Froome faces ‘Hell’ in glory bid
Fearsome climb stands in way of historic win Millar recalls protest at cycling ‘Apocalypse Now’
It has been described as “barbarous”, “monstrous”, “Hell on a bike”. It divides opinion like almost no other climb in professional cycling. It was, infamously, the subject of a one-man protest back in 2002, when the British rider David Millar stopped short of the finish line, tore off his race number and declared: “We are not animals and this is inhuman.”
Today it stands between Chris Froome and history.
The Alto de l’angliru – on whose steeps slopes the 2017 Vuelta will, after three long weeks, finally be decided today – has only been part of the grand tour rota since 1999. But it is fair to say its impact over the past 18 years has been massive.
In an era when races were competing to find ever more difficult climbs (for ever more juiced-up riders), the Angliru set a new benchmark for insanity. Although the Giro d’italia responded with the Monte Zoncolan in 2003 – Froome’s choice this week as the toughest climb on the grand tour rota – the Angliru continued, and continues, to be the source of much angst.
Some feel it has become an indispensable part of Spain’s national tour; a torturous test of the lungs and legs. “A Vuelta a Espana without L’angliru is like a marathon of only five kilometres,” Enrique Franco, the former manager of the Vuelta, once opined.
Others are of the firm opinion that such climbs have no place in professional cycling; that instead of encouraging racing, they nullify it. Or encourage cheating. Vicente Belda, former manager of the Kelme team, once said (apparently without irony): “What do they want? Blood? They ask us to stay clean and avoid doping and then they make the riders tackle this kind of barbarity.”
One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that it is tough. If Froome is to become the first Briton ever to claim the Vuelta crown, and the first of any nationality to win it straight after winning the Tour de France, he is going to have to work for it. The 32-year-old still has a healthy 1min 37sec advantage over Vincenzo Nibali [Bahrain-merida] after they marked each other on the road to Gijon yesterday. But that can be easily lost on the Angliru.
“It’s a beast,” Millar told The Telegraph Cycling Podcast this week, recalling the 2002 protest for which he was thrown off the race. The irony is, Millar was not actually protesting against the climb. It was the descent leading to it which the riders had flagged up as dangerous, that enraged him most. He crashed three times in wet, slippery conditions and was hit by a car. He then had to make his way up the Angliru, bloodied and separated from the fans by “riot fences” that were there so they could not help to push the riders. “It was like a cycling Apocalypse Now,” Millar recalled.
“One fan managed to get out to me and started pushing. But the Guardia Civil pinned this guy up against a fence by his neck. I remember going nuts. I thought at that point, ‘This isn’t cycling.’”