Stage 3: El Vigía - Cúcuta, 184km
GPM:
Loma Bolivar (cat.3) 0,6km @ 9,0% x2
The third stage of the Vuelta al Táchira is the longest, at a full on 180km+ distance, the kind that goes in the medium-long category at a higher level and well above what many 2.2 races offer. For the most part the Vuelta al Táchira tends to keep its stage lengths in the 110km-150km kind of range, and it isn’t since 2018 that we’ve seen a stage of 180km+, however that was a flat stage followed immediately by a 174km mountain stage, and given this stage is more or less flat (just with a tricky finale), I think we’ll be fine with this. It’s also the only stage to both start and finish outside Táchira state, although we do pass through the race’s home region through the middle part of the stage. As mentioned in previous stage write-ups, the race would frequently hold finishes in towns and cities well outside the confines of Táchira, often even at the opposite end of the country in fact, and while the race has become more linked to its home in recent years, this is nevertheless not really a rarity as we still typically have at least one, usually two, stages which are entirely outside of the province, typically the common Mérida finish, or a flat stage to Santa Bárbara de Barinas. We are going to be starting in one of the relatively common - at least in recent years - external hosts of the race, the city of El Vigía.
El Vigía is the shire town of the Alberto Adriani Municipality, one of the most populous in Merida state, and is home to around 160.000 people as of the 2013 census. It is the northwesternmost part of Merida state, with borders with Zúlia to the north and Táchira to the west. It does not have an official founding date, but there was a small village on the path along the northern base of the Andes on this site prior to the arrival of the railway, which came in 1892, when a railroad from Santa Bárbara del Zúlia was constructed in order to expedite transfer of produce from the Andean provinces, and El Vigía was chosen as the terminus, due to its position at the edge of the Río Chama, which carves a low valley down from the altiplano and Mérida city, and was a popular route for goods traffic accordingly. When the Chama was bridged in 1954 during the construction of Troncal 1, which links to the Pan-American Highway, the city became placed at an important crossroads for trade and grew rapidly as a result. It is the birthplace of the Olympic boxer Yoel Finol, who took a bronze medal in the Rio Olympics which was later upgraded to silver after the original silver medallist failed a doping test, and the politician Tareck El-Aissami, a former vice president of Venezuela who has held a number of high ranking positions in Nicolás Maduro’s government, most recently the Minister of Petroleum, but who resigned in 2023 amid a number of allegations of corruption among other more significant crimes, including drug trafficking (he was one of the political figures connected to the narcosobrinos incident which saw two of Maduro’s nephews incarcerated) and, with his own familial connections to Iraq, allegations have connected him to terrorist groups and to money laundering rings in the Middle East as well.
El Vigía is also home to a somewhat less contentious politician, Richard Parra - his political career has been relatively inconspicuous, but he is of more interest to us here as he went into the field after the end of his career as a pro cyclist - he won the Vuelta a Venezuela in 1988 before turning pro, riding in Italy with Selle Italia and in Spain with CIEMAT in the early 90s, including a tilt at the 1991 Giro d’Italia where he would ride in support of compatriot Leonardo Sierra. It is also home to veteran star of the Venezuelan domestic scene, José Alarcón. A talented climber, Alarcón won his first Vuelta al Táchira stage in 2009 in a sprint of the elites, and this got him a few years of international racing, spending 2010 with Lotería de Boyacá in Colombia, two years with Movistar Team América, the Colombian-based lower league Telefónica lineup that served as a satellite but not a feeder for the World Tour team, and then two more years with Canel’s Turbo in Mexico before giving up on breaking through to a higher level and returning to his home region. He has won eight stages overall at the Vuelta al Táchira, although it took him until 2023 to actually win the GC - despite seven previous top 10s and his previous best of 2nd being achieved all the way back in 2010 - along with five top 5s and one win (2015) at the Vuelta a Venezuela, a GC podium and queen stage victory at the Vuelta a Cuba, a top 5 at the Vuelta a Guatemala and top 10s at the Clásico Banfoandes and the Tour de Guadeloupe.
José Alarcón wins in the polka dots in La Grita in the 2023 Vuelta al Táchira
With Mérida and Tovar being regular hosts in the race’s relative youth, El Vigía took a little time to become established within the Vuelta al Táchira, but it has hosted a number of stages over the years, starting in 1973 when the race headed over to Trujillo for the first time, with Domingo Guerrero winning a flat stage from Valera to El Vigía. An identical stage the following year would be won by Cuban star Carlos Cardet, then Guillermo León would win a short stage from Mérida through the Chama valley a year later. Yuri Mikhaylov would win a road stage here in 1976 while Fernando Fontes of Colombia would win a CRI in the city the following day, but then it would be off the menu until 1984 when another Soviet rider, Aleksandr Krasnov, won the stage. Although the race passed through El Vigía a few times in the intervening period, though, it was not until 2002 that it would stop here again, but it would swiftly become a semi-regular host of early-race flat stages to maintain balance; Carlos Ibáñez won for Colombia-Selle Italia that year, Diosenis Valdes for the Cuban national team the following year; Alberto Loddo would win here for Diquigiovanni in 2006, Paul Alberto Torres in a circuit race in 2008 which would be repeated with Artur García winning the following year, and then, most recently, another win for Savio’s team in its most recent iteration, with Matteo Malucelli winning in El Vigía in 2021. It has also hosted stage starts in 2004 and 2005 to Mérida, in 2006 to Bailadores (!!!), La Grita in 2007 and Cerro Cristo Rey in 2009, while also appearing in the Clásico Banfoandes in 2008 with another Cuban, Gil Cordovés, triumphing - this was before he switched his allegiance although he had been racing in Venezuela for nearly a decade already by this point.
We cross back into Táchira almost immediately - around 15km into the stage and with no noteworthy obstacles, just some uphill false flat, and then heading downhill slightly into La Tendida, which has hosted finishes in the last couple of editions of the Vuelta al Táchira, won by Jonathan Guatibonza in 2023 in a sprint, and by Fernando Briceño upon his return from a doping ban in 2024. We continue along a flat charge for the next 35km until we get to Coloncito, which hosts the first intermediate sprint, and has also hosted a few flat stages in recent Vueltas itself. It usually hosts the start of a mountain stage - typically to La Grita or Mérida - but has seen a sprint finish in 2010, won by Miguel Ubeto, and an ITT in 2014, won by Andrea Del Col. Instead of heading westward back to yesterday’s stage host of La Fría, we head north from Coloncito toward El Pulpito, then crossing state lines into Zúlia and turning west again to Orope, then continuing, crossing the stage 2 route, to reach Boca de Grita and Puerto Internacional de la Unión, a bridge crossing the Rio Grita just before it flows into the Rio Zúlia, and sees us cross the international boundary into Colombia at the frontier town of Puerto Santander.
Constructed in 1989, the bridge has been the southernmost transit point between Colombia and Zúlia state, and has greatly benefited trade in the Freeport-style zone; many inhabitants of Boca de Grita will cross into Puerto Santander for their Holy Week festivities and vice versa; the border has been closed a couple of times in recent times due to political tensions resulting in a large exodus of Venezuelans or cross-border illicit activity, but the relatively isolated locale of this bridge means it is often one of the earliest transit points between the two nations to reopen.
The proximity of Táchira province to Colombia, the relative isolation within Colombia of Cúcuta and its surrounding area due to the difficulty of accessing it via the Andean mountain passes, and the many border crossings has meant that the Norte de Santander province has some level of affinity with Táchira, and the Vuelta al Táchira has seen a number of excursions into their neighbours’ territory, both to stage hosts and simply - as has been the case often in recent years - simply as mid-stage detours before returning to Venezuelan territory for the stage finish. We are going to go with a finish on Colombian territory. The difficulty in accessing this part of Colombia had meant that it was not a frequent stop-off for the Vuelta a Colombia, and typically only Cúcuta and Pamplona would be used if the race did head into the region. It took until the fourth edition of the race, in 1954, to appear, with Ramón Hoyos winning a stage into Cúcuta before a rest day saw the riders transferred to Pamplona, before a stage to Bucaramanga and a second rest day immediately afterward. 1960 would see the race start in Villa del Rosario, neighbouring Cúcuta and on the border with Venezuela, with a stage to Pamplona of just 91km won by Pablo Hurtado. This would be replicated in 1963, with Rubén Dário Gómez triumphing, and again in 1965, but with the Grand Départ being in San Cristóbal del Táchira, which was the impetus behind the introduction of the Vuelta al Táchira in 1966. It would take until 1976 for the Vuelta a Colombia to return to Norte de Santander when it would once more see a Grand Départ in Cúcuta (the Czech team winning a TTT), by which time Pamplona had seen the region’s first inclusion in the Vuelta al Táchira, Álvaro Pachón winning a stage there in 1970 and Luís Villaroel triumphing over the same course a year later. The eastward expansion of the Vuelta al Táchira would mean excursions to the east for stage starts and finishes would become rare, although stages to Rubio, Urena and San António del Táchira would often detour across the border. 1981 would see the Vuelta a Colombia return, again with a TTT in Cúcuta followed by a semitappe to Pamplona, Israel Corredor winning the latter.
When racing returned to Norte de Santander in 1990, it was an odd year for the two main races that would appear there. The Vuelta al Táchira included a stage to Cúcuta, then a clone of the short Cúcuta-Pamplona stage from the earlier Vueltas a Colombia, local boy José Díaz winning both; then there would be another stage finish in Cúcuta, won by Venezuelan “home” rider Robinson Merchán. Meanwhile in the Vuelta a Colombia, the race starting in the isolated Amazonian east of Arauca before crossing the border to Guasdualito and back during two semitappes on day 2. Then they would travel through to Táchira province and into Cúcuta, with Soviet (Lithuanian) rider Remigijus Lupeikis winning the stage. In 1993 the race would be back, for the first time visiting both Ecuador and Venezuela in the same edition, with Juan Carlos Rosero of Ecuador winning in Pamplona, Jorge León Otalvaro in a stage from Pamplona to San Cristóbal, Libardo Niño winning a time trial in Cúcuta and then Raúl Acosta winning the final stage, a circuit race including the Venezuelan cities of Ureña and San António as well as a start/finish in Cúcuta. This same circuit would be seen in the 1997 Vuelta al Táchira, the next time the region would appear, but it would then be off-the-menu for a long time after an opening prologue in the Vuelta a Colombia in 2002, won by later Caisse d’Épargne domestique Marlon Pérez. The 2023 Vuelta al Táchira has a stage which is listed as being from Ureña to Cúcuta but don’t be fooled - it has laps of the 1993 and 1997 circuit before a climb up to Cerro Cristo Rey in Venezuela. Cúcuta hasn’t hosted a start or finish in a UCI-accredited race since 2002. So let’s bring it back.
After around 60km of flat and slightly uphill false flat through Norte de Santander, we arrive in the city of Cúcuta, officially San José de Cúcuta, the sixth largest city in Colombia with a population of over 750.000. The capital and economic hub of Norte de Santander, the region was first discovered by German explorer-conquistadores in the 16th Century, but the modern settlement was originally founded as San José de Guasimales, to differentiate it from a native settlement nearby, but when growing to consume the latter it adopted the name San José de Cúcuta from the native word Kukuta, the name of the original settlement and, curiously, translating as “house of the goblin”. Originally it was a backwater, with more interest being in the hills and the city of Pamplona, around which gold mines had been found, but the difficulty of transporting such goods through the mountains led to the river navigation to the Caribbean becoming a favoured route and creating a need for transit points in what is now known as the Cúcuta valley. Founded in the early 18th Century, by the end of that period it had grown to a flourishing trading city and one of the most important in the Colombian East. It was also the site of one of the most crucial battles fought by the Libertadores, when Simon Bolívar’s troops defeated those of Spanish loyalist Ramón Correa in 1813, as Bolívar fought to secure the banks of the Táchira river, and although the battle itself was comparatively small - just 22 fatalities - it enabled the belligerents to secure their Colombian possessions and pave the way for the Admirable Campaign as the great liberator fought his way back through Venezuela toward his hometown of Caracas and was able to secure independence for both Colombia and Venezuela across these campaigns. One of the important lieutenants under Bolívar was Francisco de Paula Santander, who became vice president of New Colombia and then the first President of Nueva Granada and became associated for life with the fight for independence in the Cúcuta valley; the city’s university, one of the most prestigious in Latin America, was named for him. He is also one of the signatories of the 1821 Constitución de Cúcuta, which declared him vice president to Simon Bolívar and created the Republic of Colombia. Cúcuta remained one of the most important cities of the country until it was greatly ravaged by earthquake damage in 1875. During the reconstruction, a new centre on a grid basis was created and soon afterward the railroad arrived in the city, and greatly expedited its recovery, although the railroad itself did not survive and fell into disuse in the 1950s.
In more recent times Cúcuta has given Colombia its second President, this time of actual Colombia rather than the united provinces of Nueva Granada, this being Virgilio Barco, the grandson of an army general turned oil baron, and who led the country from 1986 to 1990, during some of the most challenging times for the nation. A former ambassador to Great Britain and the United States as well as a director of the World Bank and a mayor of Bogotá, he supported anti-poverty programs and his moves to combat drug trafficking won him significant popularity in the wider world, but his economic policies being based around the old adage of “short term pain for long term gain” and a rise in violence as the drugs cartels fought back against crackdowns hurt his popularity and he was unable to win re-election. He was aided in his fight against the cartels by another local, Luis Alberto Villamizar, an ally of Luis Carlos Galán who led the Nuevo Liberalismo group and successfully passed legislation such as the National Narcotics Statute of 1986, one of the most crucial items of law in the fight against drugs in the country, for which notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar attempted to have him assassinated, which caused Barco to deploy Villamizar on overseas embassy duty for two years. After his return to Colombia, Escobar had Villamizar’s wife and sister kidnapped along with eight other associates. Barco allowed Villamizar to conduct his own release negotiations, which he did so successfully that two years later he was commissioned by Escobar himself to negotiate his own surrender to authorities. Go figure. His crisis aversion skills in these major news events would be immortalised by Colombia’s greatest literary figure, Gabriel García Márquez, in News of a Kidnapping.
Alberto Villamizar and his wife Maruja Pachón interviewed about the kidnappings a year before Alberto’s death by Argentine TV icon Mirtha Legrand
More recently, Cúcuta has had more prominence in the field of sport, with Fabiola Zuluaga, Colombia’s most successful ever tennis competitor, coming from the city; she won five WTA Tour events, four of which being the Copa Colsanitas in Bogotá, and reached a highest rank of 16th on the world rankings in the mid 2000s, with a best in Grand Slam competition of the semi-finals in the 2004 Australian Open. Her legacy has been continued more recently by youngster Camila Osorio, who has won two WTA Tour events - again both the Copa Colsanitas, and like her predecessor all her best results are on clay. More prominent, most likely, to many would be star footballer James Rodríguez, who had been developing in Argentine and then Portuguese football before moving to Monaco before the 2014 World Cup; there he stunned the world and won the Golden Boot earning himself a big money transfer to Real Madrid; however from then his career has stuttered a bit as he has struggled to meet lofty expectations. A two-year loan to Bayern München saw him collect more trophies and contribute, but not as much as had been hoped, and eventually he would find his way to less world-renowned destinations like Everton and Olympiakos, though successful performances back in South America and a Golden Ball award at the 2024 Copa América have seen him enjoy a resurgence. Finally, there is Yeison Delgado, a Venezuelan cyclist who was born in Cúcuta and won a Vuelta a Colombia stage and finished on the podium of the Vuelta al Táchira before a doping ban following a positive test for EPO and synthetic testosterone at the 2004 Vuelta a Guatemala; upon his return he took several years to fight back to his best, but eventually won the GC of the Vuelta al Táchira, his de facto home race, in 2013.
I could have gone for a flat finish in Cúcuta; after all, most races that finish here do. However, I had designs on something to shake things up a little, and have instead elected to finish with two laps of a 9,9km circuit. This includes a short (600m) sharp dig of a climb at 9% that snakes around the monument commemorating Bolívar’s triumphs of 1813, the hill being known as Loma Bolívar in honour of the great liberator.
Cresting at 16 and 6km from the line, this is steep enough to allow puncheurs to think that they can do something here, but also short enough that sprinters can power their way over as long as they can stay in contact. The question is going to be, though, what sort of rider does it favour in this kind of péloton? The Colombian-Venezuelan scene is not exactly renowned for its puncheurs, at least not for these super short ramps (although there are a few riders who have graduated from this scene who have proven to be more than adept at the World Tour level on this kind of terrain, just think of Jhonatán Narváez, Carlos Betancur or Sérgio Henao) while sprinters coming from this kind of scene tend to need to be a bit more durable than most (think the likes of Orluís Aular, Fernando Gaviria or Jonathan Guatibonza) - but 186km is a pretty long course for riders in the Vuelta al Táchira, which doesn’t tend to put stages of this kind of length out there too often, so there ought to be some tired legs and struggling domestiques. Besides, the sprinters won’t have many chances after this, so they’re going to need to make it count.
GPM:
Loma Bolivar (cat.3) 0,6km @ 9,0% x2
The third stage of the Vuelta al Táchira is the longest, at a full on 180km+ distance, the kind that goes in the medium-long category at a higher level and well above what many 2.2 races offer. For the most part the Vuelta al Táchira tends to keep its stage lengths in the 110km-150km kind of range, and it isn’t since 2018 that we’ve seen a stage of 180km+, however that was a flat stage followed immediately by a 174km mountain stage, and given this stage is more or less flat (just with a tricky finale), I think we’ll be fine with this. It’s also the only stage to both start and finish outside Táchira state, although we do pass through the race’s home region through the middle part of the stage. As mentioned in previous stage write-ups, the race would frequently hold finishes in towns and cities well outside the confines of Táchira, often even at the opposite end of the country in fact, and while the race has become more linked to its home in recent years, this is nevertheless not really a rarity as we still typically have at least one, usually two, stages which are entirely outside of the province, typically the common Mérida finish, or a flat stage to Santa Bárbara de Barinas. We are going to be starting in one of the relatively common - at least in recent years - external hosts of the race, the city of El Vigía.
El Vigía is the shire town of the Alberto Adriani Municipality, one of the most populous in Merida state, and is home to around 160.000 people as of the 2013 census. It is the northwesternmost part of Merida state, with borders with Zúlia to the north and Táchira to the west. It does not have an official founding date, but there was a small village on the path along the northern base of the Andes on this site prior to the arrival of the railway, which came in 1892, when a railroad from Santa Bárbara del Zúlia was constructed in order to expedite transfer of produce from the Andean provinces, and El Vigía was chosen as the terminus, due to its position at the edge of the Río Chama, which carves a low valley down from the altiplano and Mérida city, and was a popular route for goods traffic accordingly. When the Chama was bridged in 1954 during the construction of Troncal 1, which links to the Pan-American Highway, the city became placed at an important crossroads for trade and grew rapidly as a result. It is the birthplace of the Olympic boxer Yoel Finol, who took a bronze medal in the Rio Olympics which was later upgraded to silver after the original silver medallist failed a doping test, and the politician Tareck El-Aissami, a former vice president of Venezuela who has held a number of high ranking positions in Nicolás Maduro’s government, most recently the Minister of Petroleum, but who resigned in 2023 amid a number of allegations of corruption among other more significant crimes, including drug trafficking (he was one of the political figures connected to the narcosobrinos incident which saw two of Maduro’s nephews incarcerated) and, with his own familial connections to Iraq, allegations have connected him to terrorist groups and to money laundering rings in the Middle East as well.
El Vigía is also home to a somewhat less contentious politician, Richard Parra - his political career has been relatively inconspicuous, but he is of more interest to us here as he went into the field after the end of his career as a pro cyclist - he won the Vuelta a Venezuela in 1988 before turning pro, riding in Italy with Selle Italia and in Spain with CIEMAT in the early 90s, including a tilt at the 1991 Giro d’Italia where he would ride in support of compatriot Leonardo Sierra. It is also home to veteran star of the Venezuelan domestic scene, José Alarcón. A talented climber, Alarcón won his first Vuelta al Táchira stage in 2009 in a sprint of the elites, and this got him a few years of international racing, spending 2010 with Lotería de Boyacá in Colombia, two years with Movistar Team América, the Colombian-based lower league Telefónica lineup that served as a satellite but not a feeder for the World Tour team, and then two more years with Canel’s Turbo in Mexico before giving up on breaking through to a higher level and returning to his home region. He has won eight stages overall at the Vuelta al Táchira, although it took him until 2023 to actually win the GC - despite seven previous top 10s and his previous best of 2nd being achieved all the way back in 2010 - along with five top 5s and one win (2015) at the Vuelta a Venezuela, a GC podium and queen stage victory at the Vuelta a Cuba, a top 5 at the Vuelta a Guatemala and top 10s at the Clásico Banfoandes and the Tour de Guadeloupe.
José Alarcón wins in the polka dots in La Grita in the 2023 Vuelta al Táchira
With Mérida and Tovar being regular hosts in the race’s relative youth, El Vigía took a little time to become established within the Vuelta al Táchira, but it has hosted a number of stages over the years, starting in 1973 when the race headed over to Trujillo for the first time, with Domingo Guerrero winning a flat stage from Valera to El Vigía. An identical stage the following year would be won by Cuban star Carlos Cardet, then Guillermo León would win a short stage from Mérida through the Chama valley a year later. Yuri Mikhaylov would win a road stage here in 1976 while Fernando Fontes of Colombia would win a CRI in the city the following day, but then it would be off the menu until 1984 when another Soviet rider, Aleksandr Krasnov, won the stage. Although the race passed through El Vigía a few times in the intervening period, though, it was not until 2002 that it would stop here again, but it would swiftly become a semi-regular host of early-race flat stages to maintain balance; Carlos Ibáñez won for Colombia-Selle Italia that year, Diosenis Valdes for the Cuban national team the following year; Alberto Loddo would win here for Diquigiovanni in 2006, Paul Alberto Torres in a circuit race in 2008 which would be repeated with Artur García winning the following year, and then, most recently, another win for Savio’s team in its most recent iteration, with Matteo Malucelli winning in El Vigía in 2021. It has also hosted stage starts in 2004 and 2005 to Mérida, in 2006 to Bailadores (!!!), La Grita in 2007 and Cerro Cristo Rey in 2009, while also appearing in the Clásico Banfoandes in 2008 with another Cuban, Gil Cordovés, triumphing - this was before he switched his allegiance although he had been racing in Venezuela for nearly a decade already by this point.
We cross back into Táchira almost immediately - around 15km into the stage and with no noteworthy obstacles, just some uphill false flat, and then heading downhill slightly into La Tendida, which has hosted finishes in the last couple of editions of the Vuelta al Táchira, won by Jonathan Guatibonza in 2023 in a sprint, and by Fernando Briceño upon his return from a doping ban in 2024. We continue along a flat charge for the next 35km until we get to Coloncito, which hosts the first intermediate sprint, and has also hosted a few flat stages in recent Vueltas itself. It usually hosts the start of a mountain stage - typically to La Grita or Mérida - but has seen a sprint finish in 2010, won by Miguel Ubeto, and an ITT in 2014, won by Andrea Del Col. Instead of heading westward back to yesterday’s stage host of La Fría, we head north from Coloncito toward El Pulpito, then crossing state lines into Zúlia and turning west again to Orope, then continuing, crossing the stage 2 route, to reach Boca de Grita and Puerto Internacional de la Unión, a bridge crossing the Rio Grita just before it flows into the Rio Zúlia, and sees us cross the international boundary into Colombia at the frontier town of Puerto Santander.
Constructed in 1989, the bridge has been the southernmost transit point between Colombia and Zúlia state, and has greatly benefited trade in the Freeport-style zone; many inhabitants of Boca de Grita will cross into Puerto Santander for their Holy Week festivities and vice versa; the border has been closed a couple of times in recent times due to political tensions resulting in a large exodus of Venezuelans or cross-border illicit activity, but the relatively isolated locale of this bridge means it is often one of the earliest transit points between the two nations to reopen.
The proximity of Táchira province to Colombia, the relative isolation within Colombia of Cúcuta and its surrounding area due to the difficulty of accessing it via the Andean mountain passes, and the many border crossings has meant that the Norte de Santander province has some level of affinity with Táchira, and the Vuelta al Táchira has seen a number of excursions into their neighbours’ territory, both to stage hosts and simply - as has been the case often in recent years - simply as mid-stage detours before returning to Venezuelan territory for the stage finish. We are going to go with a finish on Colombian territory. The difficulty in accessing this part of Colombia had meant that it was not a frequent stop-off for the Vuelta a Colombia, and typically only Cúcuta and Pamplona would be used if the race did head into the region. It took until the fourth edition of the race, in 1954, to appear, with Ramón Hoyos winning a stage into Cúcuta before a rest day saw the riders transferred to Pamplona, before a stage to Bucaramanga and a second rest day immediately afterward. 1960 would see the race start in Villa del Rosario, neighbouring Cúcuta and on the border with Venezuela, with a stage to Pamplona of just 91km won by Pablo Hurtado. This would be replicated in 1963, with Rubén Dário Gómez triumphing, and again in 1965, but with the Grand Départ being in San Cristóbal del Táchira, which was the impetus behind the introduction of the Vuelta al Táchira in 1966. It would take until 1976 for the Vuelta a Colombia to return to Norte de Santander when it would once more see a Grand Départ in Cúcuta (the Czech team winning a TTT), by which time Pamplona had seen the region’s first inclusion in the Vuelta al Táchira, Álvaro Pachón winning a stage there in 1970 and Luís Villaroel triumphing over the same course a year later. The eastward expansion of the Vuelta al Táchira would mean excursions to the east for stage starts and finishes would become rare, although stages to Rubio, Urena and San António del Táchira would often detour across the border. 1981 would see the Vuelta a Colombia return, again with a TTT in Cúcuta followed by a semitappe to Pamplona, Israel Corredor winning the latter.
When racing returned to Norte de Santander in 1990, it was an odd year for the two main races that would appear there. The Vuelta al Táchira included a stage to Cúcuta, then a clone of the short Cúcuta-Pamplona stage from the earlier Vueltas a Colombia, local boy José Díaz winning both; then there would be another stage finish in Cúcuta, won by Venezuelan “home” rider Robinson Merchán. Meanwhile in the Vuelta a Colombia, the race starting in the isolated Amazonian east of Arauca before crossing the border to Guasdualito and back during two semitappes on day 2. Then they would travel through to Táchira province and into Cúcuta, with Soviet (Lithuanian) rider Remigijus Lupeikis winning the stage. In 1993 the race would be back, for the first time visiting both Ecuador and Venezuela in the same edition, with Juan Carlos Rosero of Ecuador winning in Pamplona, Jorge León Otalvaro in a stage from Pamplona to San Cristóbal, Libardo Niño winning a time trial in Cúcuta and then Raúl Acosta winning the final stage, a circuit race including the Venezuelan cities of Ureña and San António as well as a start/finish in Cúcuta. This same circuit would be seen in the 1997 Vuelta al Táchira, the next time the region would appear, but it would then be off-the-menu for a long time after an opening prologue in the Vuelta a Colombia in 2002, won by later Caisse d’Épargne domestique Marlon Pérez. The 2023 Vuelta al Táchira has a stage which is listed as being from Ureña to Cúcuta but don’t be fooled - it has laps of the 1993 and 1997 circuit before a climb up to Cerro Cristo Rey in Venezuela. Cúcuta hasn’t hosted a start or finish in a UCI-accredited race since 2002. So let’s bring it back.
After around 60km of flat and slightly uphill false flat through Norte de Santander, we arrive in the city of Cúcuta, officially San José de Cúcuta, the sixth largest city in Colombia with a population of over 750.000. The capital and economic hub of Norte de Santander, the region was first discovered by German explorer-conquistadores in the 16th Century, but the modern settlement was originally founded as San José de Guasimales, to differentiate it from a native settlement nearby, but when growing to consume the latter it adopted the name San José de Cúcuta from the native word Kukuta, the name of the original settlement and, curiously, translating as “house of the goblin”. Originally it was a backwater, with more interest being in the hills and the city of Pamplona, around which gold mines had been found, but the difficulty of transporting such goods through the mountains led to the river navigation to the Caribbean becoming a favoured route and creating a need for transit points in what is now known as the Cúcuta valley. Founded in the early 18th Century, by the end of that period it had grown to a flourishing trading city and one of the most important in the Colombian East. It was also the site of one of the most crucial battles fought by the Libertadores, when Simon Bolívar’s troops defeated those of Spanish loyalist Ramón Correa in 1813, as Bolívar fought to secure the banks of the Táchira river, and although the battle itself was comparatively small - just 22 fatalities - it enabled the belligerents to secure their Colombian possessions and pave the way for the Admirable Campaign as the great liberator fought his way back through Venezuela toward his hometown of Caracas and was able to secure independence for both Colombia and Venezuela across these campaigns. One of the important lieutenants under Bolívar was Francisco de Paula Santander, who became vice president of New Colombia and then the first President of Nueva Granada and became associated for life with the fight for independence in the Cúcuta valley; the city’s university, one of the most prestigious in Latin America, was named for him. He is also one of the signatories of the 1821 Constitución de Cúcuta, which declared him vice president to Simon Bolívar and created the Republic of Colombia. Cúcuta remained one of the most important cities of the country until it was greatly ravaged by earthquake damage in 1875. During the reconstruction, a new centre on a grid basis was created and soon afterward the railroad arrived in the city, and greatly expedited its recovery, although the railroad itself did not survive and fell into disuse in the 1950s.
In more recent times Cúcuta has given Colombia its second President, this time of actual Colombia rather than the united provinces of Nueva Granada, this being Virgilio Barco, the grandson of an army general turned oil baron, and who led the country from 1986 to 1990, during some of the most challenging times for the nation. A former ambassador to Great Britain and the United States as well as a director of the World Bank and a mayor of Bogotá, he supported anti-poverty programs and his moves to combat drug trafficking won him significant popularity in the wider world, but his economic policies being based around the old adage of “short term pain for long term gain” and a rise in violence as the drugs cartels fought back against crackdowns hurt his popularity and he was unable to win re-election. He was aided in his fight against the cartels by another local, Luis Alberto Villamizar, an ally of Luis Carlos Galán who led the Nuevo Liberalismo group and successfully passed legislation such as the National Narcotics Statute of 1986, one of the most crucial items of law in the fight against drugs in the country, for which notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar attempted to have him assassinated, which caused Barco to deploy Villamizar on overseas embassy duty for two years. After his return to Colombia, Escobar had Villamizar’s wife and sister kidnapped along with eight other associates. Barco allowed Villamizar to conduct his own release negotiations, which he did so successfully that two years later he was commissioned by Escobar himself to negotiate his own surrender to authorities. Go figure. His crisis aversion skills in these major news events would be immortalised by Colombia’s greatest literary figure, Gabriel García Márquez, in News of a Kidnapping.
More recently, Cúcuta has had more prominence in the field of sport, with Fabiola Zuluaga, Colombia’s most successful ever tennis competitor, coming from the city; she won five WTA Tour events, four of which being the Copa Colsanitas in Bogotá, and reached a highest rank of 16th on the world rankings in the mid 2000s, with a best in Grand Slam competition of the semi-finals in the 2004 Australian Open. Her legacy has been continued more recently by youngster Camila Osorio, who has won two WTA Tour events - again both the Copa Colsanitas, and like her predecessor all her best results are on clay. More prominent, most likely, to many would be star footballer James Rodríguez, who had been developing in Argentine and then Portuguese football before moving to Monaco before the 2014 World Cup; there he stunned the world and won the Golden Boot earning himself a big money transfer to Real Madrid; however from then his career has stuttered a bit as he has struggled to meet lofty expectations. A two-year loan to Bayern München saw him collect more trophies and contribute, but not as much as had been hoped, and eventually he would find his way to less world-renowned destinations like Everton and Olympiakos, though successful performances back in South America and a Golden Ball award at the 2024 Copa América have seen him enjoy a resurgence. Finally, there is Yeison Delgado, a Venezuelan cyclist who was born in Cúcuta and won a Vuelta a Colombia stage and finished on the podium of the Vuelta al Táchira before a doping ban following a positive test for EPO and synthetic testosterone at the 2004 Vuelta a Guatemala; upon his return he took several years to fight back to his best, but eventually won the GC of the Vuelta al Táchira, his de facto home race, in 2013.
I could have gone for a flat finish in Cúcuta; after all, most races that finish here do. However, I had designs on something to shake things up a little, and have instead elected to finish with two laps of a 9,9km circuit. This includes a short (600m) sharp dig of a climb at 9% that snakes around the monument commemorating Bolívar’s triumphs of 1813, the hill being known as Loma Bolívar in honour of the great liberator.
Cresting at 16 and 6km from the line, this is steep enough to allow puncheurs to think that they can do something here, but also short enough that sprinters can power their way over as long as they can stay in contact. The question is going to be, though, what sort of rider does it favour in this kind of péloton? The Colombian-Venezuelan scene is not exactly renowned for its puncheurs, at least not for these super short ramps (although there are a few riders who have graduated from this scene who have proven to be more than adept at the World Tour level on this kind of terrain, just think of Jhonatán Narváez, Carlos Betancur or Sérgio Henao) while sprinters coming from this kind of scene tend to need to be a bit more durable than most (think the likes of Orluís Aular, Fernando Gaviria or Jonathan Guatibonza) - but 186km is a pretty long course for riders in the Vuelta al Táchira, which doesn’t tend to put stages of this kind of length out there too often, so there ought to be some tired legs and struggling domestiques. Besides, the sprinters won’t have many chances after this, so they’re going to need to make it count.
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