who can potentially have a homecoming at our first stage, since I’m breaking with tradition and opening the race in Menorca.
Founded by the Carthaginians in the 4th Century and the birthplace of the aforementioned Albert Torres, Ciutadella de Menorca is where we depart from on our first stage and home of the Gran Salida. With a population of only around 30.000 it is about the smallest such host in the history of the race, but given the race tends to kick off in August this would be the height of the holiday season and, as you will all no doubt be aware, the Spanish islands tend to swell significantly in population during the summer months as holidaymakers in search of sun, especially from the UK and Germany, tend to flock en masse to these locations which have become massive tourist hubs. Ciutadella is marginally bigger than the other major city on the island, Mahón (or Maó in the native dialect) and so gets the nod as the starting point.
The Balearic Islands were settled early, as there are many stone megaliths and structures predating the Punic Wars to be seen in Menorca, but after the Roman conquest of Spain it became a haven for pirates who would attack vessels trading between the then-provinces of Italia and Hispania, now the peninsulas that we know as Italy and Iberia respectively, and a refuge for persecuted Jews. The Romans took over the islands as a result, and the former Carthaginian cities became populated by their people. While they lost it briefly to the Vandals, they retook it as a Byzantine possession until the Umayyad Caliphate conquered Iberia, at which point the island became part of the new Caliphate of Córdoba, under the name Manurqa (منورقة). Madînat al-Jazira, or the great city, became the name of Ciutadella during this era, but it was “liberated” during the Reconquista on January 17th, 1287, which is commemorated as the de facto national day of the island as a result. It was a possession of the Kingdom of Mallorca, before being incorporated into Aragón and then eventually Spain - though its strategic location for Mediterranean trade still made it attractive to outsiders and it was repeatedly ransacked or besieged, including by Ottoman Turks in the 16th Century who sold the entire population of the city into slavery, and more enduringly in the 18th Century by Great Britain, who seized it in 1708, formally acquired it in 1713, and then ruled it - save for a seven year window from 1756 to 1763 where the French captured the island - until 1782, when France and Spain took advantage of Britain being otherwise indisposed fighting the US War of Independence to unite their forces and restore the island to the Spanish crown. The Brits briefly retook the island at the end of the century once their business in North America was over, but in 1802 the Spaniards laid the final rest to the British claims. In fact, the British even helped conduct a peaceful transfer of power on the island during the Guerra Civíl, as Menorca had remained staunchly Republican in opposition to the other Balearic islands, and had become a place of refuge for fleeing anti-Franco figures, many of whom were evacuated by the Britons as a result. The other remaining vestige of British rule is that the capital of the island was relocated to Mahón during British control, although the religious seat remains in Ciutadella as do many historical civic institutions.
Menorca from above
This is neither a long nor a complex stage, and the first part of it is just a 45km or so traversing of the island, linking the island’s two major cities, Ciutadella and Mahón via the central municipality of Alaior. Once we arrive in Mahón, we have a 35km or so loop around to the south, close to the island’s only commercial airport, and down towards the coastal jewel of Binibeca Vell, which looks like a pristine, fairytale, bridal-white perfectly-preserved Mediterranean coastal village of the traditional style, but is instead a facsimile thereof, a 1960s planned town constructed to imitate this style and controversial with many for its inauthenticity and transparent tourist cash grab, lending it a similar reputation to the Vittoriano in Rome or the Skopje 2000 project. We then loop back towards the east and then northwards to return to Mahón via coastal towns like Son Ganxo and Es Castell, which come to life with tourists at neighbouring resorts like Punta Prima. This takes us on the eastern extremity of the island past Castell Sant Felip, iconic of the British time in command of the island, and then along the estuary back to Mahón for our first intermediate sprint.
Officially the capital of the island, Mahón is the birthplace of the founder of toxicology as a forensic science, Mathieu Orfila, and the prolific writer of Catalan-language texts Juan Ramis, whose works were largely composed during the British occupation. Named for the Carthaginian military figure Mago Barca, a brother to Hannibal, who legend suggested fled here during the Punic Wars, it has a similar history to its rival on the west coast, but is better known for its port. Again, the Ottomans sacked it taking inhabitants back as slaves in the 16th Century, and the British captured the island by taking it, using its port as a pretext to move the capital eastward - after all, the Britons ruled most of their colonies via the seas in those days - and remnants of British-era fortifications and amenities can be seen not just in the surrounding area but on nearby islands as well - much of its historic centre was, however, bombed by Franco’s nationalist forces during the Civil War, with support from the Italians, especially after the other Balearic Islands became nationalist strongholds and Menorca remained the last Republican holdout.
After this we head for the north of the island before entering a circuit of just over 20 kilometres which is around the town of Es Mercadal and Monte Toro, the highest point on the island, around which the business end of today’s stage will centre. We take a little under three laps of the circuit (as we enter it at the base of the climb on the circuit, and leave it close to El Mercadal), and on the second lap we give out some points to both of the minor classifications, as we categorise the Alt de Sa Roca climb on the second pass - around 37km from the line - as well as holding our second intermediate sprint in Es Mercadal - around 25km from home. The Alt de Sa Roca is a fairly simple puncheur ascent of just over 2km at just under 7%, and a max gradient of 16%, so a reasonable challenge for a first climb of the race, with 400m averaging 12% in the middle of it and another ramp of 200m at 13% near the summit. It is, however, not that long and although it’s not a super wide road, it’s not super challenging either, so given the long-standing tradition of weird mountain categorisation and the legend of the “Spanish flat” in the sport, I thought I’d only categorise one ascent given that the race tends to keep the categorised climbing early on in the race fairly minimal. This climb is crested at 58km, 37km (with points) and 16km from the line so there are chances to attack it, but realistically given the finish it’s not likely the decisive move is made here unless there is a miscalculation behind.
Es Mercadal, with Monte Toro overlooking it
Derived from the Latin mercatum, Es Mercadal was derived from, as you might expect, a marketplace, and as a central Menorcan, inland town of some repute and with a position equidistant from Ciutadella and Mahón it maintains this role for many of the island’s central communities to this day. The route from Sa Roca to Es Mercadal is essentially a sauntering downhill that consists of a couple of uphill false flats broken up with short downhills mostly on two-way country roads. Es Mercadal itself lies at the base of the last of these, so I have moved the intermediate sprint some way through the town to try to make this a bit safer, although thankfully it’s not a stage ending sprint so the pace shouldn’t be so wild. On the third time through the town, however, we hang a right on to the Me-13 and climb up to the Cim del Toro, the summit of Monte Toro, so that we will finish the stage at the ceiling of the island. And that entails a climb which is also a cat.3 ascent, but is somewhat tougher than Sa Roca.
Monte Toro from altimetrias.net
Yes, Grand Tours that begin with an uphill finish are pretty few in number. But we have had a few, and given the nature of a) the Vuelta and b) the geography of the Balearics, I think that this is not an unreasonable idea, as the small size of the island means it’s hardly forcing the spectators up to some highly obscure, out-of-the-way location, and besides the main road through the island will be clear once the riders have completed the first 40km or so, and the rest of the route will be clear more or less until they’ve completed the first 80km or so, and anywhere on the circuit bar the climb will see the riders three times, anywhere on the climb will give a view down to the countryside that should enable fans to get the gist of what’s going on beneath them too. Uphill finishes have been used to commence the 2008 Tour de France (on the Côte de Cadoudal in Plumelec), the 2011 Tour de France (on Mont des Alouettes in the Vendée), the 2021 Tour de France (in Landerneau in Brétagne) and the 2022 Giro d’Italia (in Viségrad, Hungary) while the stage, despite its uphill finish that should generate time gaps, is considerably easier than the Bilbao start in the 2023 Tour, the Torino start in the 2024 Giro, or the Rimini finish to stage 1 in the 2024 Tour. The 2020 Vuelta is a bit of an anomaly with stage 1 finishing on Arrate, but that was meant to be stage 4 in the original plans. This finish is perhaps most akin in terms of characteristics as a climb, to the 2019 Giro’s first stage finish, the San Luca climb in Bologna, however that was as part of an ITT. The first kilometre is at a fairly manageable 6,5% kind of level before it ramps up to Mur de Huy style, with 2km at over 10% to finish, which should give us a puncheur type - potentially a GC type, Primož Roglič style - in the first red jersey of the race. It’s a well paved, comfortably passable road with a sizeable car park at the summit, owing to the mountain’s status as the highest point on the island, giving a beautiful scenic view down to the rest of the island and across the sea to Mallorca and the Spanish mainland. This should be an explosive start to the race.
Final climb, the scope of the task slowly coming into view
The self-imposed no-repetitions rule is making things increasingly challenging too, of course. Not for areas like Asturias, País Vasco or Andalucía where I still have myriad options (or there are climbs that I’ve used that have multiple sides allowing me more flexibility for the future), but certainly in the Sistema Central and in Aragón things are getting a little more challenging. But there’s still a lot out there, especially when you consider that, not bound by the realia of actual pro cycling, I can be a bit more experimental. After all, I’ve had an edition with the final five stages in the Canaries, a Grand Départ in Morocco (and one in Melilla), and now it’s time for us to - for the first time since my second Vuelta which was posted a decade ago - investigate the Balearic Islands, as I’m going to start the race in non-contiguous Spain for the first time since that Melilla route.
I’ve also tried to be a bit more brief, because these descriptions had swollen during the pandemic to the point where they were a much heavier undertaking than the design itself and while that was fine during the pandemic era, it’s now an impediment, so although the first couple of stages feature extensive descriptions of that kind, the rest of the race should give you a better idea of what to expect going forward - it’s not brief, but we’re not deep-diving into history and culture of every small town we go into anymore, or delivering eight-paragraph hagiography dedicated to revolutionaries, politicians and local riders, just giving a nod to them.
Stage 1: Ciutadella de Menorca - Santuário de la Virgen del Toro, 152km
GPM:
Alt de Sa Roca (cat.3) 2,1km @ 6,8%
Santuário de la Virgen del Toro (cat.3) 3,1km @ 9,1%
The Vuelta has been less keen than the Tour or the Giro to use overseas starts (having one in Portugal in the 90s before the modern era; since then we have had 2009 in the Netherlands, 2017 in Nîmes, 2022 in the Netherlands again (the Utrecht start had been planned for 2020 and had to be postponed) and then in 2024, when Lisbon again was the host, while 2025 will start in Italy to continue this increasing trend. On two other occasions, however, “overseas” starts have been more literal - being in parts of Spain requiring travel by sea; Tenerife hosted the Gran Partida in 1988, and Palma de Mallorca in 1986. That Gran Partida is the only time Las Canarias have been included in the race at all, but Mallorca has cropped up more regularly, thanks to its well-established role within cycling as a favourite training ground of many pros and also hosting the season-opening Trofeo Mallorca series of one-day races, which have long served as an early February tune-up for riders at all levels after their introduction in 1992. A collection of the great and good of cycling past and present can be found among the winners’ list of the various one-day races, where teams will frequently nominate around 12 riders and then choose their lineup according to parcours, fitness, training aims and indeed injuries on the road. The likes of Erik Zabel, Óscar Freire, Philippe Gilbert, André Greipel, John Degenkolb, Peter van Petegem, Robbie McEwen, Laurent Jalabert, Mario Cipollini, Alejandro Valverde, Paolo Bettini, Fabian Cancellara, Michał Kwiatkowski, Rui Costa and Luís León Sánchez have all won races among these events, but perhaps none were more popular than António Colóm, a local to Bunyola on Mallorca, who won two editions of the Trofeo Sollér and one of the Trofeo Deia before having his career quietly erased for doping offences.
That 1986 Vuelta départ saw a prologue and a road stage both starting and finishing in Palma de Mallorca, with Thierry Marie winning the former and Marc Gomez the latter. 1991 saw the riders return, with them completing stage 6 in Valencia before being shunted onto a ferry to do a road stage around Palma de Mallorca and an ITT in Cala d’Or before returning to the mainland. Jesper Skibby won the road stage and, because it was 1991, eventual GC winner Melcior Mauri won the chrono. 1998 was the last time the race headed over, with the second weekend spent on Mallorca with a road stage which was flat in the first half then bumpy in the second and was won by Fabrizio Guidi, then an ITT won - just like in 1991 - by the eventual GC winner, this time Abraham Olano.
One thing that is clear, however, is that cycling in the Balearic Islands to all intents and purposes means cycling in Mallorca. Pretty much every cyclist from the islands to reach any level of prominence has come from the largest of the islands. There is, however, but one exception: veteran endurance track specialist turned road rouleur [img=[URL]https://men.gsstatic.es/sfAttachPlugin/getCachedContent/id/2423103/width/425/height/284/crop/1]Albert[/URL] Torres[/img], who hails from Menorca. After a successful junior career largely on the boards and in time trials, he won a world title in the Madison alongside neighbouring Mallorcan David Muntaner, before establishing in 2015 the partnership that has largely carried Spanish track cycling for the last decade, with Sebastián Mora, a pairing that has carried them to three European championships. Alone, he has also added two European titles in the omnium, and two silver medals in the Worlds, one in the scratch and one in the points race. His road career has largely been secondary as a result; after going pro with Team Ecuador, one of those odd overseas-registered but Spanish-based teams that include some development riders from the registration state padded out by ex-amateurs from Spain, he followed his running buddy to Team Raleigh-GAC in 2016, before a stint with Inteja in the Dominican Republic. Movistar signed him in 2020, however, having priced themselves out of most of their existing domestique corps in their determination to sign Mikel Landa, and already having Mora on the books made him an easy target. However, while Mora has since moved on, Torres has carved out a new niche on the road with Movistar, doing four Giri and a Tour for the outfit, who he rides for to this day. He will therefore be the only rider who can potentially have a homecoming at our first stage, since I’m breaking with tradition and opening the race in Menorca.
Founded by the Carthaginians in the 4th Century and the birthplace of the aforementioned Albert Torres, Ciutadella de Menorca is where we depart from on our first stage and home of the Gran Salida. With a population of only around 30.000 it is about the smallest such host in the history of the race, but given the race tends to kick off in August this would be the height of the holiday season and, as you will all no doubt be aware, the Spanish islands tend to swell significantly in population during the summer months as holidaymakers in search of sun, especially from the UK and Germany, tend to flock en masse to these locations which have become massive tourist hubs. Ciutadella is marginally bigger than the other major city on the island, Mahón (or Maó in the native dialect) and so gets the nod as the starting point.
The Balearic Islands were settled early, as there are many stone megaliths and structures predating the Punic Wars to be seen in Menorca, but after the Roman conquest of Spain it became a haven for pirates who would attack vessels trading between the then-provinces of Italia and Hispania, now the peninsulas that we know as Italy and Iberia respectively, and a refuge for persecuted Jews. The Romans took over the islands as a result, and the former Carthaginian cities became populated by their people. While they lost it briefly to the Vandals, they retook it as a Byzantine possession until the Umayyad Caliphate conquered Iberia, at which point the island became part of the new Caliphate of Córdoba, under the name Manurqa (منورقة). Madînat al-Jazira, or the great city, became the name of Ciutadella during this era, but it was “liberated” during the Reconquista on January 17th, 1287, which is commemorated as the de facto national day of the island as a result. It was a possession of the Kingdom of Mallorca, before being incorporated into Aragón and then eventually Spain - though its strategic location for Mediterranean trade still made it attractive to outsiders and it was repeatedly ransacked or besieged, including by Ottoman Turks in the 16th Century who sold the entire population of the city into slavery, and more enduringly in the 18th Century by Great Britain, who seized it in 1708, formally acquired it in 1713, and then ruled it - save for a seven year window from 1756 to 1763 where the French captured the island - until 1782, when France and Spain took advantage of Britain being otherwise indisposed fighting the US War of Independence to unite their forces and restore the island to the Spanish crown. The Brits briefly retook the island at the end of the century once their business in North America was over, but in 1802 the Spaniards laid the final rest to the British claims. In fact, the British even helped conduct a peaceful transfer of power on the island during the Guerra Civíl, as Menorca had remained staunchly Republican in opposition to the other Balearic islands, and had become a place of refuge for fleeing anti-Franco figures, many of whom were evacuated by the Britons as a result. The other remaining vestige of British rule is that the capital of the island was relocated to Mahón during British control, although the religious seat remains in Ciutadella as do many historical civic institutions.
Menorca from above
This is neither a long nor a complex stage, and the first part of it is just a 45km or so traversing of the island, linking the island’s two major cities, Ciutadella and Mahón via the central municipality of Alaior. Once we arrive in Mahón, we have a 35km or so loop around to the south, close to the island’s only commercial airport, and down towards the coastal jewel of Binibeca Vell, which looks like a pristine, fairytale, bridal-white perfectly-preserved Mediterranean coastal village of the traditional style, but is instead a facsimile thereof, a 1960s planned town constructed to imitate this style and controversial with many for its inauthenticity and transparent tourist cash grab, lending it a similar reputation to the Vittoriano in Rome or the Skopje 2000 project. We then loop back towards the east and then northwards to return to Mahón via coastal towns like Son Ganxo and Es Castell, which come to life with tourists at neighbouring resorts like Punta Prima. This takes us on the eastern extremity of the island past Castell Sant Felip, iconic of the British time in command of the island, and then along the estuary back to Mahón for our first intermediate sprint.
Officially the capital of the island, Mahón is the birthplace of the founder of toxicology as a forensic science, Mathieu Orfila, and the prolific writer of Catalan-language texts Juan Ramis, whose works were largely composed during the British occupation. Named for the Carthaginian military figure Mago Barca, a brother to Hannibal, who legend suggested fled here during the Punic Wars, it has a similar history to its rival on the west coast, but is better known for its port. Again, the Ottomans sacked it taking inhabitants back as slaves in the 16th Century, and the British captured the island by taking it, using its port as a pretext to move the capital eastward - after all, the Britons ruled most of their colonies via the seas in those days - and remnants of British-era fortifications and amenities can be seen not just in the surrounding area but on nearby islands as well - much of its historic centre was, however, bombed by Franco’s nationalist forces during the Civil War, with support from the Italians, especially after the other Balearic Islands became nationalist strongholds and Menorca remained the last Republican holdout.
After this we head for the north of the island before entering a circuit of just over 20 kilometres which is around the town of Es Mercadal and Monte Toro, the highest point on the island, around which the business end of today’s stage will centre. We take a little under three laps of the circuit (as we enter it at the base of the climb on the circuit, and leave it close to El Mercadal), and on the second lap we give out some points to both of the minor classifications, as we categorise the Alt de Sa Roca climb on the second pass - around 37km from the line - as well as holding our second intermediate sprint in Es Mercadal - around 25km from home. The Alt de Sa Roca is a fairly simple puncheur ascent of just over 2km at just under 7%, and a max gradient of 16%, so a reasonable challenge for a first climb of the race, with 400m averaging 12% in the middle of it and another ramp of 200m at 13% near the summit. It is, however, not that long and although it’s not a super wide road, it’s not super challenging either, so given the long-standing tradition of weird mountain categorisation and the legend of the “Spanish flat” in the sport, I thought I’d only categorise one ascent given that the race tends to keep the categorised climbing early on in the race fairly minimal. This climb is crested at 58km, 37km (with points) and 16km from the line so there are chances to attack it, but realistically given the finish it’s not likely the decisive move is made here unless there is a miscalculation behind.
Es Mercadal, with Monte Toro overlooking it
Derived from the Latin mercatum, Es Mercadal was derived from, as you might expect, a marketplace, and as a central Menorcan, inland town of some repute and with a position equidistant from Ciutadella and Mahón it maintains this role for many of the island’s central communities to this day. The route from Sa Roca to Es Mercadal is essentially a sauntering downhill that consists of a couple of uphill false flats broken up with short downhills mostly on two-way country roads. Es Mercadal itself lies at the base of the last of these, so I have moved the intermediate sprint some way through the town to try to make this a bit safer, although thankfully it’s not a stage ending sprint so the pace shouldn’t be so wild. On the third time through the town, however, we hang a right on to the Me-13 and climb up to the Cim del Toro, the summit of Monte Toro, so that we will finish the stage at the ceiling of the island. And that entails a climb which is also a cat.3 ascent, but is somewhat tougher than Sa Roca.
Monte Toro from altimetrias.net
Yes, Grand Tours that begin with an uphill finish are pretty few in number. But we have had a few, and given the nature of a) the Vuelta and b) the geography of the Balearics, I think that this is not an unreasonable idea, as the small size of the island means it’s hardly forcing the spectators up to some highly obscure, out-of-the-way location, and besides the main road through the island will be clear once the riders have completed the first 40km or so, and the rest of the route will be clear more or less until they’ve completed the first 80km or so, and anywhere on the circuit bar the climb will see the riders three times, anywhere on the climb will give a view down to the countryside that should enable fans to get the gist of what’s going on beneath them too. Uphill finishes have been used to commence the 2008 Tour de France (on the Côte de Cadoudal in Plumelec), the 2011 Tour de France (on Mont des Alouettes in the Vendée), the 2021 Tour de France (in Landerneau in Brétagne) and the 2022 Giro d’Italia (in Viségrad, Hungary) while the stage, despite its uphill finish that should generate time gaps, is considerably easier than the Bilbao start in the 2023 Tour, the Torino start in the 2024 Giro, or the Rimini finish to stage 1 in the 2024 Tour. The 2020 Vuelta is a bit of an anomaly with stage 1 finishing on Arrate, but that was meant to be stage 4 in the original plans. This finish is perhaps most akin in terms of characteristics as a climb, to the 2019 Giro’s first stage finish, the San Luca climb in Bologna, however that was as part of an ITT. The first kilometre is at a fairly manageable 6,5% kind of level before it ramps up to Mur de Huy style, with 2km at over 10% to finish, which should give us a puncheur type - potentially a GC type, Primož Roglič style - in the first red jersey of the race. It’s a well paved, comfortably passable road with a sizeable car park at the summit, owing to the mountain’s status as the highest point on the island, giving a beautiful scenic view down to the rest of the island and across the sea to Mallorca and the Spanish mainland. This should be an explosive start to the race.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 2: Port d’Alcúdia - Inca, 160km
GPM:
Alt de Gràcia de Randa (cat.3) 2,9km @ 7,7%
Alt de Pórtol (cat.3) 2,9km @ 5,7%
Day 2 and we’re island-hopping, arriving on Mallorca, the largest and most populated of the Balearics, where the next couple of stages will take place. A short ferry of around an hour in peak times can get you from Ciutadella de Menorca to Port d’Alcúdia, which will be our morning’s stage host, so it’s an uncomplicated transfer considering we’re on a new island for the day, ahead of a longer, but flatter, stage which is expected to - but not certain to - give the sprinters their first chance of the race.
This is a fairly easy-going stage which takes us around the flatter southeastern half of the largest Balearic island, more like the somewhat interchangeable flat old Trofeo Alcúdia part of the Challenge Mallorca in 2021 than its more recent appearances in the spikier Trofeo Serra Tramuntana. A historic bay first visited by Romans and frequently attacked by pirates, it grew in the 20th Century into the main tourist hub for the northern half of the island. It is one of the only places here - outside Palma de Mallorca - to have hosted the national race, with the 40km ITT in 1998 being around the city, won by Abraham Olano taking 2’24 out of eventual 2nd placed Fernando Escartín and over 4 minutes out of teammate and rival - and at that point race leader - José María Jiménez, margins which would ultimately prove decisive. It was also the birthplace of former UCI head honcho Luís Puïg, head of RFEC from 1968 to 1984 and of the UCI from 1981 to 1990, and who gives his name to a velodrome and to a one day race with an illustrious winner’s list including Bernard Hinault, Laurent Jalabert, Mario Cipollini, Erik Zabel and, since its rebirth in the 2020s, Dylan Groenewegen and Marc Hirschi, both of which are in the Valencia region which he became synonymous with.
The internal part of Mallorca that we travel through today is mostly flattish, and less trodden from a touristic (preferring the beaches of course) and from a cyclist (preferring the mountains) perspective. It does, however, take us through some cities well known to sport, such as Mallorca’s second city, Manacor, which hosts an early intermediate sprint and is well known as the hometown of the Nadal family, a group of tennis pros of whom the most famous, of course, is Rafael, the king of clay and winner of… let’s just say “a lot” and move on. We continue on through other less-trodden cities like Felanitx, home of World Cup winner Mariona Caldentey, and the quieter coastal resort of Cala d’Or. We loop back towards Palma via towns like Llucmajor, and also Marratxí, somewhere slowly in the process of being absorbed by the urban sprawl of the island’s capital, and home to one of the main riders who have flown the flag for Spain in women’s cycling for the last decade, late-starting former triathlete Margarita Victoria “Mavi” García, a multiple national champion and mostly a stage race specialist who didn’t turn pro until into her 30s and took her biggest career win at age 41 when she took a stage of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes. We only have a couple of small ascents to interrupt the grind, and neither are particularly challenging. Firstly we have the climb to the Santuari de Gràcia de Randa, which amounts to the first 2,9km of this profile cresting 47km from home, and then this rather uncomplicated ascent 25km out. It’s close enough to maybe allow a bit of intrigue, but it shouldn’t foil the sprinters. They’ll have plenty of time to gather their resources on a mostly very flat run-in to Inca, a city of 35.000 inhabitants known primarily for wine cellars and a bustling street market.
It’s a very, very straight run-in so unless the prevailing wind comes from the west - fairly uncommon - the mountains will shelter the riders and result in a final 20km or so that favours the bunch. This should be the sprinters’ first chance.
GPM:
Alt de Gràcia de Randa (cat.3) 2,9km @ 7,7%
Alt de Pórtol (cat.3) 2,9km @ 5,7%
Day 2 and we’re island-hopping, arriving on Mallorca, the largest and most populated of the Balearics, where the next couple of stages will take place. A short ferry of around an hour in peak times can get you from Ciutadella de Menorca to Port d’Alcúdia, which will be our morning’s stage host, so it’s an uncomplicated transfer considering we’re on a new island for the day, ahead of a longer, but flatter, stage which is expected to - but not certain to - give the sprinters their first chance of the race.
This is a fairly easy-going stage which takes us around the flatter southeastern half of the largest Balearic island, more like the somewhat interchangeable flat old Trofeo Alcúdia part of the Challenge Mallorca in 2021 than its more recent appearances in the spikier Trofeo Serra Tramuntana. A historic bay first visited by Romans and frequently attacked by pirates, it grew in the 20th Century into the main tourist hub for the northern half of the island. It is one of the only places here - outside Palma de Mallorca - to have hosted the national race, with the 40km ITT in 1998 being around the city, won by Abraham Olano taking 2’24 out of eventual 2nd placed Fernando Escartín and over 4 minutes out of teammate and rival - and at that point race leader - José María Jiménez, margins which would ultimately prove decisive. It was also the birthplace of former UCI head honcho Luís Puïg, head of RFEC from 1968 to 1984 and of the UCI from 1981 to 1990, and who gives his name to a velodrome and to a one day race with an illustrious winner’s list including Bernard Hinault, Laurent Jalabert, Mario Cipollini, Erik Zabel and, since its rebirth in the 2020s, Dylan Groenewegen and Marc Hirschi, both of which are in the Valencia region which he became synonymous with.
The internal part of Mallorca that we travel through today is mostly flattish, and less trodden from a touristic (preferring the beaches of course) and from a cyclist (preferring the mountains) perspective. It does, however, take us through some cities well known to sport, such as Mallorca’s second city, Manacor, which hosts an early intermediate sprint and is well known as the hometown of the Nadal family, a group of tennis pros of whom the most famous, of course, is Rafael, the king of clay and winner of… let’s just say “a lot” and move on. We continue on through other less-trodden cities like Felanitx, home of World Cup winner Mariona Caldentey, and the quieter coastal resort of Cala d’Or. We loop back towards Palma via towns like Llucmajor, and also Marratxí, somewhere slowly in the process of being absorbed by the urban sprawl of the island’s capital, and home to one of the main riders who have flown the flag for Spain in women’s cycling for the last decade, late-starting former triathlete Margarita Victoria “Mavi” García, a multiple national champion and mostly a stage race specialist who didn’t turn pro until into her 30s and took her biggest career win at age 41 when she took a stage of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes. We only have a couple of small ascents to interrupt the grind, and neither are particularly challenging. Firstly we have the climb to the Santuari de Gràcia de Randa, which amounts to the first 2,9km of this profile cresting 47km from home, and then this rather uncomplicated ascent 25km out. It’s close enough to maybe allow a bit of intrigue, but it shouldn’t foil the sprinters. They’ll have plenty of time to gather their resources on a mostly very flat run-in to Inca, a city of 35.000 inhabitants known primarily for wine cellars and a bustling street market.
It’s a very, very straight run-in so unless the prevailing wind comes from the west - fairly uncommon - the mountains will shelter the riders and result in a final 20km or so that favours the bunch. This should be the sprinters’ first chance.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 3: Artà - Valldemossa, 205km
GPM:
Coll de Sóller (cat.3) 7,4km @ 4,5%
Alt de Puïgmajor (cat.1) 14,5km @ 5,9%
Coll des Vent (cat.3) 8,0km @ 4,6%
Alt de Sobremunt (cat.2) 5,4km @ 8,2%
Coll de’n Claret (cat.3) 7,0km @ 4,5%
We continue our trip around Mallorca with the toughest stage of the Balearic opening to the race, a relatively lengthy medium-mountain stage which begins in Artà, a relatively small city (just under 10.000 inhabitants) which, under its earlier name of Yartan, was one of the more prominent settlements in the islands during Muslim rule. It is on the route primarily because it is the hometown of Mallorca’s most successful cyclist of recent times, the king of minimising results and a master of 2nd place, the least explosive GC rider of his generation, Enric Mas. The fact that the Vuelta hasn’t been to the islands since his emergence is something of a surprise, after all, while the likes of Ayuso may point to the future, Enric is still the Spaniard closest to actually winning a Grand Tour right now, with four podiums and eight top 10s in three week racing, admittedly almost exclusively in the Vuelta. However, he probably needs a Carlos Sastre-esque slice of luck to actually win one due to what can only be described as a catastrophic lack of killer instinct.
The first part of the stage is flat, before we arrive in Santa María del Camí, where we extend on a very long loop into the mountains; the circuit is almost 90km in length and takes in the first two of five categorised climbs of the stage, firstly the fairly uncomplicated Coll de Sóller, mostly false flat to diesel grinding gradients and let’s just say, mostly better known for its scenery than its complexity. It starts in Bunyola, the home town of former pro António Colom, a former stage winner of the Dauphiné and Paris-Nice who rode for Illes Balears, Astana and Katyusha before being forced out of the sport by a positive test for EPO in 2009 that resulted in his podium in the Vuelta al País Vasco being voided; despite that he would have been just 32 when his suspension was up, Spanish cycling was in a bad place in 2011 with all the previous viable ProContinental teams folding in the financial crisis, and he chose not to come back, instead moving into Ironman competition.
Photo from www.cafeducycliste.com
Descending from this takes us towards the sea, and then we climb Mallorca’s most famous mountain, Puïg Major, at least as far as the road tunnel (there is a profile of the extended version with the restricted access road up to the radar station, which adds 5km at nearly 10% to the end of the climb - this may be utilised in a future edition - these roads are of limited value but the Vuelta has climbed various EVA roads in the past, most notably Aitana), so this is the first cat.1 ascent of the race, but as it’s over 100km from home I expect little by way of fireworks. Instead it’s a long and multi-stepped descent via the Coll de Sa Batalla, and then around 30km of flat riding, through our return to Santa María del Camí, and to Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands and, with 438.000 city-dwellers, the 8th-largest city in Spain.
We don’t stay long, however, just taking an intermediate sprint in Palma, for we will return to the city at a later point. As you can expect from such a major city, it has many successful children - interestingly it has become a hub for motorcycle racing despite no high level circuits on the island, with former MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo being from Palma, and since his breakthrough another champion from Palma, Joan Mir, has emerged, winning the 2020 world title in that strange, Covid-affected season. For cyclists, it is the hometown of women’s pro Iurani Blanco and former endurance track riders Toni Tauler. It is perhaps more culturally important, though, to highlight Ramon Llull, a philosopher and theologian of the 13th Century who was beatified in the 19th Century and gives his name to the Institut Ramon Llull, a consortium of the regional governments of the Balearic Islands and Catalunya, in conjunction with the city of Barcelona, to promote and promulgate Catalan linguistic and cultural identity, along with the Fundació Ramon Llull, a similarly-oriented international organisation which also includes the Andorran government along with regional and city governments of French and Sardinian cities with historic ties to Catalunya.
The last 40km of the stage are all up-and-down, with precious little flat terrain and with two gradual climbs that much of the péloton will be familiar with (the Coll des Vent hasn’t been seen much recently but has historically featured frequently in the Challenge Mallorca races and its proximity to Palma has seen it appear in the Vuelta, while it is an extension of the very commonly-seen Coll de Sa Creu; the Coll de’n Claret is a very common sight in the Challenge Mallorca. Both are very common training climbs in this part of the world, being medium length and fairly steady grinds), sandwiching one brand new and much more challenging ascent. The first climb is the Coll des Vent, finishing at 32km from home. It shouldn’t see much action in all honesty - it isn't all that challenging. However, it leads directly onto a much more challenging climb, that being the brand new, never seen in pro cycling before, Alt de Sobremunt.
As you can see, 5,4km @ 8,2% doesn’t quite tell the whole story (we are only riding that profile as far as the junction for Esporles, as the very top is a dead end and this enables us to descend through Es Verger). There’s 3km at 12,1% in the middle there, with more RAMPAS INHUMANAS than you dare to shake a leg at, and a max of 21%. What’s more, after the first 4km, so at that little plateau you see just after that point, the tarmac goes from shiny new to badly deteriorated. The last 3km of ascent are said to be in a bad way, but we’re only climbing about 1200m of that, so a new lick of tarmac ought not to be too much of a deal breaker. These nasty gradients top out 19km from the finish, so hopefully this should see some action - the fact there’s another climb to follow it means some legs that hurt here may see gaps multiply on a shallower following climb, à la Mortirolo-Aprica principle, but even so, 20km from home is not too far to test out your rivals, whereas I can’t imagine anybody of consequence wanting to push on on Puïg Major.
Climbfinder has a gallery
The descent into Esporles is not the easiest including some tricky gradients, but it’s in decent condition travelling through a relatively new development. After arriving in Esporles, we’re back on wide, well-known roads for the last 7km of this profile - mostly at tempo grinding 4-5% but with one kilometre of 6,2%, this is a flip side of Sobremunt, being a tempo climb, but hopefully with multiple groups on the road so that it becomes tactical. This climb crests just 6km from the line, the first 3 of which are shallow descent (last 3km of that profile) before a couple of flat kilometres and a slightly uphill - around 4% - final kilometre in Valldemossa itself.
With only around 2.000 inhabitants, Valldemossa is a small stage town, but it has a rich cultural history, being the site of King Sancho’s Royal Charterhouse, and the birthplace of St Catherine of Palma, a 16th Century mystic who has become the patron saint of Mallorca. After the monasteries were sold and came into private hands, those to have lived in Valldemossa include the composer Frédéric Chopin and his lover George Sand (one of the many women to write under male pen names at the time), the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, and the great Argentine writer Jorge Luís Borges. And it will make a very scenic backdrop to our first real GC shakedown.
GPM:
Coll de Sóller (cat.3) 7,4km @ 4,5%
Alt de Puïgmajor (cat.1) 14,5km @ 5,9%
Coll des Vent (cat.3) 8,0km @ 4,6%
Alt de Sobremunt (cat.2) 5,4km @ 8,2%
Coll de’n Claret (cat.3) 7,0km @ 4,5%
We continue our trip around Mallorca with the toughest stage of the Balearic opening to the race, a relatively lengthy medium-mountain stage which begins in Artà, a relatively small city (just under 10.000 inhabitants) which, under its earlier name of Yartan, was one of the more prominent settlements in the islands during Muslim rule. It is on the route primarily because it is the hometown of Mallorca’s most successful cyclist of recent times, the king of minimising results and a master of 2nd place, the least explosive GC rider of his generation, Enric Mas. The fact that the Vuelta hasn’t been to the islands since his emergence is something of a surprise, after all, while the likes of Ayuso may point to the future, Enric is still the Spaniard closest to actually winning a Grand Tour right now, with four podiums and eight top 10s in three week racing, admittedly almost exclusively in the Vuelta. However, he probably needs a Carlos Sastre-esque slice of luck to actually win one due to what can only be described as a catastrophic lack of killer instinct.
The first part of the stage is flat, before we arrive in Santa María del Camí, where we extend on a very long loop into the mountains; the circuit is almost 90km in length and takes in the first two of five categorised climbs of the stage, firstly the fairly uncomplicated Coll de Sóller, mostly false flat to diesel grinding gradients and let’s just say, mostly better known for its scenery than its complexity. It starts in Bunyola, the home town of former pro António Colom, a former stage winner of the Dauphiné and Paris-Nice who rode for Illes Balears, Astana and Katyusha before being forced out of the sport by a positive test for EPO in 2009 that resulted in his podium in the Vuelta al País Vasco being voided; despite that he would have been just 32 when his suspension was up, Spanish cycling was in a bad place in 2011 with all the previous viable ProContinental teams folding in the financial crisis, and he chose not to come back, instead moving into Ironman competition.
Photo from www.cafeducycliste.com
Descending from this takes us towards the sea, and then we climb Mallorca’s most famous mountain, Puïg Major, at least as far as the road tunnel (there is a profile of the extended version with the restricted access road up to the radar station, which adds 5km at nearly 10% to the end of the climb - this may be utilised in a future edition - these roads are of limited value but the Vuelta has climbed various EVA roads in the past, most notably Aitana), so this is the first cat.1 ascent of the race, but as it’s over 100km from home I expect little by way of fireworks. Instead it’s a long and multi-stepped descent via the Coll de Sa Batalla, and then around 30km of flat riding, through our return to Santa María del Camí, and to Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands and, with 438.000 city-dwellers, the 8th-largest city in Spain.
We don’t stay long, however, just taking an intermediate sprint in Palma, for we will return to the city at a later point. As you can expect from such a major city, it has many successful children - interestingly it has become a hub for motorcycle racing despite no high level circuits on the island, with former MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo being from Palma, and since his breakthrough another champion from Palma, Joan Mir, has emerged, winning the 2020 world title in that strange, Covid-affected season. For cyclists, it is the hometown of women’s pro Iurani Blanco and former endurance track riders Toni Tauler. It is perhaps more culturally important, though, to highlight Ramon Llull, a philosopher and theologian of the 13th Century who was beatified in the 19th Century and gives his name to the Institut Ramon Llull, a consortium of the regional governments of the Balearic Islands and Catalunya, in conjunction with the city of Barcelona, to promote and promulgate Catalan linguistic and cultural identity, along with the Fundació Ramon Llull, a similarly-oriented international organisation which also includes the Andorran government along with regional and city governments of French and Sardinian cities with historic ties to Catalunya.
The last 40km of the stage are all up-and-down, with precious little flat terrain and with two gradual climbs that much of the péloton will be familiar with (the Coll des Vent hasn’t been seen much recently but has historically featured frequently in the Challenge Mallorca races and its proximity to Palma has seen it appear in the Vuelta, while it is an extension of the very commonly-seen Coll de Sa Creu; the Coll de’n Claret is a very common sight in the Challenge Mallorca. Both are very common training climbs in this part of the world, being medium length and fairly steady grinds), sandwiching one brand new and much more challenging ascent. The first climb is the Coll des Vent, finishing at 32km from home. It shouldn’t see much action in all honesty - it isn't all that challenging. However, it leads directly onto a much more challenging climb, that being the brand new, never seen in pro cycling before, Alt de Sobremunt.
As you can see, 5,4km @ 8,2% doesn’t quite tell the whole story (we are only riding that profile as far as the junction for Esporles, as the very top is a dead end and this enables us to descend through Es Verger). There’s 3km at 12,1% in the middle there, with more RAMPAS INHUMANAS than you dare to shake a leg at, and a max of 21%. What’s more, after the first 4km, so at that little plateau you see just after that point, the tarmac goes from shiny new to badly deteriorated. The last 3km of ascent are said to be in a bad way, but we’re only climbing about 1200m of that, so a new lick of tarmac ought not to be too much of a deal breaker. These nasty gradients top out 19km from the finish, so hopefully this should see some action - the fact there’s another climb to follow it means some legs that hurt here may see gaps multiply on a shallower following climb, à la Mortirolo-Aprica principle, but even so, 20km from home is not too far to test out your rivals, whereas I can’t imagine anybody of consequence wanting to push on on Puïg Major.
Climbfinder has a gallery
The descent into Esporles is not the easiest including some tricky gradients, but it’s in decent condition travelling through a relatively new development. After arriving in Esporles, we’re back on wide, well-known roads for the last 7km of this profile - mostly at tempo grinding 4-5% but with one kilometre of 6,2%, this is a flip side of Sobremunt, being a tempo climb, but hopefully with multiple groups on the road so that it becomes tactical. This climb crests just 6km from the line, the first 3 of which are shallow descent (last 3km of that profile) before a couple of flat kilometres and a slightly uphill - around 4% - final kilometre in Valldemossa itself.
With only around 2.000 inhabitants, Valldemossa is a small stage town, but it has a rich cultural history, being the site of King Sancho’s Royal Charterhouse, and the birthplace of St Catherine of Palma, a 16th Century mystic who has become the patron saint of Mallorca. After the monasteries were sold and came into private hands, those to have lived in Valldemossa include the composer Frédéric Chopin and his lover George Sand (one of the many women to write under male pen names at the time), the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, and the great Argentine writer Jorge Luís Borges. And it will make a very scenic backdrop to our first real GC shakedown.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 4: Magaluf - Palma de Mallorca, 19,1km (ITT)
The very word sends shivers down the spine of many, associated with the most base and heinous of shallow, unrepentant tourist excesses. Magaluf. It has become an ugly word for an ugly place, a characterless hotchpotch of medium-rise hotel complexes, empty and soulless out of season, and then seeing a seasonal migration of Germans and Britons who arrive every summer to don their lobster-red summer skin and conduct the ancient mating rituals of their peoples; arguing over sun loungers, drinking copious quantities of alcoholic beverages, shouting instructions at unruly children, and loudly complaining about what few local foods and customs outside of their domestic comfort zones that they have the misfortune to encounter. The Janus-faced blessing and curse of the package holiday, that blight which so many Mediterranean towns and cities have become both financially dependent on and socially deeply resentful of. Magaluf has had it worse than many, becoming a stag/hen party magnet, and despite many attempts at renovation, rebranding and a number of legal actions being taken to curb drunken excess, the reputation remains.
I’ll be honest, I felt that this was a good distance from Palma for a week 1 TT but I just also imagined the sheer humour that would arise from starting a time trial deep in a complex of mostly bemused, maybe even bewildered, hungover tourists who may not have bargained on a major international cycling race descending upon their holiday on a Tuesday morning while they were filling up on chain-hotel buffet breakfasts - full English, of course.
The time trial is a very simple one - a short-to-medium-length power test, pan flat and all along the coast along the strip of resorts that extends westward from Palma. Magaluf hasn’t hosted racing since around 2011, when one of the Challenge Mallorca races was the flat Trofeo Magaluf-Palmanova; Palmanova has since become a regular host of the hillier Trofeo Calvià race, which has winners such as Brandon McNulty and Rui Costa. Between the resort towns and Palma itself, we pass the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, the second museum dedicated to the works of Miró after the one in Barcelona; Palma was chosen as the location as Miró had married there, and although the family had fled Spain in the Civil War, they chose Mallorca as their home when they returned in the 1950s. The museum is located at Miró’s former workshop on the outskirts of Palma and serves as our gateway into the city. In the city, we pass the bustling port, which will be used to transfer the logistics over to the Spanish mainland after the stage, and then do an out-and-back along the Passeig Maritim, before turning inland to finish at Plaça Major.
Passeig Maritim
Plaça Major
Palma is the home to a majority of races on the island, appearing pretty much annually in the Challenge Mallorca, typically with a flat race ending on the Passeig Maritim (winners including Erik Zabel, Óscar Freire, Philippe Gilbert, Robbie McEwen, André Greipel, John Degenkolb, Marcel Kittel and Arnaud de Lie, which tells you what you need to know about the parcours) which traditionally opened the week but more recently has closed it. It also hosted the Spanish national championships road race in 1936, 1965 and most recently in 2022, with Carlos Rodríguez winning the men’s event, and local girl Mavi García winning the women’s. It has also been on the parcours every time the Vuelta a España has made a trip to the Balearics, with Agustín Tamames winning here in 1975, two finishes in 1986 (Thierry Marie winning the prologue and Marc Gomez the ensuing road stage), one in 1991 won by Jesper Skibby and Fabrizio Guidi winning a sprint in 1998.
I’ve only used Palma once before, as only one of my previous Vueltas has been to the Balearics - the second Vuelta, posted all the way back in 2012 - but this is a logical way to finish the route off for a start on the islands. This is a fairly short time trial but should mean that between the uphill finish on stage 1, the medium mountain stage on stage 3 and then this ITT, there should be a solid foundation of a GC set before we arrive back on the mainland.
The very word sends shivers down the spine of many, associated with the most base and heinous of shallow, unrepentant tourist excesses. Magaluf. It has become an ugly word for an ugly place, a characterless hotchpotch of medium-rise hotel complexes, empty and soulless out of season, and then seeing a seasonal migration of Germans and Britons who arrive every summer to don their lobster-red summer skin and conduct the ancient mating rituals of their peoples; arguing over sun loungers, drinking copious quantities of alcoholic beverages, shouting instructions at unruly children, and loudly complaining about what few local foods and customs outside of their domestic comfort zones that they have the misfortune to encounter. The Janus-faced blessing and curse of the package holiday, that blight which so many Mediterranean towns and cities have become both financially dependent on and socially deeply resentful of. Magaluf has had it worse than many, becoming a stag/hen party magnet, and despite many attempts at renovation, rebranding and a number of legal actions being taken to curb drunken excess, the reputation remains.
I’ll be honest, I felt that this was a good distance from Palma for a week 1 TT but I just also imagined the sheer humour that would arise from starting a time trial deep in a complex of mostly bemused, maybe even bewildered, hungover tourists who may not have bargained on a major international cycling race descending upon their holiday on a Tuesday morning while they were filling up on chain-hotel buffet breakfasts - full English, of course.
The time trial is a very simple one - a short-to-medium-length power test, pan flat and all along the coast along the strip of resorts that extends westward from Palma. Magaluf hasn’t hosted racing since around 2011, when one of the Challenge Mallorca races was the flat Trofeo Magaluf-Palmanova; Palmanova has since become a regular host of the hillier Trofeo Calvià race, which has winners such as Brandon McNulty and Rui Costa. Between the resort towns and Palma itself, we pass the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, the second museum dedicated to the works of Miró after the one in Barcelona; Palma was chosen as the location as Miró had married there, and although the family had fled Spain in the Civil War, they chose Mallorca as their home when they returned in the 1950s. The museum is located at Miró’s former workshop on the outskirts of Palma and serves as our gateway into the city. In the city, we pass the bustling port, which will be used to transfer the logistics over to the Spanish mainland after the stage, and then do an out-and-back along the Passeig Maritim, before turning inland to finish at Plaça Major.
Passeig Maritim
Plaça Major
Palma is the home to a majority of races on the island, appearing pretty much annually in the Challenge Mallorca, typically with a flat race ending on the Passeig Maritim (winners including Erik Zabel, Óscar Freire, Philippe Gilbert, Robbie McEwen, André Greipel, John Degenkolb, Marcel Kittel and Arnaud de Lie, which tells you what you need to know about the parcours) which traditionally opened the week but more recently has closed it. It also hosted the Spanish national championships road race in 1936, 1965 and most recently in 2022, with Carlos Rodríguez winning the men’s event, and local girl Mavi García winning the women’s. It has also been on the parcours every time the Vuelta a España has made a trip to the Balearics, with Agustín Tamames winning here in 1975, two finishes in 1986 (Thierry Marie winning the prologue and Marc Gomez the ensuing road stage), one in 1991 won by Jesper Skibby and Fabrizio Guidi winning a sprint in 1998.
I’ve only used Palma once before, as only one of my previous Vueltas has been to the Balearics - the second Vuelta, posted all the way back in 2012 - but this is a logical way to finish the route off for a start on the islands. This is a fairly short time trial but should mean that between the uphill finish on stage 1, the medium mountain stage on stage 3 and then this ITT, there should be a solid foundation of a GC set before we arrive back on the mainland.
- Feb 20, 2010
- 33,064
- 15,272
- 28,180
Stage 5: Valencia - Amposta, 213km
Back on the mainland, and it’s a stage for the sprinters, as we head northwards from Valencia for our only exposure to the province in the race, and travel into the southern tip of Catalunya. It’s a relatively uninteresting stage considering its length, this is more to allow for any hassle arising out of a no-rest-day transfer to the mainland. This has typically been the case when the Vuelta visits Mallorca, because the ferries are regular (also doing the ITT last gives the opportunity that the road bikes etc. can be ready for transit immediately). The riders etc. can fly for the short hop. I originally had a longer stage here but over 200km is more than enough after a long transfer I think.
Valencia of course is one of Spain’s largest cities, and hosts copious quantities of bike races across the national championships, regional tours for both men and women (going back to the Vuelta a Levante back in the 1930s and even including some outlying Volta a Catalunya stages), and the Vuelta, which it first appeared in in 1936. Vuelta stages here tend to be flat, or at least with a long flat run-in, as while there are mountains in the vicinity, the area around Valencia itself is pan flat. In the El Correo-El Pueblo Vasco days, races would frequently start with several flat stages linking coastal resorts on the south and east of the country before heading inland to the mountains of the north. Stage winners in Valencia over the years in the Vuelta include António Martín, Délio Rodríguez, Rik van Steenbergen, Rik van Looy, Nino Defilippis, Sean Kelly, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, Alessandro Petacchi and Fabian Cancellara, but interestingly the city hasn’t hosted a stage finish since the 2009 ITT which started and finished at the short-lived and much-maligned F1 street circuit here, which has long fallen into disrepair, a bizarre white elephant when there is a better, more established permanent facility which hosts MotoGP in Cheste, only an hour away. It did, however, serve as the departure for a 2015 stage to Castellón de la Plana, one of the cities we are travelling through on the way. The city is also the hometown of a few riders over the years, probably most notably José Enrique “Búfalo” Gutiérrez, and David Bernabéu, both of whom were embroiled in Operación Puerto.
Valencia cityscape
As mentioned, this is a pure transitional stage, heading north through cities like Sagunto, Torres Torres and La Vall d’Uixó as we head to Castellón de la Plana, the capital of the northernmost of the Valencian provinces, for our first intermediate sprint, and then where in previous years we’ve seen races (both real and in this thread) go into the Desierto de las Palmas mini-range, we instead stay along the coast through Benicassim, and have perhaps the toughest ascent of the day, the 1,5km @ 6,5% of the Cuestas de Oropesa - really not enough to justify categorisation. We do head inland a little around Alcossebre as the coast road is unpaved here, so going through Alcalá de Xivert, but return to the coastline at Benicarló and Vinarós, another common and popular stage host in the Vuelta over the years, mostly as before during the El Correo-El Pueblo Vasco days with winners including Rudi Altig and Marino Basso, before a brief return to fashion in the 2000s, with three stage finishes here, Juan Manuel Garate winning a transitional stage in 2001, then Max van Heeswijk and André Greipel winning sprints in 2005 and 2009 respectively.
Crossing into Catalunya, we pass through the town of Alcanar, home of the Prades brothers, two veteran riders of interesting background - veteran durable sprinter Eduard, who has won the Tour of Turkey and the Tour of Norway in a late blossoming career largely with Spanish ProTeams, and his older brother Benjamí, who started out as a biathlete before converting to cycling where he has carved out a niche on the Asia Tour, racing mainly in Japan and remaining competitive in the scene into his 40s. We do have a couple of uncategorised ramps and repechos leaving the town that may have some impact in terms of who will contest the sprint, but shouldn’t have any impact on the outcome being a sprint. Firstly the 2,7km @ 3,9% of the Coll d’en Piqué (only the first climbing part) at around 35km from the stripe, and then 3,4km @ 3,7% on the Puerto de Montes Blancos at 25km from home. This has more chance of having an effect, with the last 1600m averaging a little over 5%, but still far from threatening, although it does at least look quite scenic. After this it’s just an easing downhill to the flat run-in to today’s stage host of Amposta.
From what I can see, Amposta has never hosted the Vuelta, but it has hosted the Volta a Catalunya on a number of occasions, but mostly back in times of yore, with the most prominent victor in the city being Roger de Vlaeminck, who won the Volta’s prologue here in 1976. It made its first appearance in a pro race in over 40 years in 2025, with Matthew Brennan winning a sprint. It is the hometown of 50s pro José Serra, who won two Vuelta stages and finished 3rd overall in 1950. This one is very much intended to be a sprint and a quiet day in the saddle for the riders after the travel from Mallorca, as a midweek transitional stage to bring us up toward our next set of more challenging ones.
Back on the mainland, and it’s a stage for the sprinters, as we head northwards from Valencia for our only exposure to the province in the race, and travel into the southern tip of Catalunya. It’s a relatively uninteresting stage considering its length, this is more to allow for any hassle arising out of a no-rest-day transfer to the mainland. This has typically been the case when the Vuelta visits Mallorca, because the ferries are regular (also doing the ITT last gives the opportunity that the road bikes etc. can be ready for transit immediately). The riders etc. can fly for the short hop. I originally had a longer stage here but over 200km is more than enough after a long transfer I think.
Valencia of course is one of Spain’s largest cities, and hosts copious quantities of bike races across the national championships, regional tours for both men and women (going back to the Vuelta a Levante back in the 1930s and even including some outlying Volta a Catalunya stages), and the Vuelta, which it first appeared in in 1936. Vuelta stages here tend to be flat, or at least with a long flat run-in, as while there are mountains in the vicinity, the area around Valencia itself is pan flat. In the El Correo-El Pueblo Vasco days, races would frequently start with several flat stages linking coastal resorts on the south and east of the country before heading inland to the mountains of the north. Stage winners in Valencia over the years in the Vuelta include António Martín, Délio Rodríguez, Rik van Steenbergen, Rik van Looy, Nino Defilippis, Sean Kelly, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, Alessandro Petacchi and Fabian Cancellara, but interestingly the city hasn’t hosted a stage finish since the 2009 ITT which started and finished at the short-lived and much-maligned F1 street circuit here, which has long fallen into disrepair, a bizarre white elephant when there is a better, more established permanent facility which hosts MotoGP in Cheste, only an hour away. It did, however, serve as the departure for a 2015 stage to Castellón de la Plana, one of the cities we are travelling through on the way. The city is also the hometown of a few riders over the years, probably most notably José Enrique “Búfalo” Gutiérrez, and David Bernabéu, both of whom were embroiled in Operación Puerto.
Valencia cityscape
As mentioned, this is a pure transitional stage, heading north through cities like Sagunto, Torres Torres and La Vall d’Uixó as we head to Castellón de la Plana, the capital of the northernmost of the Valencian provinces, for our first intermediate sprint, and then where in previous years we’ve seen races (both real and in this thread) go into the Desierto de las Palmas mini-range, we instead stay along the coast through Benicassim, and have perhaps the toughest ascent of the day, the 1,5km @ 6,5% of the Cuestas de Oropesa - really not enough to justify categorisation. We do head inland a little around Alcossebre as the coast road is unpaved here, so going through Alcalá de Xivert, but return to the coastline at Benicarló and Vinarós, another common and popular stage host in the Vuelta over the years, mostly as before during the El Correo-El Pueblo Vasco days with winners including Rudi Altig and Marino Basso, before a brief return to fashion in the 2000s, with three stage finishes here, Juan Manuel Garate winning a transitional stage in 2001, then Max van Heeswijk and André Greipel winning sprints in 2005 and 2009 respectively.
Crossing into Catalunya, we pass through the town of Alcanar, home of the Prades brothers, two veteran riders of interesting background - veteran durable sprinter Eduard, who has won the Tour of Turkey and the Tour of Norway in a late blossoming career largely with Spanish ProTeams, and his older brother Benjamí, who started out as a biathlete before converting to cycling where he has carved out a niche on the Asia Tour, racing mainly in Japan and remaining competitive in the scene into his 40s. We do have a couple of uncategorised ramps and repechos leaving the town that may have some impact in terms of who will contest the sprint, but shouldn’t have any impact on the outcome being a sprint. Firstly the 2,7km @ 3,9% of the Coll d’en Piqué (only the first climbing part) at around 35km from the stripe, and then 3,4km @ 3,7% on the Puerto de Montes Blancos at 25km from home. This has more chance of having an effect, with the last 1600m averaging a little over 5%, but still far from threatening, although it does at least look quite scenic. After this it’s just an easing downhill to the flat run-in to today’s stage host of Amposta.
From what I can see, Amposta has never hosted the Vuelta, but it has hosted the Volta a Catalunya on a number of occasions, but mostly back in times of yore, with the most prominent victor in the city being Roger de Vlaeminck, who won the Volta’s prologue here in 1976. It made its first appearance in a pro race in over 40 years in 2025, with Matthew Brennan winning a sprint. It is the hometown of 50s pro José Serra, who won two Vuelta stages and finished 3rd overall in 1950. This one is very much intended to be a sprint and a quiet day in the saddle for the riders after the travel from Mallorca, as a midweek transitional stage to bring us up toward our next set of more challenging ones.
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