- Sep 20, 2017
- 12,139
- 23,027
- 28,180
Welcome to my potentially last-ever stage or race thread.
I have spent countless hours working on these detailed stage breakdowns in the past few years, be it as a stage-by-stage analysis or as separate posts like with this Vuelta. And don't get me wrong - I have always enjoyed doing so, and in a different version of events I would have happily carried on.
But we aren't in a different version of events, and the reality is that, under the current moderation policy pushed by the admins, it is no longer possible to freely discuss cycling, because posts related exclusively to the Vuelta are getting deleted on a large scale. If I can't properly discuss the Vuelta in the threads I have spent hours writing the opening post of, then I don't know what the point of putting all that time into said opening posts is anymore. In addition, much of the content I go through in these preambles would technically not be allowed under the current rules.
For these reasons, I am not going to devote that time anymore so long as things are the way they are. I had this post fully finished, so I figured I might as well post it, but that will be that for now. If I don't have to worry about 100% cycling-related posts getting deleted anymore - whether that is on a Cyclingnews Forum where the admins have changed course, or on a different forum entirely - I might return to making these posts. But as things stand, it's over, and writing that does not make me feel defiant, but deflated.
Either way, the race is still more important than this monologue, so... let's get to it.
The penultimate mountain stage of the Vuelta. The MTF is the third-hardest climb in the race, but it coming the day after a well-designed mid-mountain stage is a bad idea and completely avoiding the litany of big climbs they could have put before it is a worse one.
Map and profile
Start
Another oversized transfer has taken the peloton from near the west coast to the easternmost town in Galicia, O Barco de Valdeorras. Unusually for northern Spain, this region was quite heavily developed in the Roman era, courtesy of the gold mines (among the largest in the empire) in the region they managed to deplete well before the Visigothic conquest of Iberia. The Romans also introduced viniculture to the region, and winemaking remains an important part of the local economy to this day. O Barco itself was certainly established by this point, but as it was not especially close to the main mines, it was a minor town at most. From the Middle Ages onwards, it was part of Galicia, being ruled by the same lords as Monforte de Lemos. At the time, the neighbouring Bierzo region (the area around Ponferrada) had something of an unclear status, with both Galician and Leonese influences. Political control fell to the latter after the Middle Ages. In the early 19th century, both regions became part of a separate Bierzo province, which was then broken up in 1833 with only Valdeorras on the Galician side of the border and the rest becoming part of León.
In the early 20th century, after the construction of the railway, slate mining arrived in the region. The industry rapidly grew from the 1960s onwards to the point where Spain now produces the vast majority of the world’s slate, with the Valdeorras region being the single most important mining area. This has led to great economic development in an era where most other rural areas went into decline, but also a landscape pockmarked by slate quarries. O Barco is not a town with much sporting heritage, and is as far as I can tell a completely blank slate where cycling is concerned.
(picture by Victor Fernández Salinas at Flickr)
The route
Unipublic have opted for the shortest possible route out of Galicia and into the Bierzo (now a part of León, in the sprawling region Castilla y León). After a minor climb (3.7k at 5.4% as per PCS), it’s a goodbye to Galicia and a hello to Castilla y León, which after sixteen-and-a-bit stages is the first Spanish region visited by the race that neither borders France nor sits on the north coast of Spain. The Bierzo is a transitional area in many ways, and language illustrates this: although Galician and the Leonese dialect of Asturian are both spoken in (part of) the region, Spanish is quite dominant here. After a valley section, we have about 40 kilometres with a lot of fairly straightforward climbing. Up first is the Alto/Altu de Ocero via Alto/Altu de Los Pinos. The image link on altimetrias.net is sadly broken, so Climbfinder it is.
Its easy descent backs directly into the next climb, Alto de Berlanga de Bierzo/Altu de Berllanga.
The next descent also has hardly any flat after it, and this time the climb is categorised. Unfortunately, Paso/Pasu de las Traviesas is pretty easy even for a cat. 3 – there just isn’t a whole lot going on before the MTF here.
By the time the ensuing descent is over, we are in an almost entirely Spanish-speaking area, and thus the multilingual toponyms are behind us. There is one more hill before we reach Ponferrada, capital of the Bierzo and the city paying for today’s MTF. It’s a small, but significant one: Alto de Compostilla was the final climb on the 2014 Worlds circuit.
The final climb is remote enough that we have another little hill, Alto de San Esteban, to take in before we even reach its start.
And then, it’s time for the real deal. This side of Alto de El Morredero is completely new to cycling, as the climb has been dormant for a while and part of the road was paved less than a decade ago. It is definitely better than the classic side: even without taking into account that the hard parts are in more convenient spots for attacking, it’s already harder courtesy of the hardest section simply being steeper. I’m somewhat surprised it’s only a cat. 1, although it might have something to do with Unipublic ‘forgetting’ to categorise the first ramp.
Finish
The finish is in the municipality of Ponferrada, so I guess I should talk a little about it. Of course, cycling fans will know it mainly for those 2014 World Championships, but there’s more to Ponferrada than bike racing. The city’s history starts 1082, when the bishop of Astorgá (in León proper) ordered the construction of a bridge to ease travel for pilgrims to Santiago. A church was added four years later, and soon a small town had sprang up. Ponferrada developed further after being given town rights in the late 12th century and the arrival of the Knights Templar around the same time. The Templars became the most powerful force in the town, with construction of the well-preserved castle starting as early as 1287. As discussed way back on stage 8, the Knights Templar were disbanded in the early 14th century. In Ponferrada, they seem to have surrendered peacefully, handing over control of the city and the castle to the Crown, who wound up handing it over to a Galician noble family. In 1486, Ponferrada reverted to the crown once more, marking one of the milestones in the establishment of Leonese hegemony in the Bierzo region.
In spite of the large castle, Ponferrada did not become a particularly large town, and was in fact not the capital of the Bierzo province during its short existence. The town slowly started to grow in the second half of the 19th century, and was legally made a city in 1908. In the Francoist period, the exploitation of the nearby iron and coal deposits was rapidly developed, and coupled with the development of associated industries, this meant that the population quintupled to 68000 people between 1940 and 2011.
As for Alto de El Morredero, the finish is located at a small former ski station, however the infrastructure was mothballed in 2008 before being dismantled entirely in 2020. The climb has been used as a MTF twice in this race, with Heras winning the first Vuelta stage of his career here in 1997 before Valverde emerged victorious in 2006. Vinokourov finished sixth, and that seemed like a confirmation that he wasn’t going to overcome the two minutes he had lost on La Covatilla… then the rest of the race happened. The climb was used once more after that, in the 2010 Vuelta a Castilla y León, but has been off the menu for fifteen years (although the Vuelta did finish in Ponferrada itself once more in 2011). Of the current field, only Mikel Landa and Michał Kwiatkowski were around for that last MTF… it was past time the sport returned here.
El Morredero is not the most photogenic spot, so enjoy a picture of Ponferrada itself instead (by Gabriel Fdez. at Flickr)
I have spent countless hours working on these detailed stage breakdowns in the past few years, be it as a stage-by-stage analysis or as separate posts like with this Vuelta. And don't get me wrong - I have always enjoyed doing so, and in a different version of events I would have happily carried on.
But we aren't in a different version of events, and the reality is that, under the current moderation policy pushed by the admins, it is no longer possible to freely discuss cycling, because posts related exclusively to the Vuelta are getting deleted on a large scale. If I can't properly discuss the Vuelta in the threads I have spent hours writing the opening post of, then I don't know what the point of putting all that time into said opening posts is anymore. In addition, much of the content I go through in these preambles would technically not be allowed under the current rules.
For these reasons, I am not going to devote that time anymore so long as things are the way they are. I had this post fully finished, so I figured I might as well post it, but that will be that for now. If I don't have to worry about 100% cycling-related posts getting deleted anymore - whether that is on a Cyclingnews Forum where the admins have changed course, or on a different forum entirely - I might return to making these posts. But as things stand, it's over, and writing that does not make me feel defiant, but deflated.
Either way, the race is still more important than this monologue, so... let's get to it.
The penultimate mountain stage of the Vuelta. The MTF is the third-hardest climb in the race, but it coming the day after a well-designed mid-mountain stage is a bad idea and completely avoiding the litany of big climbs they could have put before it is a worse one.
Map and profile
Start
Another oversized transfer has taken the peloton from near the west coast to the easternmost town in Galicia, O Barco de Valdeorras. Unusually for northern Spain, this region was quite heavily developed in the Roman era, courtesy of the gold mines (among the largest in the empire) in the region they managed to deplete well before the Visigothic conquest of Iberia. The Romans also introduced viniculture to the region, and winemaking remains an important part of the local economy to this day. O Barco itself was certainly established by this point, but as it was not especially close to the main mines, it was a minor town at most. From the Middle Ages onwards, it was part of Galicia, being ruled by the same lords as Monforte de Lemos. At the time, the neighbouring Bierzo region (the area around Ponferrada) had something of an unclear status, with both Galician and Leonese influences. Political control fell to the latter after the Middle Ages. In the early 19th century, both regions became part of a separate Bierzo province, which was then broken up in 1833 with only Valdeorras on the Galician side of the border and the rest becoming part of León.
In the early 20th century, after the construction of the railway, slate mining arrived in the region. The industry rapidly grew from the 1960s onwards to the point where Spain now produces the vast majority of the world’s slate, with the Valdeorras region being the single most important mining area. This has led to great economic development in an era where most other rural areas went into decline, but also a landscape pockmarked by slate quarries. O Barco is not a town with much sporting heritage, and is as far as I can tell a completely blank slate where cycling is concerned.
(picture by Victor Fernández Salinas at Flickr)
The route
Unipublic have opted for the shortest possible route out of Galicia and into the Bierzo (now a part of León, in the sprawling region Castilla y León). After a minor climb (3.7k at 5.4% as per PCS), it’s a goodbye to Galicia and a hello to Castilla y León, which after sixteen-and-a-bit stages is the first Spanish region visited by the race that neither borders France nor sits on the north coast of Spain. The Bierzo is a transitional area in many ways, and language illustrates this: although Galician and the Leonese dialect of Asturian are both spoken in (part of) the region, Spanish is quite dominant here. After a valley section, we have about 40 kilometres with a lot of fairly straightforward climbing. Up first is the Alto/Altu de Ocero via Alto/Altu de Los Pinos. The image link on altimetrias.net is sadly broken, so Climbfinder it is.
Its easy descent backs directly into the next climb, Alto de Berlanga de Bierzo/Altu de Berllanga.
The next descent also has hardly any flat after it, and this time the climb is categorised. Unfortunately, Paso/Pasu de las Traviesas is pretty easy even for a cat. 3 – there just isn’t a whole lot going on before the MTF here.
By the time the ensuing descent is over, we are in an almost entirely Spanish-speaking area, and thus the multilingual toponyms are behind us. There is one more hill before we reach Ponferrada, capital of the Bierzo and the city paying for today’s MTF. It’s a small, but significant one: Alto de Compostilla was the final climb on the 2014 Worlds circuit.
The final climb is remote enough that we have another little hill, Alto de San Esteban, to take in before we even reach its start.
And then, it’s time for the real deal. This side of Alto de El Morredero is completely new to cycling, as the climb has been dormant for a while and part of the road was paved less than a decade ago. It is definitely better than the classic side: even without taking into account that the hard parts are in more convenient spots for attacking, it’s already harder courtesy of the hardest section simply being steeper. I’m somewhat surprised it’s only a cat. 1, although it might have something to do with Unipublic ‘forgetting’ to categorise the first ramp.
Finish
The finish is in the municipality of Ponferrada, so I guess I should talk a little about it. Of course, cycling fans will know it mainly for those 2014 World Championships, but there’s more to Ponferrada than bike racing. The city’s history starts 1082, when the bishop of Astorgá (in León proper) ordered the construction of a bridge to ease travel for pilgrims to Santiago. A church was added four years later, and soon a small town had sprang up. Ponferrada developed further after being given town rights in the late 12th century and the arrival of the Knights Templar around the same time. The Templars became the most powerful force in the town, with construction of the well-preserved castle starting as early as 1287. As discussed way back on stage 8, the Knights Templar were disbanded in the early 14th century. In Ponferrada, they seem to have surrendered peacefully, handing over control of the city and the castle to the Crown, who wound up handing it over to a Galician noble family. In 1486, Ponferrada reverted to the crown once more, marking one of the milestones in the establishment of Leonese hegemony in the Bierzo region.
In spite of the large castle, Ponferrada did not become a particularly large town, and was in fact not the capital of the Bierzo province during its short existence. The town slowly started to grow in the second half of the 19th century, and was legally made a city in 1908. In the Francoist period, the exploitation of the nearby iron and coal deposits was rapidly developed, and coupled with the development of associated industries, this meant that the population quintupled to 68000 people between 1940 and 2011.
As for Alto de El Morredero, the finish is located at a small former ski station, however the infrastructure was mothballed in 2008 before being dismantled entirely in 2020. The climb has been used as a MTF twice in this race, with Heras winning the first Vuelta stage of his career here in 1997 before Valverde emerged victorious in 2006. Vinokourov finished sixth, and that seemed like a confirmation that he wasn’t going to overcome the two minutes he had lost on La Covatilla… then the rest of the race happened. The climb was used once more after that, in the 2010 Vuelta a Castilla y León, but has been off the menu for fifteen years (although the Vuelta did finish in Ponferrada itself once more in 2011). Of the current field, only Mikel Landa and Michał Kwiatkowski were around for that last MTF… it was past time the sport returned here.
El Morredero is not the most photogenic spot, so enjoy a picture of Ponferrada itself instead (by Gabriel Fdez. at Flickr)
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram