Vuelta a España stage 16 preview: Ambush country? After four-year hiatus, race returns to challenging series of minor climbs in Spain's far north-west

• Start time: 13:05 CET in Poio
• Finish time: 17:17 CET in Mos. Castro de Herville
• How to watch stage 16 of the Vuelta a España
• Favourites to win the stage: Tom Pidcock, João Almeida, Jonas Vingegaard, Santiago Buitrago

When the Vuelta a España embarks on stage 16 on the switchbacks of the narrow, twisting roads of southwestern Galicia on Tuesday, it'll be hard to forget the words of Superman Miguel Ángel López: 'Aquí me quedo... Gracias por todo. [I'm getting out now...Thanks for everything. ]'. López radioed those words to his Movistar team on the same terrain as Tuesday's stage during stage 20 of the 2021 Tour of Spain, letting them know without any advance warning that his race was over, just like that.

In what was easily the most dramatic moment of the 2021 Vuelta, and perhaps the entire season, López's mid-stage exit - later covered in extensive detail in the team documentary El día menos pensado [The least expected day] - came about not because he was injured or ill. It was simply because the Colombian climber was too angry to continue amid his team's apparent lack of support for him when he was gapped on the never-ending series of hills on the punishing roads.

It seemingly didn't matter to López that his all-but-guaranteed third place overall would thus no longer materialize, nor that he'd just won the hardest mountain stage of the Vuelta a couple of days before. The roads of Galicia were where it all ended for López: first his participation in the Vuelta and then, by mutual agreement, his contract with Movistar. Despite profuse apologies to fans and the team alike, he never raced with them again.

For the 2025 Vuelta a España peloton, López's underlying message still rings true on Tuesday's 167.9-kilometre stage from Poio to Castro de Herville: Galicia is classic ambush hill territory, where teammates' support on such dangerously varied and tricky terrain is critical. Lose contact with your squad at the wrong moment and you could - like López - end up losing a whole lot more than you bargained for, right down to the race itself.

"How would I define that route we've chosen? For anybody who doesn't know the terrain, it's a trap," former Tour de France and local Galician star Oscar Pereiro told Cyclingnews in 2021 after designing the route that became López's undoing.

"If it rains, it'll be chaos. And if it's sunny, there's terrain to spare for team leaders to suddenly find themselves isolated at any point.

"I think it's a stage where tactically you could pull off some real master strokes. To help your readers understand what it's like, I'd compare it to the last 100 kilometres of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but harder."

This time around, the last and most critical part of the stage 16 route is identical to four years ago, using the same last two category 2 climbs, the Alto de Prado and the Alto de Herville. The Prado's hardest part is a 500-metre ramp at 20%, while the Alto de Herville, according to Pereiro, is a climb of two distinct halves.

"The first half is like a series of stairs: a hard pull up, then a rest, and then another hard pull up, then a rest.

"Then there's an area of false flat, and the last segment is pretty straightforward. It's probably the least hard climb of the day. But after what's already been tackled, it'll hurt."

What precedes the last two climbs of stage 16 is almost equally as hard as the route in 2021. This time, the main challenge will be the fearsomely irregular category 1 Alto de Groba - 11.5 kilometres long, with gradients swinging from 5% to 15%.

It's a climb that will be familiar to riders like Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), who won there in the 2024 edition of O Gran Camiño, and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), who took third behind the Dane. Fans with longer memories may recollect that Nico Roche won on the same climb, but with a different approach road, back on stage 2 of the 2013 Vuelta.

Given that the 2024 Gran Camiño stage was reduced to just one ascent rather than two due to very poor weather, neither the Dane nor the Colombian is familiar with racing down the twisting corkscrew of a descent, where gaps can open up just as quickly as on the way up.

"The descents on the stage are as complicated as the climbs in their own way. You can't just ease back and fuel up on them. They're fiddly and variable, sometimes very narrow, sometimes suddenly broadening out, " Pereiro, born and bred in the town of Mos at the foot of the final climb, told Cyclingnews, making them perfect terrain for ambushes, too.

The notoriously labyrinthine nature of the roads in this part of Galicia makes a reconnaissance very important, and Vingegaard told reporters on Sunday evening that he would spend some of Monday's rest day riding up the climbs the race will revisit on Tuesday.

"It's a really tough stage," Jai Hindley, fourth overall, told reporters for his part during the rest day. "It's much harder than people think."

Back in 2021, amidst all the furore of the López controversy, it was barely noticed that the stage went to France's Clément Champoussin, with race leader Primož Roglič dropping all his rivals by a handful of seconds to further cement his overall advantage before the final time trial in Santiago de Compostela, which the Slovenian also won.

However, four years on, the main favourite on such an explosive final ascent could well be a rider with a tried-and-tested uphill sprint like Tom Pidcock. But whoever emerges as the winner of the day, the inherent risks of a sudden split in the group all the way through the second half of the stage could well make the build-up just as interesting and important to the final climb itself - as Miguel Ángel López found out to his considerable cost, back in the Vuelta in 2021.

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Climbs

• Alto de San Antoñino (cat. 3) km. 82.9
• Alto de Groba (cat. 1) km. 109.8
• Alto de Prado (cat. 2) km. 144.5 - time bonus
• Mos. Castro de Herville (cat. 2) km. 167.9

Sprints

• Couso, km. 140.2