2021 Vuelta a España to start inside Burgos Cathedral

The 2021 Vuelta a España will start from inside the Burgos Cathedral with an individual time trial around the Spanish city on August 14 next year, organisers Unipublic announced on Thursday.

The riders will exit the cathedral through its main entrance and then complete what race director Javier Guillén described as an "urban circuit" of Burgos to showcase the "monumental character" of the Burgos province's capital city in northern Spain.

No distance has yet been shared for the time trial, but the organisation said in a press release that the course would pass the city's castle before finishing back at the cathedral.

The Spanish Grand Tour is set to return to an August start date in 2021 – having been postponed until October this year due to the coronavirus – and will celebrate 800 years since construction was started on the Burgos Cathedral in 1221.

To present the opening stage of the 2021 Vuelta, Angel Fuentes of Spanish ProTeam Burgos BH was on hand on Thursday to roll down a mocked-up start ramp inside the entrance of the cathedral. The Mayor of Burgos, Daniel de la Rosa, added that using the monument to host the start of the Vuelta was "exceptional".

The shortened, rescheduled 2020 edition of the Vuelta is currently ongoing, reaching its halfway mark with the conclusion of stage 9 in Aguilar de Campoo on Thursday, with Ineos Grenadiers' Richard Carapaz – the winner of the 2019 Giro d'Italia – continuing to lead defending Vuelta champion Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) by 13 seconds.