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.
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