Vuelta a Espana Stage 18 - Preview

This stage is almost a carbon copy of the penultimate leg of the 2015 edition when Fabio Aru took the leader's red jersey from a tiring Tom Dumoulin and, the next day, claimed his first Grand Tour victory in Madrid. Although the start and finish towns are different, the four first-category climbs are the same, and could well produce another notable upheaval at the top of the leaderboard.

From the start in Colmenar Viejo, the riders will quickly reach the foot of the Puerto de Navacerrada, a steady ascent of 11.8 kilometres that rises to an altitude of 1,860 metres at a little more than six per cent. Later on, this will be the descent that leads into the finish at Becerril de la Sierrra.

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Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014). 

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