The clock is ticking on the 2021 Vuelta
In 2007, Denis Menchov effectively won the Vuelta a España thanks to a stunning mid-race time trial performance on a singularly dull section of motorway somewhere in the featureless steppes of eastern Spain, killing the GC. It has felt since that organisers Unipublic have been hell-bent on ensuring such an uneventful race never happened again. For most of the last 14 years, the Vuelta route has been packed with a relentless series of mountaintop finishes and punchy, steep goattrack climbs. The race has all but abandoned the flat, interminable first-week grinds across central Spain that used to make the Vuelta so easy to identify, and so visually dull. There has been the occasional decisive time trial since - Primož Rogličc’s victory in Pau in 2019 being one such example. But deliberately making a race against the clock the Vuelta’s main challenge had apparently been unofficially vetoed.
Until now, that is. The 2021 Vuelta route features an undulating 33.7km-long time trial on stage 21. According to route co-designer Fernando Escartín, “The time trial has been deliberately placed right at the end, to see if we can have a Vuelta where the overall winner isn’t decided until the last possible moment on the last stage of all.”
Changes of leader on the last day of grand tours thanks to time trials, particularly the shorter versions that have featured in recent editions of the Giro d’Italia, are far from uncommon. In a recent time trial in 2017, a 29.3km effort between Monza and Milan, Tom Dumoulin was able to oust Nairo Quintana from the top spot overall. Tao Geoghegan Hart took the race lead on the shorter final-day TT of last year’s race.
It’s been a similar story in the Vuelta’s previous two final-stage TTs of over 30 kilometres, in 2001 and 2002, which saw climbers Óscar Sevilla and Roberto Heras lose their race lead to Ángel Casero and Aitor González respectively. As for the Tour de France, you could - at a pinch - argue that last year’s dramatic upending of the applecart for Rogličc wasn’t truly last-minute because the Planche des Belles Filles TT was on the penultimate stage. But in that case, the Tour’s most recent comparable effort, back in 1989 on the streets of Paris, is a more than
- Fernando Escartin
adequate reminder of how thrilling last-day time trials can be.
What makes it even clearer the organisers want the 2021 Vuelta to be decided as late as possible is also the inclusion of a new monster Asturian summit finish on stage 18, the 15km Gamoniteiru. On top of that, 24 hours earlier the riders will have had to tackle the Lagos de Covadonga, one of Spain’s hardest and most iconic summit finishes. The crux of the race comes in these two stages.
The number of likely bunch sprint stages, compared to the 2020 route, has doubled from three to six, and four of them appear in the first nine days as the race wends towards the Mediterranean coastline from the northern cathedral city of Burgos. The final bunch sprint stage into Madrid is missing for the first time in seven years. But that more straightforward first segment - which could make the Vuelta more appealing to riders coming from the Olympics - could see a much more traditional-looking early half, and a slower build to that final week.
Assuming the flat stages don’t morph into echelons as the peloton crosses central Spain, other days when the GC racers could take a break include stage 20’s Lombardialike mixture of punchy, mediummountain climbs and tricky descents in northwest Galicia. Two days of challenging late ascents and fast drops to the finish on stage 10 and stage 12 should liven up the second “The TT is at the end, to see if we can have a Vuelta where the winner isn’t decided until the last second” week for breaks and speculative GC action.
For major GC challenges, the stage 9 climb to Velefique in the semi-desert sierras of Almería could be one important flashpoint, the one stage outside Asturias with over 4,000m of vertical ascent. Nor can the first of the 2021 Vuelta’s eight summit finishes, on stage 3 to Picón Blanco, be ignored. “That’s going to make it extremely difficulty to calculate your form,” warned Miguel Indurain. “Do you come into the Vuelta firing on all cylinders and risk running out of energy for that final TT?”
After last year’s disappointment in the Tour, the Vuelta’s double defending champion Roglic knows only too well what Indurain means.