Vuelta a España 2020 route revealed

The overall map of the 2020 Vuelta a Espana

(Image credit: LaVuelta)

A familiar cascade of uphill finishes will shape the Vuelta a España in 2020, with the summit finishes on the Tourmalet and the Angliru and a brutally difficult week-three time trial all but certain to decide the final outcome of the race.

The 2020 Vuelta’s eight summit finishes start with one of the Basque Country’s best-loved ascents, the Arrate, which traditionally hosts the ‘queen stage’ of the Vuelta al País Vasco, on stage 4. The last summit finish of the 2020 race will be on the technical, exposed slopes of La Covatilla in Spain’s far west, just 24 hours before the finish in Madrid.

If an unprecedented [for the Vuelta] finish on the Col du Tourmalet wasn’t daunting enough, the Pyrenean giant will be preceded by the first category Portalet, the special category Aubisque and the short, unclassified ascent of the Soulor. While the time cut could play a crucial role on such a short, hard stage, it also means that come the Vuelta’s second rest day [the first is for a transfer back to Spain from Holland], an out-and-out climber will surely be in the red jersey of race leader.

Stage 9 packs a monster mountain punch, but, globally, the Vuelta’s second week is by far the most difficult of the three. A brief but tricky incursion into the southern hills of the Basque Country on stage 10 precedes another difficult summit finish on stage 11, the Alto de Moncalvillo. This in turn sets the race up for a double whammy of Asturian mountain stages, which could be dubbed, indeed, ‘the Contador weekend.’

First of these northern Spanish summit finishes is stage 15’s Alto de la Farrapona – where Contador effectively sealed his overall win in the 2014 Vuelta ahead of Chris Froome – while stage 16 ends with Spain’s toughest single climb, the Angliru, where Contador pulled down the curtain on his career in spectacular style in 2017. If that wasn’t enough for any Contador nostalgists out there, the Angliru is also where the Spaniard effectively won the Vuelta in 2008, and he remains the only rider ever win there twice.

Crunch moment number three of the Vuelta is the time trial to Ezaro that opens the third week. The course first takes in rolling terrain on north-west Galicia’s coastline, and then rises up the brutally difficult two-kilometre ascent to the Ezaro dam. As the only individual time trial, this could be where the non-climbing specialists make some gains, but with such a difficult finale, it could well prove to be a stalemate.

Two stages taking the Vuelta in and out of Portuguese territory have more interest for their rarity than the terrain: this will be the first time that the Vuelta has visited Spain’s westerly neighbour since 1997. So it will be up to the Vuelta’s final summit finish of La Covatilla to confirm the overall leader’s status in the GC, although by then, with such a hard middle segment, the GC battle could well have been decided.

In 2019, only one stage through the sierras of Madrid was of this type, but this time out stages 5 to Lekunberri, 8 to Sabiñanigo, 10 to Villanueva de Valdegovia and 17 to Ourense all have at least one classified climb almost immediately preceding the finish. In fact, the notoriously difficult San Miguel de Aralar climb, just before the finish of stage 5 in Lekunberri, could well be where the Vuelta’s GC battle begins in earnest.

Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.