Race Design Thread

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Stage 5: Biķernieki - Riga, 13,9km (ITT)

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And so we finish with this, a short-to-mid-length ITT in and around the nation’s capital, which you will probably have expected seeing the direction we were headed. It makes sense to utilise the capital city and take the race to the people, especially in a nation which is relatively sparsely populated like Latvia, and besides, the fact remains that with 660.000 inhabitants in the city itself and 900.000 in the metropolitan area, Riga completely and utterly dwarfs every other city in the country so it would be a major omission if the nation was to set up a proper short tour like this. It’s not like it’s some gargantuan country where you can stay away from the capital city and still link major metropoles. It’s by far the most famous, most important and strongest city in the country, and home to by far the largest number of notable alumni in the country.

Its name etymology is disputed; it likely either derives from an Old Livonian word for a loop in the river which has given it its natural harbour, or from the German word for the Rīdzene river, a tributary of the Daugava. This natural harbour has been a boon for the city which grew in early middle age times, as the Vikings used it as part of their trade route to Byzantium, before German traders arrived in the 12th Century, bringing Christianity first by peaceful means, and then when this saw limited success, by force by way of a crusade at the end of the century. After some time of dispute, the city joined the Hanseatic League in 1282 and became a strong and established mercantile city, swiftly outgrowing and coming to dominate all other cities in the region.

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As the power of the Hansa declined, the city became a free Imperial City in the Holy Roman Empire briefly, before being passed to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1581. It was then taken by Sweden forty years later, and was in fact one of the strongest and largest Swedish cities until 1710, when the Russians captured it. The battles in the Great Northern War continued until eventually the city was formally ceded to the Russian Empire eleven years later, a status it would keep until Latvian independence in the 20th Century, due primarily to German capitulation in the West after the Russians were forced to cede the Baltic States as part of the peace treaty on the Eastern front. After a brief period of independence the city was seized by the Soviets in 1940, holding rigged elections, arresting and deporting scores of politicians and individuals and opening “the corner house”, the KGB’s largest headquarters in the Baltic region, which is now a museum. When the Nazis arrived the following year, a concentration camp was set up in the northern suburb of Ķeizarmežs (Kaiserwald), but not before over 24.000 Jews were systematically murdered in the Rumbula forest, the second largest atrocity committed under that regime before the establishment of the extermination camps. The historical centre was heavily damaged by the Soviet battle to reclaim the city, and although much was rebuilt as close to its original look as possible, it was not until 1995 with the rebuilding of the House of the Blackheads that the pre-war skyline of Riga returned.

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House of the Blackheads, one of Germany’s lasting legacies in Riga

The city was a European Capital of Culture in 2014 and recent history has largely been about asserting the nation’s sovereignty and rejecting evidence of the former Russian hegemony. This has accelerated in the last two years, with Russian activity in Ukraine largely catalysing a pro-Europe swing in the country. Soviet-era immigrants were not automatically entitled to Latvian citizenship (earlier ones were), and the population has swung more toward ethnic Latvians in the last 30 years - however it is still only around half of the city. This historic population does, however, include a large number of Latvia’s most well-known great and good - even though many of the most famous or important Riga natives are remnants of its more cosmopolitan times; these include legendary and visionary film director Sergei Eisenstein, whose Battleship Potemkin remains one of the most important milestones in cinema; Jākobs Jufess, who would emigrate to America, take the name Jacob W Davis and be the inventor of modern denim jeans; surgery pioneer Ernst von Bergmann; Wilhelm Ostwald, a Nobel Prize-Winning chemist; Turing Award-winning computer scientist Juris Hartmanis, and social and political theorist Isaiah Berlin.

Sports-wise, a large proportion of Latvia’s best-known athletes come from Riga as you may expect. Rīgas ASK are just about the most successful European basketball team in history, and in 1960 TTT Riga won the women’s European title making the first time both awards went to the same city. Dinamo Riga were a prominent and important ice hockey team playing in the Soviet league and later the KHL, but withdrew in protest at the invasion of Ukraine, as did all of the overseas teams in the KHL bar Barys Astana and Kunlun Red Star (who have been playing in Russia since the pandemic anyway) and are now re-establishing themselves aiming to join the Finnish league in order to keep Latvian ice hockey at a strong level as the domestic league is small; with players like Teodors Bļugers (anglicised as “Teddy Blueger”), Zemgus Girgensons and Elvis Merzļikins in the NHL (and formerly Sandis Ozoliņš, arguably the best ever Latvian ice hockey player, as well as Matīss Kivlenieks, who died in his prime in 2021 after an accident involving a fireworks display) the sport is one of the most popular in the country. Riga has also given the world success in the world of chess, always popular in the Soviet times, with Mikhail Tal the best-known Grandmaster of Riga, and more recently the tennis player Jeļena Ostapenko, arguably the most likely answer that the man in the street will give when asked to name a Latvian sportsperson (unless they’re a major ice hockey fan), who won the 2017 French Open.

The city also briefly held its own one-day race, as well as appearing a few times in the Tour de l’URSS. It is hard to find too much detail on the old versions of this race, at least until the late 70s when they rebranded it the “national championships in stage racing” and based it out of Crimea, but early versions would start in St Petersburg and run through the Baltic States where the sport was popular before arcing back to Moscow. The GP Riga was a largely flat affair whose most famous winner is probably the Italian sprinter Francesco Chicchi in 2013, though a case may be made for Gatis Smukulis in 2007 during its UCI phase; Toms Skujiņš did win a non-UCI-ranked edition in 2010 at the age of 19, however.

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The time trial starts at the Biķernieki racing circuit, the only FIA-homologated motor racing circuit in the country (and one of very few in the Baltic States as a whole that are capable of holding decent sized events, with the likes of Kloostimestra and the mad Palanga circuit being temporary). Designed in 1962, it weaves through the forest and largely hosts junior formulae in open wheel and touring cars, as well as for a period the European Rallycross Championship and even briefly the World Championship in the same discipline. In the winter these paths, tracks and even the circuit itself, like those of the Finnish Ahvenistö circuit, are used as a cross-country skiing complex. The Biķernieki forest is also home to Latvia’s main war memorial, as the forest here, owing to its proximity to the capital, saw a huge number of killings, and there are at least 55 marked burial sites with upward of 20.000 victims in the forest. The memorial was proposed and planned in 1986, but delayed by the fall of the Soviet Union and revived by the German War Graves Commission in 2000.

We head south to the Dreiliņkalns hill which we head around the outside of and then take a right and then it’s a long straight line until we reach Daugavas Stadions, constructed in 1927 as the main sporting centre of independent Latvia, a role which it has reacquired since the secession from the Soviet Union, with a recent renovation increasing the capacity to around 10.500 and rising once complete. The stadium deals with football and athletics, but the complex once complete will also include a national ice arena and a basketball/handball/volleyball arena. After this another left takes us to the Centra Sporta Kvartāls, another sporting centre, although apart from the Riga University athletics track and soccer/rugby stadium, the remainder is more for outdoor games like tennis and also BMX and a skate park.

The final part of the circuit takes us around Riga old town, and after around 10km of very few corners and mostly power, suddenly in the final 3km or so, there are a lot of corners and technical challenges to change up the tempo a bit. The final section is down to the Freedom Monument, and then circling to the north of the city centre to the riverside; past Rigas Pils, the city’s castle which now serves as the President’s residence.

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Finally, we hook a left into the cobbled stretches through the middle of town until we get to the finish, which will be in front of the cathedral on Doma Laukums, the central square. This will give us a Mont Cassel-like backdrop, but with more scenic city centre and less hill. But that’s fine, as this is a time trial. After the dirt and cobbles of the first three days and then the relentless punchy hills of stage 4, this will be a nice way to finish off the short stage race.

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So this one is actually a race I’d been trying not to do. I’ve had a couple of goes but never been happy, and in the end it kind of just fell together. With some of the discussions we’ve had about the calendar, the UCI points system and the way the second tier teams are dropping away, one of the ideas I’ve had for a while of how to revamp that second tier was to have a couple of sort of lower-tier long-form stage races that would serve as kind of the Grand Tours of the below World Tour level, with a couple such races per continent, or per continent as defined by the UCI at least. We already have a pseudo-level like that on the Asia Tour with Langkawi and Qinghai Lake both being 2.HC races for many years (although if they could be two weeks, then maybe the two Tour of China races that ran pre-pandemic back to back could be put back into a single race for this purpose to offer more variety in parcours than Qinghai Lake has to offer) - so I thought, what would be the logical races to do for that? I mean, Portugal is kind of a no-brainer for Europe, but the second would be harder to figure out - Germany would be the most logical (and of course in my mind I would most love a Peace Race) but perhaps some kind of race in Scandinavia or the Balkans would also be an option. Greece too, perhaps, but they are very peripheral to cycling even if they have the geography for it. For Africa, the Tour du Maroc or Tour d’Algérie would be the logical offering for a North African race, and then perhaps a second race in East Africa where the cycling interest is (Ethiopia would be most likely given infrastructure, population size and geographical diversity) or in South Africa. And for the Americas? I figured one in South America (probably the Vuelta a Colombia) and one in North America.

And that was what led me to this. An idea I’ve been attached to for a while in this kind of role was a sort of ‘Great American Road Race’. You couldn’t really have a ‘Tour of the USA’, it’s far too big to cover with even three weeks, let alone two; but only touring one part of the country à la the Tour of California would make it not seem a big enough race to merit the status. So I had this idea of a kind of travelling circus of a race that would be bid on by regions year on year, giving it different characteristics. One year it could be in the Pacific North West, in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. One year it could be in the South and feature the mountains of Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas. One year it could be in the Rockies. And the main area I was trying to investigate, the East, with stages around the major cities in college country, hockey country and the likes, in New England, around the line of major cities down from New York to Washington DC and then inland to Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But the problem for me was, those left me with a lack of cycling history. To incept such a race, you’d need history, right? The couple of editions of the Tour de Trump didn’t really give me enough to work with. And so I kept on circling back to the old USA Pro Cycling Challenge, figuring that was sort of meant to be the same thing, but it was in reality just a Tour of Colorado. But that’s OK, seeing as Colorado is like the cradle of all endurance sport in the US thanks to its high altitude and its sporting facilities, and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge was only a one week race, as opposed to its spiritual predecessor, the Red Zinger Race/Coors Classic. However, I hit upon a secondary problem: the main thing that had annoyed me about the USAPCC was partly to do with its bluster, similar to the Tour of California, but instead of being about promising something it could not deliver and trying to buy tradition and history instead like Messick had, the USAPCC team had all that history on their doorstep from America’s best known and best loved bike race… and they’d squandered it by not honouring it and giving the fans that had been around for it the first time around that nostalgia pop that could have got traditionalists out in numbers and helped sell the race. So I set to work on rectifying that, giving a Rocky Mountains edition of my planned race that would hit all the notes and play the hits - much as when I went insane and rewrote 30 years of political history to create a Peace Race that would embody the spirit of the original but adapted to modern cycling, I wanted to do likewise with the Coors Classic, adapting the original’s traditions and history but with stages adapted to what the péloton does now - and be fit for the péloton that would take it on. And of course, by the time I was done… I’d basically put the whole race in Colorado, so decided to scrap much of it and make it a Colorado-only race for ease of organisation, binning the whole plan and turning it into a longer USAPCC. Go figure.

My thinking was that as this race would take the old USAPCC slot in August, there would be stagiares in teams so you could get a pretty good startlist for a “ProContinental Grand Tour” type race here. Teams like EF and Trek with US interests could bring secondary teams for young prospects and stagiares, obviously at the ProTeam level you have over the last few years had Human Powered Health, Novo Nordisk and Israel-PremierTech with obvious North American interest, plus a few others with Anglophone (eg Black Spoke) or American (eg Q36.5) riders; and then at the Continental level there would be the domestic teams like Project Echelon and also the likes of Team Medellín, GW-Shimano, Canel’s, Petrolike with their mix of Mexican and Colombian riders, the Canadian teams and then potentially a US national team with the best riders not on pro teams, such as Alex Hoehn, as well as perhaps the occasional American who is out there on Continental teams unlikely to enter in and of themselves, like Keegan Swirbul.

Maybe in time if I have another go I can turn this more into what it originally was meant to be, covering multiple states in a region, in the Northeast, or the South, or the Pacific Northwest, or whatever. But for the time being… here’s my Coors Classic revival / Tour of Colorado.

Stage 1: Durango - Telluride, 192km

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GPM:
Hesperus (cat.3) 3,5km @ 6,1%
Sunshine Mountain (Alta)(cat.3) 2,5km @ 4,7%

So in my original design plans for this race I went East-West, but as the race plans developed, we ended up going the opposite way to try to be a bit more faithful to the old Coors Classic traditions, and that meant starting in the city that had originally been earmarked for the finale. Durango, Colorado is, like its Mexican counterpart, named for the Basque town at the foot of the Urkiola and sits amid small to mid range mountains likewise. However, unlike Durango, Mexico, it has not outgrown its original namesake, being home to around 20.000 people. It was originally established as a railroad town to try to connect Eastern Colorado and New Mexico to the Silverton mining area, north of here. The history of the city for its first century was largely shaped by the comings and goings of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, but after this started to falter the city started to move toward tourism, with the scenery of this part of the route having untapped appeal. With the old Durango to Silverton line now being a narrow gauge heritage railroad and ski resorts opened up in the mountains north of the city, it has fully transitioned its economy accordingly, aided significantly by extensive use of the city and its surroundings as a setting for many Western movies, with the dramatic scenery, frontier mining town areas and heritage railroad giving an authentic touch.

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Strangely enough, Durango was a rare host of the old Coors Classic; the stage race tended to use large transfers and stages that started and finished in the same place, and apart from the old Tour of the Moon stages in Grand Junction, this side of the state was underrepresented. However, Durango has developed a reputation for cycling, with the proximity of several climbs and its high altitude serving as a useful training area. The first Durango native to make it big in pro cycling was Bob Roll, who was originally from California but spent most of his career residing in Durango. He is now known as a shill of a presenter of the sport on US television, but before that he spent eight seasons as a pro, mostly with the 7-Eleven team, in the 80s and 90s. Most of his successes were in the US, but he did win a stage of the Tour de Romandie and enter three Giri and three Tours; his most memorable cycling achievement, however, is probably being part of the crew that domestiqued Andy Hampsten’s 1988 Giro win. The city is more known for mountain biking, with no fewer than three Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inductees based out of the city - downhill and trials specialist Greg Herbold, former World Champion downhiller (turned drugs trafficker) Melissa Giove and Ned Overend, the inaugural XCO World Champion (another transplant, having been born in Taiwan but moving to Durango at the start of his career). Further national champions in the field from the area include Todd Wells (cyclocross) and Howard Grotts (XCO).

Strangely, then, apart from the opening stage of the 2012 edition of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, an attempt at reviving the feel of the Coors Classic, this is where the trail for cycling runs dry in Durango, until Quinn Simmons’ arrival on the scene. Simmons is a highly talented young rider with Lidl-Trek who made it to the top level young; although physically able to deal with the World Tour level, perhaps psychologically it was a little soon - like a few other, shall we say more ‘sheltered’ American riders like Chloe Dygert, Simmons was perhaps not aware that the sport’s demographic in Europe is a little different to that in North America, and some of his political viewpoints - and his way of expressing them - have made him a figure of controversy; he has however successfully got his head down and put some of these controversies behind him and hopefully will be able to make these a forgotten part of his career by the time he’s done.

Oh yea, there’s also a very famous cyclotourist from Durango, but since we’re talking about a bike race, he need not detain us here.

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The man flying the flag for Durango in today's races

Originally, I had a much more challenging opening stage here, a medium mountain stage which would have gone over Coalbank Pass (33km at 3,5%), Molas Pass (5,6km @ 5,5%), Red Mountain Pass (16km @ 3%), and Dallas Divide (7km @ 5,5%) before a slight riser and a flat run in to Telluride. Because neither Black Bear Pass nor Imogene Pass are paved, we would have to loop around using Dallas Divide to get there, or continue on to put the finish in Montrose which would leave us with a very dull stage with around 70km from the final climb to the line - the very kind of stage I moaned baout 2009-10 era ASO and the early editions of the May version of the Tour of California, so Telluride was chosen. However, as the race plans developed it became clear to me that although this would be a far more interesting introduction to the race, it would also imbalance the race badly; in order to keep a balanced route AND include all the historical spots I felt essential, this was the easiest casualty.

In the end, despite my best intentions, I ended up with something very closely resembling that 2012 USAPCC stage. Given there were going to be a few other nods to other historic races later in the design I was reluctant to utilise a copycat-style stage here. But unfortunately… there just aren’t that many roads out in this wilderness. Large areas around this neck of the woods are mountainous and towns and cities are many miles apart, so alternative roads are few. That 2012 stage was in fact slightly longer than mine, as it included an extra loop around Durango at the start to give some extra KOM points out - but there’s no wanting for KOMs in my race so I will not bother with this. Even with the additional climb, there was no stopping it being sprinted out, with Tyler Farrar victorious - but the combination of altitude and the hills within the stage led to an intriguing mix of a sprint field, with Damiano Caruso 3rd ahead of ‘Fast’ Freddy Rodríguez (albeit many years past his prime and riding on a domestic Continental team by then) and even Chris Horner in the top 10. This is the only time in recent memory that either town has hosted pro (road) cycling.


Again because of the lack of paved passes to the east and south of Telluride, a direct route is not possible, so you either have to go north and loop around like a spiral to arrive there, as in my original proposal, or you have to start by heading almost due west as we do here. This takes us over an early climb - so early that the break might not have formed so if anybody has designs on the KOM from the GC mix like Pinot at the 2023 Giro then they might try to keep it together for that. Otherwise, we then head west until we reach Cortez, a town of just under 10.000 that I at one point was aiming at using in place of Durango to avoid having to mention The Cyclotourist, but Durango’s extensive other cycling history won out. Used as an access point for Mesa Verde Natural Park and Monument Valley, it is home to Motocross star Eli Tomac, and basketball Chuck Nevitt, one of the tallest men to ever play the game that is built around being tall. Here we just have an intermediate sprint.

The second intermediate sprint follows shortly after, after a gradual period of false flat. This takes place in Dove Creek, the county seat of Dolores County, named for the river valley it flows through. This also leads us to an absurd amount of uphill - although little of it of any significance - up to Lizard Head Pass. We will be riding uphill for no fewer than 78km - that’s seventy-eight - but in that time we only actually ascend 1000 vertical metres so it’s not what you’d really call climbing. Lizard Head Pass is named for the dramatic peak that overlooks it, renowned as one of America’s toughest climbing summits, but this isn’t something that the road climb can match; it is known as one of the more beautiful drives in the region, but challenging it is not; PJamm Cycling records the actual climbing part of it as being 19,5km at 2,2% so where they draw the line of where it ceases to be false flat and starts to be a climb is beyond my grasp; either way, apart from that 1 kilometre of 7,4% there isn’t anything that even approaches middling gradients, so in fact I haven’t categorised it at all.

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Instead, I decided to look at the north side of the climb and borrow a bit of a Spanish trait, categorising the second summit even though it’s lower than the first, and give the points at the scenic mirador where the old gravel road up to the former mining community of Alta and the lakes that overlook it lie. Alta is now a ghost town so the road is little used and only accessible in summer, but this road to Telluride is open continuously and even if the climb is not exactly stellar in nature, it does at least have some sustained enough length coming off the back of the neighbouring summit (we’re riding this from right to left so the green section is the climb).

This summit is 14km from home, so Lizard Head Pass is around 25km out accordingly. The run-in after the descent that you see in that profile (which weaves past parts of the ski resort) is pan flat however, and the run-in after the 90º right hander at the highway junction 5,6km from the line is almost completely straight; just gentle curves this way and that as the road follows the valley into Telluride. Originally founded under the name Columbia to mine silver, gold was found in 1875 and the isolated community grew into a town and was named after the mineral - the most common means of finding gold in Colorado - a few years later. Ironically enough, the gold found in Telluride does not come from the eponymous mineral. Its earliest claim to fame would be as the site of infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy’s first recorded crime, when he robbed the Telluride bank; as the mining industry receded, however, it became more of a retreat for hippies and counter-culture, as well as a common site for smugglers and drug dealers due to its difficult to reach location and groups shipping drugs in from Mexico using it as a drop point. Since the establishment of the skiing industry this reputation has in turn both been diminished and reinforced, and the facilities surrounding the ski resorts have opened up the rest of the mountainside to hikers, mountain bikers and other thrill seekers and turned the small city of 3.000 into a burgeoning retreat town all year round. And in a nice callback to the Westerns being filmed in the Durango area in the 50s and 60s, we finish in the town used for filming many sequences in Quentin Tarantino’s throwback The Hateful Eight.

Reduced sprint likely? Yea, reduced sprint likely.

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In Colorado's rugged peaks he roams,
Sepp Kuss, a rider brave,
Through valleys deep and mountain homes,
Where echoes of the past still crave.

In Tour of Colorado's winding trails,
His spirit soars, his pedals fly,
With every climb, his passion hails,
A testament beneath the sky.

Amongst the pines, where shadows play,
He weaves through turns with grace untold,
Each switchback conquered, come what may,
In Kuss, a story to unfold.

With every ascent, a dance of will,
A symphony of strength and might,
In his veins, the mountain's thrill,
Guiding him through day and night.

The road ahead, a winding quest,
In Kuss, the heart of Colorado beats,
Each summit reached, a sacred crest,
A journey etched in mountain feats.

So let us cheer for Sepp Kuss bold,
In Tour of Colorado's grand embrace,
Where stories of the mountains are told,
And his legend finds its rightful place.
 
I think we have to balance things out with some light poetry.

There once was a kid from Durango,
who could climb better than José Azevedo
(David Blanco works better for the rhyme, but not in the context)
Through no fault of his own,
he ended atop of the throne,
cause three's one too many to tango
 
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I think we have to balance things out with some light poetry.

There once was a kid from Durango,
who could climb better than José Azevedo
(David Blanco works better for the rhyme, but not in the context)
Through no fault of his own,
he ended atop of the throne,
cause three's one too many to tango
Hmmm. Not sure I agree Quinn Simmons is a better climber than Ace.
 
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Stage 2: Montrose - Grand Junction, 160km

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GPM:
Colorado National Monument (Ute Canyon)(cat.2) 13,4km @ 4,0%

The riders will head north from Telluride, over Dallas Divide, to get to the departure point for stage 2, the city of Montrose. This is again as they did in 2012, but where that stage went immediately eastward to finish at Mount Crested Butte (with a two-up sprint between Tejay van Garderen and Christian Vande Velde, neither exactly renowned for their lightning finish, being won by the younger of the two), whereas we are still enjoying a bit of West Colorado since I am a bit of a sop to tradition.

Home to just over 20.000 people, Montrose is the second largest city in western Colorado, outsized only by our destination for the stage. It is named for the Scottish city, albeit indirectly, being named for the Walter Scott novel that namecheck it. Like many of these towns and cities it grew out of a stop on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, but nowadays it is more of a manufacturing hub that also serves as a gateway to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Like Durango, the scenery around here has seen it appear in many westerns, including True Grit and How The West Was Won, and it is also the site of the fictional prison in which Saul Goodman is incarcerated in Better Call Saul.

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Montrose

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Black Canyon

The first part of the stage is very flat; there are few sizeable settlements in this area as almost the whole population has crystallised around the railroad stops. As a result we have an early intermediate sprint in Delta after just 30 kilometres of racing; a trading post for colonists to deal with the local Ute population, it has a population of around 9.000 which makes it one of the larger settlements we travel through, and which serves for parts of the year as a pseudo-theme park with people demonstrating the lifestyles of trappers and speculators from the days of the establishment of the town. We actually arrive in Grand Junction, our finishing town, after just 95km - so we could have done a semitappe.

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With some 65.000 inhabitants and growing (up by almost 50% in the last 25 years), Grand Junction is by far the biggest city in this part of the state - three times the size of Montrose - and was essentially created out of colonialism, when the Ute Indian Territory was abolished and they were forced onto reservations in order to open the land up. Let no American ever tell you that they were a driving force against the days of Empire, the very size of their homeland is the product of colonisation, similar to Russia in that respect. Anyway; the area became popular for viticulture and a number of wineries are based out of the Grand Junction area. Fruit cultivation and, on a different tangent, uranium mining are also major breadwinners for the city, but it also benefited greatly from oil shale reserves in the 70s and early 80s, but this was brought to an abrupt halt in 1982 by Exxon’s withdrawal. A similar problem was felt to a lesser extent in the late 2000s economic downturn, leading the city to aggressively attempt to diversify its industries and make itself less dependent on fossil fuels economically.

But I didn’t pick Grand Junction as a stage host for its economics, or even for its status as an urban centre of such size that dwarfs its neighbouring towns and cities. I selected it for racing purposes, because Grand Junction used to host bike racing regularly, and it used to host one of the most iconic stages in the history of American cycling. Now long forgotten by pro racing but immortalised in celluloid as part of American Flyers and one of the most popular Gran Fondos in America, Grand Junction plays host to a ride and former stage known for its spectacular scenery, snaking through the Colorado National Monument, as the Tour of the Moon.

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Tour of the Moon climb road

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Colorado National Monument scenery

The old traditional Tour of the Moon stage was around 134-135km in length and would be what we would nowadays call a medium mountain stage; starting and ending in Grand Junction it would loop up and down the massif a couple of times but feature a reasonably long run-in after the climb that would mean that it would be less conducive to racing as a route in modern cycling than it did back in the 80s. Winners of the Tour of the Moon stage during the heyday of the Coors Classic include Olaf Jentzsch, Adrie van der Poel and Andrew Hampsten. They would start in Grand Junction, then enter two laps of a circuit that went up to the Colorado National Monument, back down it, and then followed through the vineyards at the foothills, before returning from whence it had come. The final year it ran, 1988, it was shortened slightly because of relocating the finish, but apart from that the stage remained a consistent, and constant, spectacle in America’s greatest bike race.

My stage isn’t quite a true Tour of the Moon, since it doesn’t start and finish in Grand Junction, but then given the lengthy run-in from the final summit - some 45km - and that it’s only stage 2, I really don’t see it being especially conducive to major racing from distance in today’s cycling, so given the TV coverage would pick up all the best of the scenery at least. My aim was to produce something akin to a traditional Vuelta a España stage to Córdoba using San Jerónimo or the Alto del 14%. The climb here is further from the finish but is longer and tougher. And it does in fact share something of the shape of the San Jerónimo climb, consisting of a main body of the climb followed by some flat with some slighter uphill ramps until eventually reaching the high point of the road.

The Ute Canyon Road side of the climb is the one that we are taking, as you can see from that profile, the first part is the main body of the climb, gradually steepening to a final 4km at 7% in the first 8km of the climb. This would in and of itself be worthy of cat.2 I feel, around 7,5km at 5,5%, but then there’s a kilometre of downhill false flat. Because PJAMM only puts the climb markers each kilometre, it makes the second part of the climb, the last 4,5km or so, look like it’s all false flat (it only averages a little under 3%) but in reality there are a few ramps and repechos between flat steps, culminating in a final 600m at 8%. I don’t feel this is enough to bump the categorisation up from 2nd to 1st category, at least not given what we have to come in this race, so I’ve stuck with cat.2.

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View from Ute Canyon Overlook, where the crest of the ascent is

We now have 7-8km of pseudo-flat to a secondary summit which is the other side of the climb, at the Highland View Overlook, sometimes called the ‘Black Ridge’ side of the Colorado National Monument. This takes us across the historic and scenic Rim Rock Drive, one of the most breathtaking roads in the entire US. This video shows the various overlooks and viewpoints that fill the route; they are heading from north to south, so the opposite direction to us - but it means you can see more of what we have to look at in the flat and descent.


The body of the descent is broken up similarly to the ascent, three sections with the middle one being just false flat; but the two other parts are only at around 4,5 - 5% themselves, lending this a long but gradual 17km at 3,4% toward Fruita. We don’t actually get as far as Fruita however, before we turn right and head along the base of the range, by the Monument Canyon Trailhead, to return to Grand Junction for the stage finish. With around 7km between our summit and the Black Ridge Road summit, and then around 17km of descending, we are left with a final flat stretch of 20km for any dropped riders to wrestle their way back on; I think the sustained nature of the climb means that a lot of sprinters will be dropped and given the type of péloton we will have for a race like this, probably a group of 20-30 being close enough to the front of the main bunch over the summit, which will probably double on the descent, and then it will come down to what kind of gaps have been produced and how far back various fast finishers are as to whether they push on or if the dropped riders can race back on. The finish will be at Lincoln Park in Grand Junction, in accordance with history.
 
Stage 3: Rifle - Aspen, 151km

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GPM:
Owl Creek Road (cat.3) 1,3km @ 7,0%
Owl Creek Road (cat.3) 1,3km @ 7,0%

The third stage of the Tour of Colorado sees us heading from the west of the state into its central mountains for the first time, although despite what that might suggest, this is in fact a purely transitional flat-to-hilly stage ahead of the first weekend of the race (since we’re working to the Volta a Portugal formula here).

We start in the city of Rifle, around 70km east of Grand Junction and home to around 10.000 people. It is a major cattle ranching centre, settled on former Ute Nation lands after this was confiscated in the wake of the Meeker Massacre, when Nathan Meeker, the director of the White River Ute Agency, was killed along with some of his employees by the natives in retribution for them settling and ploughing under important pasture land sacred to the tribe. For a while this was the terminus of the east-west railroad and grew into a new city, largely built around agriculture, although discoveries of oil shale in the Piceance Basin have seen the city become more heavily reliant on fuel reserves. It’s also home - appropriately enough given the city’s name is a type of firearm - to the controversial Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a prominent opposer of gun control who previously ran a restaurant themed around firearms where staff members packed heat as part of standard operating procedures and is one of the supporters of Donald Trump’s stolen election conspiracy as well as an alleged QAnon adherent and having had historic ties to the Three Percenters. But for the most part, it’s a quiet, unassuming small city that, as far as I can tell, has never hosted pro bike racing.

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Here, it was chosen more for convenient location than anything else. I guess I could have had an extra lap in Aspen and moved the start to the similarly-sized Glenwood Springs, a former frontier town previously called Defiance and known for gunslingers, gamblers and all the good stuff that makes a good Western movie, but that would have been a longer transfer. Instead, that town - now repurposed as a spa town - will host the first intermediate sprint, before we turn off of the main east-west route through the Western Slope part of Colorado along the eponymous river, and instead head up the valley of the Roaring Fork river, which entails a long and sloooooow uphill false flat - yes, it’s a flat stage where we are finishing at some 800m above where we started.

This isn’t a unique design by any stretch of the imagination of course, this kind of thing is fairly common in other races that take place at high altitudes or where you have to climb up onto a plateau - Vuelta stages climbing from sea level on to the meseta in the southeast follow this formula (as opposed to in Andalucía or in España Verde where mountain ranges would mean sustained climbs early on in the stage, such as the 2008 stage out of Ponferrada or the 2011 Vitória-Gasteiz one), and you see it in places like Qinghai Lake too.

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Roaring Fork Valley

Probably the most interesting place we go through on the drag up here is Basalt, home to the Swirbul family, cyclist Keegan (a once-promising climber now riding for Efapel after being dropped by Human Powered Health) and his cross-country skiing sister Hailey (who has now retired but represented the US, especially in relays, at a number of World Championship and Olympic events where her at least relative proficiency in Classic technique, which the American team has long had a technical deficit in, had made her a very useful opening leg). After we get to Woody Creek we enter a lap and around 2/3 of a 33km circuit. This takes us onto the “hilly” part of the circuit, as we take in one of the popular ski resorts around Aspen, the Snowmass resort. To get from the main road to the bottom end of Snowmass village is 6km at 2,5%; here the Brush Creek river forks in two; following the east fork would cut off this next part of the circuit; we follow the west fork which takes us up 2,4km at 4% into Snowmass Village proper, the main body of the resort, although we don’t take any of the ‘real’ climbing to the various accommodation and chalets etc.; instead we hang left and head back down toward the creek of the east fork of the river, and then take on the short punchy uphill of Owl Creek Road. This is 1300m at 7% and doesn’t get especially steep, so I doubt it will be particularly decisive, coming at 43km to go. Maybe the second time over the climb at 10km to go will see some speculative attempts, but it’s a wide open road, and the run-in is largely very straight so I expect this will suit the chasers more.

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Snowmass Village in summer. We folllow the road in the foreground, from right to left.

The “descent” from Snowmass takes us to the west side of the runway of Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, the busiest ski resort airport in the United States with regular service from Denver supplemented by flights from as far afield as Chicago and Los Angeles in winter. Not bad considering the challenging terrain and limited room meaning there is non-standard separation of runway and taxiway and therefore larger aircraft are forbidden from using the airport. We then pass Buttermilk Resort, another of Aspen’s outlying resorts, before heading into the city of Aspen itself.

Originally founded as a mining camp during the Colorado Silver Boom, the city was a hard-to-reach outpost after that initial boom subsided, until the mid-20the Century when the skiing industry took off, with the 1950 FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships being awarded to Aspen and accelerating the progress of development of the infrastructure in the city. Although its population even today is only 7.000, it is well established in the minds of Americans and beyond for its winter wonderland nature, its sports heritage and so on. It also enjoyed a period of cultural importance after the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and John Denver settled there; the latter of whom has a museum dedicated to his memory in the town; although originally from New Mexico, Denver made Colorado his home (the surname coinciding with the state capital being coincidental) and his song Rocky Mountain High was adopted as the official state song. Unfortunately, once popular with counter-culture types, artists and hippies, it has now become heavily gentrified, with skyrocketing property values meaning most of the city is full of largely empty holiday homes and second- or third-homes for wealthy investors and the jet set. For a couple of weeks each year that counterculture vibe returns, though, for each year since 2002 the city has hosted the Winter X Games, where all the crappy concourse sports that don’t belong in the Winter Olympics but keep getting foisted on us, where sounding rad and wearing baggy sallies are more important than being faster, better, stronger, can take centre stage.

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While the small size makes for typically few celebrities being from Aspen, many have made it their home, as you can probably imagine from the description in the last paragraph. Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn have lived here for most of the last 40 years, for example. Those that have spent their whole lives in Aspen, however, tend to be sportspeople. A lot of these are winter sports stars, for reasons which should be obvious - such as Alex Ferreira, a snowboarder, and Jeremy Abbott, a figure skater, who have won silver and bronze Olympic medals respectively. Strangely though, the only Olympic gold medallist to be an Aspen native (Chris Klug is from Denver originally) is a summer Olympian… and somebody that is more relevant to us here: Alexi Grewal.

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One of the great icons of that initial American cycling heyday, where the Coors Classic was at its zenith, Grewal came to prominence in the early 1980s as an amateur, winning the Mount Evans Hillclimb and Cascade Cycling Classic as well as two stages of the 1983 Coors Classic and one of the Tour de l’Avenir that year; and twice finishing on the podium of the Vuelta de Chile. He stayed amateur for 1984 to have a chance at the Olympics, seeing as it was a pretty strong opportunity with the Eastern Bloc riders all staying home and a partisan crowd in LA to cheer the stars and stripes. Grewal escaped with a little over 20km remaining, but Steve Bauer caught him at around 10km to go, leading the two to battle all the way through the rest of the race to leave the other behind, both failing and having to take on a two-up sprint which the American won to become the first road cycling gold for his country. He turned pro for 1985 and would bounce between teams before finding a home at Coors, but by and large his successes were confined to races at home; he finished 3rd overall in the Tour de l’Avenir in 1986, but this was the time when the likes of Laurent Fignon were winning it when already a two-time Tour de France winner; Grewal was 26 at the time so hardly a rider for ‘l’Avenir’ so to speak; he only attempted one GT in his nine pro seasons, the 1986 Tour de France, which he was forced to abandon in week 3. Nevertheless, his continued dominion over the American calendar and his status for winning that Olympic medal made him a key figure in this era of the sport and a rightful early inductee to the American cycling Hall of Fame.

An Aspen stage was an almost ever-present in the heyday of the Coors Classic; often just a criterium or a circuit race in the city (the race did have a bit of an HTV Cup-esque love for the crit, although let’s be fair, it is a key featured part of American road cycling and their inclusion did at least give the race a certain uniquely American character that many of the subsequent attempts to introduce long-form stage racing back to America have failed to truly encapsulate), it would also sometimes be a loop of a longer circuit similar to, if not identical to, mine here. In 1982 there were even two stages, a circuit race of 48km around Snowmass Resort won by Julio Alberto Rubiano as the Colombian team dominated and did a 1-2-3, followed by a 13km ITT from Snowmass back into the city which was won by Mexican Ignacio Mosquera. Niki Rüttimann, a TdF stage winner and early winner of the Clásica San Sebastián, evergreen beast of the US scene Thurlow Rogers, first Mexican maillot jaune Raúl Alcalá, and twice Davis “Taylor’s dad” Phinney can be added to the list of winners here in Aspen back in the Coors Classic.

No surprise, then, that subsequent attempts to revive the spirit of, if not outright the existence of, the Coors Classic have seen Aspen prominently featured. In 2011’s inaugural edition, stage 2 ran from Gunnison to Aspen over the easy side of two major climbs, with George Hincapie winning a 6-man sprint for the stage against Tejay van Garderen (whose wife, former pro Jessica Phillips, is also from Aspen) and Tom Danielson; this stage was repeated the following year on stage 3, Danielson holding off the chasing pack by just 2 seconds. 2013 saw the first introduction of a circuit race where something very closely approximating my circuit - but run in the opposite direction - was introduced.

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Tragically that stage was won by Peter Sagan, but thankfully he was not there to give it another go the following year when Kiel Reijnen won on the same course. These stages were also only around the 100km mark, so very short - neither short enough to fit the old crit/circuit category of days of yore, nor long enough to be a real tester, more like a semitappe just waiting for a second part. In both years the subsequent stage would also start in Aspen; in 2015 a more full stage was brought back, with the climb of the easy side of Independence Pass brought back; it didn’t change anything as Reijnen won a sprint again. There was also a women’s stage race in Aspen in 2011 - although bearing in mind it consisted of a flat ITT and two crits, it seems it was part of the drive to get Kristin Armstrong qualified for the Olympics again after her first return from retirement.

This one should be good for the sprinters, at least the durable ones but I think this will end in a sprint.
 
Stage 4: Aspen - Beaver Creek, 175km

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GPM:
Independence Pass (cat.1) 25,4km @ 4,8%
Battle Mountain (cat.3) 2,3km @ 5,8%
Bachelor Gulch (cat.2) 8,6km @ 6,8%
Beaver Creek (cat.3) 3,7km @ 5,2%

Stage 4 and we have a sort of mountain stage? Not sure whether to class as high mountain or medium mountains, because the only cat.1 climb is at the start of the stage, but with this high altitude and the climbing going on, this will have some potential GC relevance above a transitional type stage. And to make things a bit easier on the riders, no transfer at all after yesterday’s stage - we’re starting from Aspen exactly where we finished yesterday. Aren’t I nice? For once.

Not that the riders will have long to thank me, because this stage starts heading uphill almost immediately, as we head over one of the race’s predecessors’ traditional ceilings straight from the gun, starting the 25km grind up to Independence Pass only 3-4 kilometres into the stage’s distance. This is the toughest climb of the day, so it isn’t like we’re going on some high mountain odyssey, but it will certainly guarantee that whatever breakaway we get will be strong.

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This sweeping ascent is a classic of the Coors Classic and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, although it is more frequently taken from its easier eastern face; that side is 25km in length but only 3,5%, however, whereas the western side is a more solid 25km at 4,8%. This is broken up into 12km or so at 5,5%, then around 5km of false flat before gradually increasing in gradient until a final 4km at 6%. Nothing especially steep, and mostly tempo grinding. This puts it into the same kind of ballpark as steady but never-ending climbs like Port d’Envalira or Petit-Saint-Bernard - both climbs whose overall stats put them at borderline HC category, but that both are typically given cat.1 when the Tour chooses to use them due to the tempo-climb nature of them. One thing that Independence Pass has over those, however, is its altitude. Those are only at around 2000m altitude, whereas Independence Pass is almost double that, topping out at 3687m, which makes it the second highest pass in the Continental Divide, after its southern neighbour Cottonwood Pass, and the fourth highest paved road in Colorado. For this reason, in the 2013 and 2015 editions of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, it was the ceiling of the race; 2012 saw the stage in which it was featured - from the east - also including Cottonwood Pass. 2012 and 2015 saw the climb seen from both sides, with the stage into Aspen approaching over the eastern side, and the subsequent stage starting from Aspen as I do and heading west over the climb once more. In 2013 this route out of Aspen was also used but the stage before did not use Independence Pass; likewise in 2014 the race started in Aspen but stage 2 set off in the opposite direction en route to Mount Crested Butte.

Descending from Independence Pass takes us into Twin Lakes, a popular scenic camping spot, and then it’s a flat altiplano road to take us to Leadville, the county seat of Lakes County and, despite a small population of just under 3.000, a well established name in the sport of cycling - and indeed others. As with many of these towns and cities in the Colorado uplands it’s a former silver mining town that was once one of the most lawless places in all of the Wild West and where all of those gunslinger stereotypes we see in Western movies came to genuine fruition - the gambling, moonshine-running, sheriff-assassinating world of legend, and associates and colleagues of both Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill Cody set up shop in Leadville - but has now earned some repute as the “last affordable town” for workers of the various resorts in this part of the world to live in. It is now better known as a base for ultra-endurance sportsmen and women, with the Leadville 100 trail running and endurance mountain bike events attracting people the world over in summer, and the skijoring festival attracting a crowd in the winter. It is now the base from which former - temporary - Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has based his cannabis company, which briefly also sponsored a domestic pro team in 2019.

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Leadville hosts an intermediate sprint at the end of a bunch of uphill false flat; there is then a short descent and then some gradual - non-categorised - uphill to Tennessee Pass. All told its 5,5km but only averages about 2,6% so not really worth categorising, and then there is a long and similarly but slightly more severe downhill, broken up by a short 2-3km dig up to Battle Mountain for a cat. 3 climb, before descending on towards Vail, or more accurately Eagle-Vail, an outlying part of that ski resort town, which has been a long-time host of the races in this part of the world, with often Vail to Vail circuit races prevailing or mountain stages from the eastern plateau going through passes like Loveland Pass, Hoosier Pass and indeed Vail Pass, winners here including the likes of Noël Dejonckheere, Patrocinio Jiménez, Davis Phinney, Teun van Vliet, Andy Hampsten, and some all-time legends too in Lucho Herrera and even Bernard Hinault. Vail to Vail Pass ITTs were a regular feature of the revived USA Pro Cycling Challenge in the 2010s, Levi Leipheimer winning in the inaugural edition, then Tejay van Gardener winning back to back in 2013 and 2014. Gavin Mannion won the same stage in the 2018 Colorado Cycling Classic.

We are heading west from Eagle-Vail however, to Avon, where we take on a couple more challenges. Without this little detour, we are more or less copying wholesale the 2012 stage which followed from Aspen to Beaver Creek on stage 4 and was won by Jens Voigt solo by almost three minutes, with race leader Tejay van Garderen ignoring the veteran baroudeur and focusing more on GC threats like Andreas Klöden and Levi Leipheimer and ensuring they didn’t gain time.

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2012 Aspen - Beaver Creek stage

However, the following year Beaver Creek appeared again, with riders arriving from the north this time after a rare departure for the race into north Central Colorado and the city of Steamboat Springs. This featured an interesting loop around Beaver Creek using the roads above the ski resort and added something more of a challenge that would allow for some GC action more realistically achievable than on the 2012 version, by looping up and around to an ascent called Bachelor Gulch.

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2013 Steamboat Springs - Beaver Creek stage

I believe that Bachelor Gulch was cat.1 that day, I have given it cat.2 but it’s on the borderline. But having given cat.1 to Independence Pass I couldn’t realistically reasonably claim them equals. Bachelor Gulch is steeper - averaging 6,8% - but is only a third the length. The last 4km average almost 9% however so these will give a good chance to attack. Tomorrow’s stage may deter it (sadly pacing was hard to achieve here while including all sites I wanted to) but with the summit being just 15km from home - much of which is the descent - this would clearly give an opportunity to work from. That day Lachlan Morton was in the leader’s jersey but the climb saw a group of five break away. While the less-heralded Gregory Brenes was despatched and only just held off the heads of state, BMC had two - Tejay van Garderen and Matthias Fränk - along with Tom Danielson and, on a domestic team and already buoyed by results in California, Janier Acevedo. Acevedo would prove strongest, winning the stage but with van Garderen taking the lead of the race which he would keep to the end.

Bachelor Gulch is an outlying resort village of the overall Beaver Creek resort, and so descending its other side takes us back to Avon where we have our final intermediate sprint, before looping back up the first - gradual - part of the climb again, before continuing on onto the main centre of Beaver Creek resort afterward. Inhabiting a valley first settled in the 1880s, the resort was first proposed in the 1950s and then funded in the 1970s with the intent of Denver hosting the Winter Olympics in 1976. While this bid fell through and Innsbruck stepped in once more, the Vail resort’s owners sold up to an oil tycoon who went ahead with the development anyway; it was sold on in 1985 and rapidly developed afterward, becoming a fixture on the FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup and hosting the World Championships in Alpine skiing in 1989, 1999 and 2015. It was introduced to the World Cup in 1997 and regularly hosts prominent downhill events, sometimes the first in that discipline in the season, in events known as the “Birds of Prey” after the course on which it is run.

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Beaver Creek in summer

Of course, unlike many of the European resorts that are located at the top of large mountain passes or dead ends such as Alpe d’Huez, Montecampione, Tignes, Hochsölden and so many others, there isn’t really the need to ascend up to the top of the mountain here in Colorado; Avon in the base of the valley is already at almost 2300m. Beaver Creek therefore is only a short climb from there, averaging 5,2% for 3,7 kilometres and ending at a little under 2500m. This climb in and of itself isn’t hard enough to create particularly large gaps, so my hope is that there will be attacks earlier. I suspect that the following day’s course may deter this, but the last few kilometres of Bachelor Gulch being inside 20km from the line and much of that being descent gives me hope.
 
This sweeping ascent is a classic of the Coors Classic and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, although it is more frequently taken from its easier eastern face; that side is 25km in length but only 3,5%, however, whereas the western side is a more solid 25km at 4,8%. This is broken up into 12km or so at 5,5%, then around 5km of false flat before gradually increasing in gradient until a final 4km at 6%. Nothing especially steep, and mostly tempo grinding. This puts it into the same kind of ballpark as steady but never-ending climbs like Port d’Envalira or Petit-Saint-Bernard - both climbs whose overall stats put them at borderline HC category, but that both are typically given cat.1 when the Tour chooses to use them due to the tempo-climb nature of them. One thing that Independence Pass has over those, however, is its altitude. Those are only at around 2000m altitude, whereas Independence Pass is almost double that, topping out at 3687m, which makes it the second highest pass in the Continental Divide, after its southern neighbour Cottonwood Pass, and the fourth highest paved road in Colorado. For this reason, in the 2013 and 2015 editions of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, it was the ceiling of the race; 2012 saw the stage in which it was featured - from the east - also including Cottonwood Pass. 2012 and 2015 saw the climb seen from both sides, with the stage into Aspen approaching over the eastern side, and the subsequent stage starting from Aspen as I do and heading west over the climb once more. In 2013 this route out of Aspen was also used but the stage before did not use Independence Pass; likewise in 2014 the race started in Aspen but stage 2 set off in the opposite direction en route to Mount Crested Butte.
Is it also the ceiling of your race? In that case, have you considered inaugurating a prize for the first rider over it - perhaps naming such a prize after the most mythical Coloradan climber?
 
Stage 5: Breckenridge - Pikes Peak, 178km

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GPM:
Hoosier Pass (cat.2) 10,0km @ 4,5%
Wilkerson Pass (cat.3) 1,8km @ 5,5%
Crystal Creek Reservoir (cat.2) 9,3km @ 6,5%
Pikes Peak (HC) 17,0km @ 8,1%

OK, time for an absolute peak performance, as we start challenging the UCI’s acceptability limits, with a monster mountain stage that despite being more or less Unipuerto is one of the most brutal stages ever seen at this level, thanks to the combination of extreme altitude and just the sheer monster difficulty of the mountaintop finish.

We start at over 3000m of altitude already, in the ski town of Breckenridge. This town was settled by prospectors and named after one of their party back in 1859, and has a permanent population of around 5.000, although the town absolutely swells to many times this size every winter with the colossal population influx of tourists to the local ski resorts. It was founded to serve miners and speculators travelling across the Continental Divide after the discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak and Idaho Springs. While mining dried up in the early 20th Century, it was replaced in 1961 by the skiing community, as runs were pressed and cut into the hillside and the town swelled once more. It is now the adopted home to a number of America’s winter sports stars, again mostly in the showier and more modern disciplines like freestyle and moguls, but also including skeleton luge racer Katie Uhlaender. But also, somewhat unexpectedly, goth/industrial royalty in the form of Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen, whose family settled in Breckenridge after moving from Cuba in his childhood.

Breckenridge also has a cycling history, thanks largely to the ultra-endurance MTB race, the Breckenridge 100, that takes place every July and includes three large summits across the Continental Divide. Its close proximity to popular stage host Vail meant that it did not appear with any frequency in the Coors Classic, but since the reintroduction of pro racing to Colorado in the early 2010s it has been a common stage host. Stage 5 of the first edition of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in 2011 finished in the town after a long and gradual uphill false flat from Steamboat Springs with the only major climb of the day right at the start; Elia Viviani won a bunch gallop ahead of Jaime Castañeda, a Colombian sprinter who the finish better suited but just doesn’t have the top end speed of Viviani. The following year it was a stage start only, but another finish came in 2013, in a stage which went from Aspen over Independence Pass and then Hoosier Pass south before finishing with a descent into Breckenridge, being won by Mathias Fränk ahead of Lachlan Morton, with the two opening up a small gap ahead of Peter Sagan and Tejay van Garderen with the remains of an escape group and then the bunch coming in at +44”. 2014 saw an easier stage from Woodland Park, though with the same run-in over Hoosier Pass and then a small hilly circuit around Breckenridge itself, which Laurent Didier won from the break ahead of Janier Acevedo and Rob Britton. 2015 saw a clone of the 2013 stage with Rohan Dennis winning solo, before the Australian doubled up winning a 13,5km ITT around Breckenridge the following day. After the demise of the USAPCC, the Colorado Cycling Classic in 2017 featured a stage which was a circuit race finishing that loop around the town from the 2013-15 USAPCC stages, seeing Alex Howes win the stage ahead of Taylor Eisenhart, in a finish which enabled the latter to take the race lead.

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My stage actually starts directly with a climb, the Hoosier Pass ascent which was the main attraction of that 2014 stage. It’s actually not a bad cat.2 climb - the total ascent is 15,4km at 3,6% though the start of this is through the town itself, so we actually depart a couple of kilometres into it and have a neutral zone in the false flat area shown at under 2% on this profile. The last 5km average 6% and the 10,5km that we have average 4,5%, so this is mostly tempo grinding but at least it’s long enough to be noteworthy. It just looks tiny on the profile because of what comes later.

Descending Hoosier Pass takes us into a large altiplano area, a long grassland flat which will be the backdrop for most of our stage and all of the rest of the first half of it at least. This sparsely populated area - the largest urban centre is the town of Fairplay, population of 724 - is nevertheless one of the most famous - sort of - places in all of Colorado. That is because of a fictional small town which has been placed in this basin to recall the childhood of a couple of friends from the foothills west of Denver, which has gone on to worldwide renown and acclaim - this is the South Park Basin, and the eponymous small town was created as a title to one of the most ubiquitous animated series of the last 30 years. Initially a (deliberately) crudely-animated vehicle for sophomoric toilet humour and foul-mouthed arguing that earned the series a counter-cultural popularity, over time the series has developed into an on-the-nose and irreverent satirical show that no culture, self-identity, creed or belief system is above being lampooned by.

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This long plateau is broken up only by a cat.3 climb to Wilkerson Pass. And even then probably giving points is generous. A false flat uphill and then downhill follow all the way through Woodland Park - which hosted that stage start in 2014 - to the town of Cascade. Established as a tourist destination in the 1880s, being the best point from which to access Pikes Peak, it was used as a spa town and popular for the beauty of the train ride into the town as much as the fresh air and facilities on arrival, with Cascade Cañon and Falls being particularly popular. Often passengers on said train would be collected at the station and then taken on wagons up to Pikes Peak’s hill station and onward to the summit. However this was rendered obsolete by the establishment of a cog railway from Manitou Springs, and many of the large hotels in Cascade closed in the 1920s. However, one thing that has really helped Cascade stay relevant is the road up to Pikes Peak and its popularity due to the historic significance of the summit. And due to, of course, the most famous thing about the mountain to modern generations: the International Hillclimb.

1465929244-gettyimages-170244368.jpg


The highest peak in the Front Range, Pikes Peak takes its name from the explorer Zebulon Pike who was one of the first American settlers to explore it (although he did not reach the summit and the first successful conquering of the peak was 14 years later in 1820). Before Pike’s expedition it was known by the Spanish as ‘El Capitán’ for its position of prominence in the initial range of the Rockies; Pike himself called it “Highest Peak” for rather self-explanatory reasons, but it became known as “Pike’s” in colloquial speech and the name has stuck. The summit also gives its name to the Colorado Gold Rush of the late 1850s and early 1860s, so named because potential speculators travelling west knew they had arrived when the mountains appeared in view, and Pikes Peak would be the first sighting of the Rockies that they would have. The peak has long since been tamed, with cog railways to the summit and, in 1939, a ski resort being built on its slopes, though this would fall into disrepair and close in 1984. Most importantly, though, there was a road.

Pikes-Peak-Highway-road.jpg


The Pikes Peak International Hillclimb (or PPIHC for short) is the second longest-running motor race in the US, after the Indianapolis 500 (the Mount Washington Hillclimb predates both, but has not run continuously). It has the same sort of unique position on the motor racing calendar as the Isle of Man TT does in motorcycle racing; it is self-sanctioned and not part of any series, but attracts a wildly diverse field running from rank amateurs through to elite rally and sportscar drivers. It was the brainchild of the entrepreneur Spencer Penrose, who had funded the expanding of the narrow carriage road used to bring tourists from Cascade to the upper reaches of the mountain into what is now the Pikes Peak Highway, and first ran in 1916. Many classes were added over time, with stock cars, motorcycles and also some wild competition in the open class, where entrants were free to make all manner of unregulated modifications to their vehicles specifically targeting the race, in much the same way as no matter what the sportscar calendar consists of, vehicles are designed with Le Mans in mind. The combination of the need for extreme cornering stability along with the oxygen demands on the vehicles at the ever-increasing altitude meant specialised vehicles were created for the PPIHC in a way unique on the American calendar.

Until 1984, the event was largely a provincial affair, but as the decade wore on, Europeans progressively showed more interest in the event, with Michèle Mouton winning the event outright and then an award-winning short film being made about Ari Vatanen’s pursuit of the course record in 1988. Since 2002, the previously all-gravel route had started to be paved following a lawsuit by the Sierra Club against the city of Colorado Springs, under whose jurisdiction the road fell. This was due to the significant damage through erosion that was created by the event as the loose-packed dirt and gravel was spewed down the mountainside by the hundreds upon hundreds of entrants in the hillclimb. The asphalt was laid down on the final section in 2011, which was seen by many as the death of the true spirit of the Peak; the ten minute barrier was broken by Nobuhiro Tajima that same year, and the nine minute barrier soon followed in 2013 at the hands of Sébastien Loeb, who was even closer to the eight minute mark than the nine. In recent years electric vehicles have dominated, due to not suffering in the altitude, and Volkswagen broke the eight minute barrier in the hands of Romain Dumas in 2018. Despite the tarmac being safer to handle on than the loose gravel, the increased speed that has resulted has increased the risk considerably too, and motorcycle racing has been discontinued as of 2021, the same year the new summit complex was opened.

Of course, however, while it was never accessible to the Coors Classic and the Mount Evans hillclimb is the most famous similar type event for cyclists in the region, the enforced paving of the Pikes Peak Highway road has meant that since 2011, it is now available for cycling as well. And this creates a monster. An absolute monster.

PikesPeak.gif


Yes - 31km at 6,6%. This is what they call brutal, and it stands up strong against any European climb that I can come up with. In fact, I’ve even gone the Télégraphe+Galibier route and categorised that first first 9km independently, then starting the final climb at the end of the false flat, close to the start of the PPIHC motor race, and even then it’s still quite demonstrably an hors catégorie ascent - being 17km at 8%, and that with a short amount of flat in it. There’s 11km at 9% in the middle (the first part of the section I’ve classified as Pikes Peak) from the first steep ramps after the hillclimb start up to the Devil’s Playground, so that in and of itself would probably merit HC status.

Just for the part that I have categorised, this puts it in the same kind of ballpark as Col de la Madeleine south, Chamrousse via Col Luitel, Blockhaus from Scafa (the steeper route) and the Col de Portet. Except this is at 2000m higher altitude, cresting at over 4200m and providing a challenge even to those well versed in the Latin American péloton and climbing those Colombian and Venezuelan monstrosities like La Línea and Letras. There are very few comparables for the whole climb that are known to racing unless we think of doublets like Télégraphe-Galibier or Sierra Nevada via Monachil. They are like Fuji-San via the Fujinomiya Trail, Doi Inthanon (38km at 6%), Ovit Pass in northern Turkey, Roque de los Muchachos and other such monsters known only to traceurs and cyclotourists. Perhaps Cerro de la Muerte in the Vuelta a Costa Rica is the most likely comparable but even then, it is far more consistent than Pikes Peak.

This one is really going to create some huge gaps. With a climb like this, a Unipuerto stage is sufficient, just like a Mont Ventoux or a Genting Highlands, especially in the field that will be racing this. The climb is so hard it’s going to guarantee time gaps regardless of the lack of previous climbing. And if they ever raced this in real life, we’d be looking at some major gaps. Major gaps.

Pikes-Peak-Visitor-Center-Exterior_Credit-DHM-Design.jpg
 
Just for the part that I have categorised, this puts it in the same kind of ballpark as Col de la Madeleine south, Chamrousse via Col Luitel, Blockhaus from Scafa (the steeper route) and the Col de Portet. Except this is at 2000m higher altitude, cresting at over 4200m and providing a challenge even to those well versed in the Latin American péloton and climbing those Colombian and Venezuelan monstrosities like La Línea and Letras. There are very few comparables for the whole climb that are known to racing unless we think of doublets like Télégraphe-Galibier or Sierra Nevada via Monachil. They are like Fuji-San via the Fujinomiya Trail, Doi Inthanon (38km at 6%), Ovit Pass in northern Turkey, Roque de los Muchachos and other such monsters known only to traceurs and cyclotourists. Perhaps Cerro de la Muerte in the Vuelta a Costa Rica is the most likely comparable but even then, it is far more consistent than Pikes Peak.
Lutsenko conquered a comparable beast last year, albeit at far lower altitude: https://mycols.app/col/babadag-oludeniz
 
Lutsenko conquered a comparable beast last year, albeit at far lower altitude: https://mycols.app/col/babadag-oludeniz
Babadağ is, just for the climbing in a vacuum, significantly harder according to PRC, with a Coeficiente APM of 688 to Pikes Peak's 536 making it the hardest climb seen in racing by their system, being as tough as the likes of Mortirolo, Rettenbachferner or the old Mount Fuji hillclimb, but 50% longer in duration. As I've discussed before though, the coefficient does exaggerate for steepness and has no means by which to take altitude or surface into account. IIRC there was brick paving in the last km or 2 of that climb, but Pikes Peak has the 4000m altitude to factor in. Großglockner north was probably a good comparative I neglected to mention.
 
Stage 5: Breckenridge - Pikes Peak, 178km

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GPM:
Hoosier Pass (cat.2) 10,0km @ 4,5%
Wilkerson Pass (cat.3) 1,8km @ 5,5%
Crystal Creek Reservoir (cat.2) 9,3km @ 6,5%
Pikes Peak (HC) 17,0km @ 8,1%

OK, time for an absolute peak performance, as we start challenging the UCI’s acceptability limits, with a monster mountain stage that despite being more or less Unipuerto is one of the most brutal stages ever seen at this level, thanks to the combination of extreme altitude and just the sheer monster difficulty of the mountaintop finish.

We start at over 3000m of altitude already, in the ski town of Breckenridge. This town was settled by prospectors and named after one of their party back in 1859, and has a permanent population of around 5.000, although the town absolutely swells to many times this size every winter with the colossal population influx of tourists to the local ski resorts. It was founded to serve miners and speculators travelling across the Continental Divide after the discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak and Idaho Springs. While mining dried up in the early 20th Century, it was replaced in 1961 by the skiing community, as runs were pressed and cut into the hillside and the town swelled once more. It is now the adopted home to a number of America’s winter sports stars, again mostly in the showier and more modern disciplines like freestyle and moguls, but also including skeleton luge racer Katie Uhlaender. But also, somewhat unexpectedly, goth/industrial royalty in the form of Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen, whose family settled in Breckenridge after moving from Cuba in his childhood.

Breckenridge also has a cycling history, thanks largely to the ultra-endurance MTB race, the Breckenridge 100, that takes place every July and includes three large summits across the Continental Divide. Its close proximity to popular stage host Vail meant that it did not appear with any frequency in the Coors Classic, but since the reintroduction of pro racing to Colorado in the early 2010s it has been a common stage host. Stage 5 of the first edition of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in 2011 finished in the town after a long and gradual uphill false flat from Steamboat Springs with the only major climb of the day right at the start; Elia Viviani won a bunch gallop ahead of Jaime Castañeda, a Colombian sprinter who the finish better suited but just doesn’t have the top end speed of Viviani. The following year it was a stage start only, but another finish came in 2013, in a stage which went from Aspen over Independence Pass and then Hoosier Pass south before finishing with a descent into Breckenridge, being won by Mathias Fränk ahead of Lachlan Morton, with the two opening up a small gap ahead of Peter Sagan and Tejay van Garderen with the remains of an escape group and then the bunch coming in at +44”. 2014 saw an easier stage from Woodland Park, though with the same run-in over Hoosier Pass and then a small hilly circuit around Breckenridge itself, which Laurent Didier won from the break ahead of Janier Acevedo and Rob Britton. 2015 saw a clone of the 2013 stage with Rohan Dennis winning solo, before the Australian doubled up winning a 13,5km ITT around Breckenridge the following day. After the demise of the USAPCC, the Colorado Cycling Classic in 2017 featured a stage which was a circuit race finishing that loop around the town from the 2013-15 USAPCC stages, seeing Alex Howes win the stage ahead of Taylor Eisenhart, in a finish which enabled the latter to take the race lead.

Beaver-Run-summer-exterior_new-exterior-paint-color_June-2023.jpg


My stage actually starts directly with a climb, the Hoosier Pass ascent which was the main attraction of that 2014 stage. It’s actually not a bad cat.2 climb - the total ascent is 15,4km at 3,6% though the start of this is through the town itself, so we actually depart a couple of kilometres into it and have a neutral zone in the false flat area shown at under 2% on this profile. The last 5km average 6% and the 10,5km that we have average 4,5%, so this is mostly tempo grinding but at least it’s long enough to be noteworthy. It just looks tiny on the profile because of what comes later.

Descending Hoosier Pass takes us into a large altiplano area, a long grassland flat which will be the backdrop for most of our stage and all of the rest of the first half of it at least. This sparsely populated area - the largest urban centre is the town of Fairplay, population of 724 - is nevertheless one of the most famous - sort of - places in all of Colorado. That is because of a fictional small town which has been placed in this basin to recall the childhood of a couple of friends from the foothills west of Denver, which has gone on to worldwide renown and acclaim - this is the South Park Basin, and the eponymous small town was created as a title to one of the most ubiquitous animated series of the last 30 years. Initially a (deliberately) crudely-animated vehicle for sophomoric toilet humour and foul-mouthed arguing that earned the series a counter-cultural popularity, over time the series has developed into an on-the-nose and irreverent satirical show that no culture, self-identity, creed or belief system is above being lampooned by.

JiiZwyvJvXGujKEsu4xcna-1200-80.jpg


This long plateau is broken up only by a cat.3 climb to Wilkerson Pass. And even then probably giving points is generous. A false flat uphill and then downhill follow all the way through Woodland Park - which hosted that stage start in 2014 - to the town of Cascade. Established as a tourist destination in the 1880s, being the best point from which to access Pikes Peak, it was used as a spa town and popular for the beauty of the train ride into the town as much as the fresh air and facilities on arrival, with Cascade Cañon and Falls being particularly popular. Often passengers on said train would be collected at the station and then taken on wagons up to Pikes Peak’s hill station and onward to the summit. However this was rendered obsolete by the establishment of a cog railway from Manitou Springs, and many of the large hotels in Cascade closed in the 1920s. However, one thing that has really helped Cascade stay relevant is the road up to Pikes Peak and its popularity due to the historic significance of the summit. And due to, of course, the most famous thing about the mountain to modern generations: the International Hillclimb.

1465929244-gettyimages-170244368.jpg


The highest peak in the Front Range, Pikes Peak takes its name from the explorer Zebulon Pike who was one of the first American settlers to explore it (although he did not reach the summit and the first successful conquering of the peak was 14 years later in 1820). Before Pike’s expedition it was known by the Spanish as ‘El Capitán’ for its position of prominence in the initial range of the Rockies; Pike himself called it “Highest Peak” for rather self-explanatory reasons, but it became known as “Pike’s” in colloquial speech and the name has stuck. The summit also gives its name to the Colorado Gold Rush of the late 1850s and early 1860s, so named because potential speculators travelling west knew they had arrived when the mountains appeared in view, and Pikes Peak would be the first sighting of the Rockies that they would have. The peak has long since been tamed, with cog railways to the summit and, in 1939, a ski resort being built on its slopes, though this would fall into disrepair and close in 1984. Most importantly, though, there was a road.

Pikes-Peak-Highway-road.jpg


The Pikes Peak International Hillclimb (or PPIHC for short) is the second longest-running motor race in the US, after the Indianapolis 500 (the Mount Washington Hillclimb predates both, but has not run continuously). It has the same sort of unique position on the motor racing calendar as the Isle of Man TT does in motorcycle racing; it is self-sanctioned and not part of any series, but attracts a wildly diverse field running from rank amateurs through to elite rally and sportscar drivers. It was the brainchild of the entrepreneur Spencer Penrose, who had funded the expanding of the narrow carriage road used to bring tourists from Cascade to the upper reaches of the mountain into what is now the Pikes Peak Highway, and first ran in 1916. Many classes were added over time, with stock cars, motorcycles and also some wild competition in the open class, where entrants were free to make all manner of unregulated modifications to their vehicles specifically targeting the race, in much the same way as no matter what the sportscar calendar consists of, vehicles are designed with Le Mans in mind. The combination of the need for extreme cornering stability along with the oxygen demands on the vehicles at the ever-increasing altitude meant specialised vehicles were created for the PPIHC in a way unique on the American calendar.

Until 1984, the event was largely a provincial affair, but as the decade wore on, Europeans progressively showed more interest in the event, with Michèle Mouton winning the event outright and then an award-winning short film being made about Ari Vatanen’s pursuit of the course record in 1988. Since 2002, the previously all-gravel route had started to be paved following a lawsuit by the Sierra Club against the city of Colorado Springs, under whose jurisdiction the road fell. This was due to the significant damage through erosion that was created by the event as the loose-packed dirt and gravel was spewed down the mountainside by the hundreds upon hundreds of entrants in the hillclimb. The asphalt was laid down on the final section in 2011, which was seen by many as the death of the true spirit of the Peak; the ten minute barrier was broken by Nobuhiro Tajima that same year, and the nine minute barrier soon followed in 2013 at the hands of Sébastien Loeb, who was even closer to the eight minute mark than the nine. In recent years electric vehicles have dominated, due to not suffering in the altitude, and Volkswagen broke the eight minute barrier in the hands of Romain Dumas in 2018. Despite the tarmac being safer to handle on than the loose gravel, the increased speed that has resulted has increased the risk considerably too, and motorcycle racing has been discontinued as of 2021, the same year the new summit complex was opened.

Of course, however, while it was never accessible to the Coors Classic and the Mount Evans hillclimb is the most famous similar type event for cyclists in the region, the enforced paving of the Pikes Peak Highway road has meant that since 2011, it is now available for cycling as well. And this creates a monster. An absolute monster.

PikesPeak.gif


Yes - 31km at 6,6%. This is what they call brutal, and it stands up strong against any European climb that I can come up with. In fact, I’ve even gone the Télégraphe+Galibier route and categorised that first first 9km independently, then starting the final climb at the end of the false flat, close to the start of the PPIHC motor race, and even then it’s still quite demonstrably an hors catégorie ascent - being 17km at 8%, and that with a short amount of flat in it. There’s 11km at 9% in the middle (the first part of the section I’ve classified as Pikes Peak) from the first steep ramps after the hillclimb start up to the Devil’s Playground, so that in and of itself would probably merit HC status.

Just for the part that I have categorised, this puts it in the same kind of ballpark as Col de la Madeleine south, Chamrousse via Col Luitel, Blockhaus from Scafa (the steeper route) and the Col de Portet. Except this is at 2000m higher altitude, cresting at over 4200m and providing a challenge even to those well versed in the Latin American péloton and climbing those Colombian and Venezuelan monstrosities like La Línea and Letras. There are very few comparables for the whole climb that are known to racing unless we think of doublets like Télégraphe-Galibier or Sierra Nevada via Monachil. They are like Fuji-San via the Fujinomiya Trail, Doi Inthanon (38km at 6%), Ovit Pass in northern Turkey, Roque de los Muchachos and other such monsters known only to traceurs and cyclotourists. Perhaps Cerro de la Muerte in the Vuelta a Costa Rica is the most likely comparable but even then, it is far more consistent than Pikes Peak.

This one is really going to create some huge gaps. With a climb like this, a Unipuerto stage is sufficient, just like a Mont Ventoux or a Genting Highlands, especially in the field that will be racing this. The climb is so hard it’s going to guarantee time gaps regardless of the lack of previous climbing. And if they ever raced this in real life, we’d be looking at some major gaps. Major gaps.

Pikes-Peak-Visitor-Center-Exterior_Credit-DHM-Design.jpg
FYI. We're not allowed to say Mt Evans anymore. It's Mt Blue Sky now.
 
Stage 6: Colorado Springs - Air Force Academy, 30,2km (ITT)

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The last day before the rest day is the race’s only test against the clock. And yes, this placement might hamper aggression in the preceding mountain stage, but I do feel that the severity of the climb and the altitude will be enough to ensure we do still get some hard racing that day.

The course connects two important development academies within the Colorado Springs area, the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in the middle of the city, and the US Air Force Academy in the outlying foothills of the Front Range. These are two of the prime drivers for placing the stage here, although the short transfer distance and the significance of Colorado Springs as a stage town was fairly obvious. With a population of a little under half a million, this is the second largest city in Colorado and was its original capital, while the state was still officially only a Territory. This only stood from the city’s founding as Colorado City in 1859 to cater to Pikes Peak Gold Rush speculators and travellers until 1861 when the capital was moved to Golden, but its position at the base of the most recognisable mountain when approaching the Rockies in this part of the world made it a popular settling point for those travelling west. The altitude making the climate more hospitable than in much of the desert territories, the city was especially popular with English immigrants, lending it the nickname of ‘Little London’. The merging of Colorado City with Fountain Springs and other outlying colonies in 1872 created the new municipality of Colorado Springs, and it soon became a place for aviation, with a number of airfields opened up in the 1910s and 1920s, and this as well as the access to high mountains for satellite and RADAR stations monitoring during the Cold War meant it was chosen as the home of the USAF training academy in the 1940s and 50s. The original site of the central command for Air Defence Command was Ent Air Force Base, but with this moving into the hillside complex, this former base was repurposed in 1977 as the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center. The new Air Force Academy celebrated its first graduates in 1959, and has since expanded to also commission new officers for the Space Force in 2021 - the city is also home to numerous Space Force facilities and has the largest number of military installations for the space services in the world. Across the army, air force and space force, almost 50.000 active servicemen and women are stationed within the Colorado Springs municipality.

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Downtown Colorado Springs

Although this central history of the city seems to be tied to defence, it is also a very popular city with tourists. The access to Pikes Peak is a primary factor in that - the city even reopened the old cog railway in 2021 - but perhaps the most immediate attraction is the Garden of the Gods, a National Natural Landmark originally known by settlers as Red Rock Corral, a spectacular formation of red rocks with dramatic overhangs and vertical faces which were travelled through and used as both holy sites and navigational aids by multiple Native American groups. It looks like a living Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

GardenoftheGods3WEB-a6011427cb1b43b2a6afd4ca4a63b6ac.jpg


With the high altitude being beneficial to endurance sportspeople - the city is at over 1800m altitude and has access to mountains exceeding double that, of course - it made for a logical centre for the US Olympic authority to establish a central training base, and as a result, countless sportspeople have made Colorado Springs their home, at least for part of their careers. Strangely, though, the sport most commonly associated with the city is an indoor sport, and a technical one at that - the city is renowned for its figure skating, holding the sport’s World Championships five times and being home to its Hall of Fame. Despite this, however, it strangely hosts no high level ice hockey, despite the Colorado Avalanche up the road in Denver being multiple-time Stanley Cup champions, and Colorado Springs sharing the role of host of the IIHF World Championships in 1962. It does however have the Colorado College Tigers, who are the heated rivals of the Denver Pioneers across all sports in which they compete.

The number of sporting sons and daughters of Colorado Springs are numerous. A few notable examples are Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Goose Gossage, who was an early adopter of the ‘closer’ role in the 1970s and early 80s; Vincent Jackson, a star wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers whose premature death in 2021 is one of the most prominent linked to CTE from head injuries suffered during his playing career; two time Super Bowl winner (with the Pittsburgh Steelers teams of the 2000s) Aaron Smith; former NFL player turned MMA icon Bob “The Beast” Sapp, whose impressive size and (suspiciously enhanced) physique turned him into a star especially in Japan in the sport’s formative years and before developments in the sport exposed many of his technical weaknesses; and much of the motor racing Unser dynasty; the family is closely associated with the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, but it seems much of the side of the family from which Al Unser, Al Unser Jr. and Robby come was based out of Albuquerque, while Jerry Unser, Bobby Unser and their side of the family were settled in Colorado Springs. The US training facilities in the city mean many others have settled in the area, such as UFC Hall of Famer Donald Cerrone, who attended Air Force Academy; NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry; Olympic bronze medalist figure skaters the Knierims, Chris and his wife Alexa; they separated on-ice in 2020 due to Chris’ retirement, with Alexa going on to win a further gold and silver medal at the world championships in 2022 and 2023 with new sporting partner Brendan Frazier; former world champion skeet shooter Bill Roy; former amateur wrestling standout turned pro wrestler Bobby Lashley and former Four Continents silver medallist figure skater John Coughlin, who dramatically committed suicide in 2019 a day after receiving a suspension for unspecified allegations, which later turned out to have been related to grooming underage skaters.

Surprisingly, then, given its position of prominence in US sport, when I was researching this race, I found that while the Red Zinger Race/Coors Classic was running, Colorado Springs has little to no involvement. This was especially surprising to me given that US cycling at the time liked to reuse routes and repeat stages almost exactly year on year, looking to establish some kind of mythos and tradition to certain routes and sites on the route and give it its own identity. Therefore when the USA won the rights to host the Road World Championships for the first time in 1986, and Colorado Springs was chosen as the host, given the fact that Colorado was very much the epicentre of American cycling, I assumed this route would have been ‘known’, but it seems this was not the case. Instead, the course was an undulating series of digs on a route around the Air Force Academy, with a lot of false flat interspersed with occasional shorter, more sustained climbing. Back in those days, the only TT was the 100km four-rider Team Time Trial (the only format which should be accepted) with a mostly amateur field which was won by the Netherlands, and there were only three road races, the men’s elite, the women’s elite, and the men’s amateur. Jeannie Longo won the women’s race from a small group, Uwe Ampler the men’s amateur in similar fashion, while Moreno Argentin would beat Charly Mottet in a close finish in the elite road race; the two would drop Spaniard Juan Fernández, the third member of their trio in the break, in the run to the line, and to add insult to injury he would be swallowed by the remains of the péloton on the line and relegated to 4th by Giuseppe Saronni.

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Profile of the Colorado Springs World Championship circuit, from the awesome historic resource that is Lasterketa Burua’s history of World Championship courses - check it out

1986 World Championships Road Race highlights

Colorado Springs has shown up on the routes of the rebirthed Colorado Tour, though, the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. In fact, the race saw its inaugural Grand Départ in the city, or more accurately just outside it, with a prologue starting in the Garden of the Gods and ending downtown. Actually it was 8,3km so should have been a full TT stage, but they called it a prologue. Germans and locals dominated, with the top 8 being entirely from those two nations; Patrick Gretsch won racing for HTC-High Road, while Jens Voigt was the only one of the 8 not to be on a US-based team. The city would return a year later as a stage finish, for stage 5 from Breckenridge - a stage which essentially followed the same route as my stage 5 but with a long plateau to finish rather than a monstrous HC mountain. This ended with a bunch sprint won by Tyler Farrar. There was also a circuit race in Colorado Springs in 2014, but rather than using the Air Force Academy circuit from 1986 they preferred to use another circuit around the Garden of the Gods. The profile makes it look a lot harder than it was, however, with one of those misleading exaggerated profiles that make small ascents look like monsters; the preference for feet and miles in US races over metres and kilometres possibly also exacerbated the issue in making climbs look more significant than they were. Despite some hope for interesting racing, we got a fairly nondescript sprint stage won by Elia Viviani. This same circuit was used in the 2017 Colorado Cycling Classic, a non-sequel sequel to the USAPCC, itself a non-sequel sequel to the Coors Classic, and was won by John Murphy, also in a bunch gallop.

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2011 Grand Départ at the Garden of the Gods

I’ve looked to create a TT that links the US Olympic centre in the downtown area and heads out to the Air Force Academy, to link the modern day racing in the city with those 1986 Worlds. Originally when I had an east-west route, I was heading into Colorado Springs from the north and put a race finishing on the circuit from those championships, with the following stage being loops of the Garden of the Gods circuit from 2014 and 2017 before Pikes Peak, but that was dissatisfactory and the race ended up expanding to over two weeks to include everything I needed - just not really necessary and overlong for a single state given my proposed plans for some “Great American Road Race” parcours ideas. The revised route is this, a challenging ITT which ends at 200m higher altitude than it starts, but for the majority of its duration is a pure power test; the first 7km or so are gradually uphill, but only at about 1-1,5%, and are absolutely ramrod straight after the first corner coming off the ramp. At the halfway stage we loop around Davis Airfield and enter the USAFA complex, with a drag of a climb - 4km at 3,5% so not steep and certainly not enough for the recent fad of bike changes for climbing TT sections to come into effect, but enough that it might balance things off a bit more between the pure power guys and the all-rounders, especially given we’re at 2000m above sea level here. No, it’s not quite the madness of those Vuelta a Bolivia TTs, and it’s not traditional like the Vail Pass TT. But this should be a good challenge.

I was tempted to put the finish at the same spot as the 1986 Worlds, but instead I felt this made things a bit overlong and added extra hills; the race has hills enough, plus the characteristics of US GC candidates have historically been about heavy TT bias and grinding mountains due to the nature of races in the USA that they’ve grown up with - not just the likes of Lance, but the likes of Leipheimer, van Garderen, Vande Velde, Julich, Landis, Danielson and Talansky. Even today, the likes of Jorgenson show versatility and ATV potential. Exceptions (perhaps like Chris Horner or some other guy) are rare. So this will be a bit of a sop to the US riders, and so instead of climbing up Academy Drive, we finish at Falcon Stadium, home of the Air Force college football team and also hosting the 2020 NHL Stadium Series game between the Colorado Avalanche and the Los Angeles Kings. The Falcons (the nickname of the Air Force college sports teams) have announced athletics-based developments suggesting a running track may become part of the facilities in future, these are currently undertaken at a much smaller facility near the 1986 Worlds finish. If they do indeed install a running track, I’ll put the finish on the track itself. If not, we’ll have to settle for the roads outside the stadium.

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I mean, after the Ponferrada TT they turned down I can't see the UCI ever allowing it and we'd probably end up going back to the circuits version of the Worlds ITT from back in the Madrid-Stuttgart-Varese-Mendrisio days, but I can't say it wouldn't be really cool, and Envalira is hardly a monster climb, the power guys can definitely grind it out.

The altitude would be really interesting too.
 
Yeah, a circuit with the same side of Comella and down to the border (so in opposite side of the road as I have them) done twice is more realistic. Very much a traditional format to have the TT use most of the road race circuit.

EDIT: Or did you have a flat route only in mind?

 
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