Stages 19 and 20

[craig1985]

These are the two stages of the Vuelta when they finally get to the Basque region and TBH they are bit of a let down:

Noja - Bilbao 157.9km

Bilbao - Vitoria 187km

On Stage 20 it is a waste of the Urkiola with nearly 50km of downhill and flat to the finish? Lame. I don't know about anybody else, but with the first visit to the area since 1978, you would think they would come up with something interesting.

So if you had carte blanche over the race routes, would you come up with?

 

[auscyclefan94]

Stage 20: Should of finished the stage on the Cat 1.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

They wanted to finish the stages in the big cities of the Basque country. I understand why they chose Gasteiz, but there isn't much in the way of climbs close to it, it's the flattest part of the region by far.

As for finishing in Bilbao, well, I don't mind the climbing of El Vivero, to be honest, but they could have added La Reineta (6,6km @ 5,7%) to put a bit more in the legs than just the one climb. However, my personal preference would have been, instead of turning left into Bilbao after Güeñes, going straight on over the Puerto de Garate to Llodio, then on to Orozko, over Bikotx-Gane (4,9km @ 6,1%), descend to Artea, include the nasty climb up to Lamindao (2,4km @ 9,9%) then you'd have about 20km flat before arriving in Galdakao at the base of El Vivero, and do your two laps there.

I would much rather, if the cities are the intention, finish in Donostia than Gasteiz on stage 20. They could even include the Alto de Aia, though it would likely be about 30-35km from the finish. Preferably an uphill finish on Monte Igueldo.

 

[Descender]

San Sebastian was not apparently an option since it's the most nationalistic big city and it already has a big race.

Bilbao and Vitoria were always going to host the finishes, it was mostly a political decision. As to why the stages are so lame, I'm inclined to think the reason is Unipublic fears there will be trouble and they'll have to be cancelled, and they don't want to risk cancelling the last important chance to change GC cause that would make the race lose legitimation. Something else could have been made out of the Bilbao stage, and in Vitoria they could have done an ITT. But again, they didn't want to place key stages in the Basque Country...

Other than that, I can't see how Unipublic would suddenly take a 180 degrees turn in their recent policy of keeping suspense till the very end.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Actually, let's make stage 20 a set of two semitappas. Cut a bit out of the loop around País Vasco and finish atop Urkiola after 100km or so.

Then, in the afternoon, set off a pursuit race. Not on GC time, that's too impractical at this stage of a GT. But on the time set in the morning semitappa.

That would hopefully give us a bit more than a parade from Urkiola to Gasteiz.

 

[The Hitch]

Whats Alto de Verano like? If its steep enough i can see people going on the descent, or even on the climb and trying to maintain on the descent.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Whats Alto de Verano like? If its steep enough i can see people going on the descent, or even on the climb and trying to maintain on the descent.

The opposite side of it is 4km @ 8,0%, but the side they're doing, from Galdakao, looks to me like the one via Ganguren, so roughly 5,5km @ 7,6%. There's another route listed on climbbybike at 4,4km @ 7,2% too, and that has a maximum of 14% near the bottom.

Edit: the Lezama side has 383m listed as the top, the Gallo side has 363m, and the Ganguren side has 441m (there's a bit into Ganguren itself that climbs beyond this, so more like 5km for this side of it).

The Vuelta site has 410m as the height of El Vivero, so I'd assume it's more likely to be the Ganguren side than the Gallo one.