Plot, continuation and end. We have known since the beginning of December that this 90th edition of the Vuelta would start from the Italian region of Piedmont, which will host the first three stages in their entirety from August 23. We now know the rest of the route, presented Thursday evening at the Palacio Municipal IFEMA in Madrid, and it has some originalities, in geographical terms.
Passage to France
After Italy, the peloton will make a short one-day stop in France, climbing the Montgenèvre and Lautaret passes, well known by the Tour de France, before descending towards Voiron, a town of 20,000 inhabitants in the Isère, which will become the 15th French city in history to host a stage of the Vuelta.
The riders will then board a plane to head to Spain – transfers increasingly criticized for their carbon footprint – to compete the next day in the fifth stage, a 20-kilometer team time trial in Figueres. , a city known for housing the Salvador Dali museum. This very spectacular collective exercise has become rare on the “Grand Tours”.
The Angliru on the menu
The next day, it’s time for the first major mountain stage which will arrive in Andorra, the fourth state through which the Vuelta will pass in 2025. For its 90th anniversary, the Tour of Spain wants “pay homage to tradition by including some passes that have marked its history“, like Morredero, Cerler or Valdezcaray, notes its director Javier Guillen.
More recent, but already cult, climbs are also part of the menu, including the terrifying Angliru, one of the most difficult climbs in the world, which will await the riders during the 13th stage, the longest of the 2025 edition.
So, “Pogi”, seduced?
Four days from the end, Valladolid, the finish city of the first stage of the first Vuelta in 1935, will host a potentially decisive individual time trial. Knowing that a final mountain stage going up to Bola del Mundo is planned for the day before the arrival in Madrid, September 14.
The organizers probably hope that this route will please Tadej Pogacar. The Slovenian, third in 2019 for his first and only participation, said he would wait for the routes of the Vuelta and the Giro d’Italia, revealed in January, to decide which of these two “Grand Tours” he will compete in 2025, next to the unmissable Tour de France.
Prudhomme on the Vingegaard-Pogacar duel: “I believed in the Lioran seesaw theory”
Video credit: Eurosport
