Vuelta a España meets Liège-Bastogne-Liège - stage 20 preview

Stage 20: Manzanares El Real to Guadarrama

Date: September 16

Distance: 208km

Stage type: Hilly

From Andorra to Javalambre to the Tourmalet and the Angliru, the 2023 Vuelta a España has had the race’s usual swathe of mountain stages aplenty. But for its final full-blown GC stage 20 on Saturday, it’s taking a radically different slant.

Rather than a daunting summit finish or even an individual time trial, no climb on Saturday’s 202-kilometre trek through the sierras west of Madrid is ranked as more difficult than category 3. However, when you put ten category 3 ascents into what is the longest stage of the Vuelta, then suddenly, it becomes a whole different ball game, particularly when that stage comes just 24 hours before the end of the entire Vuelta.

Stage 20 of the 2023 Vuelta, running from the small towns of Manzanares el Real to Guadarrama west of the capital Madrid, contains the most vertical climbing of the entire race, with 4,270 metres of ascending. Rain is forecast for the whole day, too, on terrain that rarely drops below 1,000 metres above sea level. 

The high mountains may be finished within the Vuelta then, but the medium mountains could do some real damage, even in a GC seemingly as well-established as in this year’s race.

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Rarely visited by even local pros who look for longer, better-known ascents in the Madrid sierras like Navacerrada or Cotos, “Saturday’s climbs could easily feature in a Classic,” former National Time Trial Champion Raúl García Pierna (Kern Pharma), who hails from the local town of Tres Cantos, tells Cyclingnews. 

“They’re not very long; they mostly take about 10 minutes or so to climb, but what matters is that they come in really quick succession, without any breaks at all.”

“So whatever strength riders have left is going to be really important, logically, but it’s also a stage where strategic thinking will count as well. Riders are going to get worn down really quickly. It’s going to be a hard, hard day.”

The Vuelta has had this type of ‘Liège-Bastogne-Liège’ stage on its second last day in the recent past. In 2021, former Tour de France champion Oscar Pereiro designed one such stage through his native region of Galicia for the Vuelta  - which also had 4,200 metres of vertical climbing.  

The dramatic abandon of Miguel Angel Superman López after the Colombian fell out big time mid-stage with his squad, Movistar, logically overshadowed events on the road. But while the TV cameras were busy filming López marching up and down outside his Movistar team car, seemingly glued to his mobile phone and ignoring his director’s pleas to get back on his bike, the radically undulating terrain caused some interesting, if largely unnoticed, GC attacks to materialize as well.

While road surfaces in rural Galicia are notoriously poor, that’s not the case in the much more well-off region of Madrid, where stage 20 of the 2023 Vuelta takes place.

They’re twisting roads but well-tarmacked,” García Pierna continues. “Though I’m told the last climb, which goes through the town of El Escorial, is very hard, too.”

Retired rider and Movistar director Pablo Lastras, who grew up in the sierras of Madrid, confirms that the final ascent of stage 20, 4.6 kilometres long and with a percentage of 6.6%, “is extremely difficult, coming just a few kilometres before the finish, too.

“Even the other climbs, in general, aren’t too hard, just between 5% and 7%. We’re talking about the last full-on stage of the Vuelta, and they’re packed together.  The combination of those two means strategically it’s going to be very complicated,” Lastras tells Cyclingnews.

“The teams are going to have a really tough time defending a lead because if their riders get dropped on one climb, they won’t have time to get back on before the next climb comes up.”

“The race is going to be bastante loco [quite mad], and there’s loads of terrain for attacking. If you want to move up on the overall, you’ll have your chance. I like that.”

”The other big factor is the weather,” Lastras says. “The race is at a high altitude all day, and if it turns rainy, things could get really cold. It’s not going to be that simple for anybody if they forget to eat or don’t have the right kind of rain gear. The wind won’t be a factor, though, because the roads go through a lot of well-protected, wooded areas.” 

Stage 20 of the 2022 Vuelta, where Remco Evenepoel sealed his overall victory, was held in the sierras of Madrid further north but held no surprises. However, on this one, Lastras says, just the opposite could happen.

“Even if they used some of these roads in the 2023 National Championships, there’s a whole area around the Robledondo climb [cat.3, km.147.1] which is really undulating and difficult and which is not nearly so well-known by most of the riders in the peloton,” he explains.

“Everything’s calculated down to the last detail in cycling these days. But this is a stage that could see ambushes emerge all over the place, and that carries its own, very real, challenges.”