I'm going to bring back a long forgotten (and seldom disputed) race, continuing on from my Vuelta a Bariloche.
The
Vuelta a la Argentina was first run in 1951 (won by Rik van Steenbergen, no less). An attempted resurrection of it in 1991 was aborted, before they brought it back in 1999, as a 12-stage, two week race. The chaos that was the 2000 edition killed it off again, with illness, intrigue, radical redesigning of stages at the last minute, judges openly biasing their calls in favour of Argentine riders, but most importantly a horrific mistake where a truck got onto the course during stage 7, colliding with and killing Relax-Fuenlabrada's Saúl Morales. The péloton neutralised the stage and refused to take the course for stage 8a. There was an attempt to resurrect the race in 2007, but this was unsuccessful and the race remains consigned to the scrapheap of history.
Now, however, I'm going to have a look at bringing it back. Now, naturally, a country the size of Argentina cannot be truly comprehensively covered with even a three-week race, but patterned after the major national Tours of central and South America, I'm going to make this a two week stage race. As a result, good areas for racing such as the excellent hilly territory in the south around Comodoro Rivadavia are going to go unused. I was also originally going to include a stage around San Carlos de Bariloche, but I felt that as that would probably require two aeroplane transfers in as many days, this was probably impractical, and besides, I've just given the residents of the Patagonian resorts their own Tour. As a result this could be more realistically be described as a Tour of the upper half of Argentina, but then that makes it no different to the real life Vueltas.
I'm hoping to create a real all-rounder's course, with something to utilise nearly every skill a road rider could conceivably be expected to have.
Anyway, on with the racing.
Stage 1: Mar del Plata - Mar del Plata (TTT), 23,2km
We start with a shortish Team Time Trial in the country's biggest beach resort. Starting at the Complejo Deportivo Panamericano, It's a flat out drag race of 4 dead straight kilometres before a little loop around a park leading onto Avenida Peralta Ramos, from which we will follow along the seafront boulevards until reaching Plaza Colón, whereupon we will turn around and return from whence we came on a simple out-and-back type of course finishing at the city velodrome, a reminder of the country's track heritage. Although there are a fair few corners around the seafront, this one should favour the pure power teams, but without being too long so as not to eliminate any team from contention entirely.
There are no categorised climbs (as you might expect in a team time trial), not that it would be easy to find one here. Still, the riders may have to look out for wind coming in from the Atlantic, as this may have an effect on some of the teams, what with all of the course bar the first and last 4km being side on to the sea.
Velodrome:
Mar del Plata seafront (the teams will head down the road on the right before returning on the one on the left):