The route of the Vuelta a España 2022 was presented Thursday afternoon in Madrid. On August 19, the riders start with a team time trial of about 23 kilometers in Utrecht, after which the Vuelta ends on September 11 in the Spanish capital Madrid. Cycling-Classics.com presents the preview route Vuelta 2022!
Preview Route Vuelta 2022
The three-week stage race opens with a team time trial in Utrecht. There also arrives the first stage-in-line. This stage starts in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and then goes via the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and Amersfoort to Utrecht. West Brabant is the backdrop for the last Vuelta stage on Dutch soil. Start and finish are in Breda. En route, cycling towns such as Chaam, Dongen, Rucphen and Etten-Leur will be visited.
Spectacle in cycling-crazy Basque Country
Next, there’s a real travel day on the program to get to Spain, to be precise the Spanish autonomous region of the Basque Country. The first stage on Basque territory takes place between Vitoria Gasteiz and Laguardia and is tailored to the attackers, with a second and a third category climb along the way. Stage five starts from Irún and finishes in the famous city of Bilbao. Once again, stage hijackers will be in for a treat, as five shorter climbs loom between the start and finish, with another second category climb in the deep finale.
Climbing in Asturias
The third Basque stage ends in Cantabria, west of the Basque country, and is without a doubt the toughest. Indeed, the finish is on the flanks of the Pico Jano, with strips up to 13%. What follows is a difficult transition stage from Camargo to Cistierna and two very hard mountain stages in the Asturias region. The Alto de El Angliru will not be part of the race, but finishes on the unpublished Collado Foncuaya and Los Praeres will shake up the classification.
After a second rest day, it’s all hands on deck again for the classification riders, since the organization has a flat time trial of just over thirty kilometers between Elche and Alicante. It is also the last time in this Vuelta. After this trial against the clock, the sprinters will once again get a chance to sprint for the flowers in Cabo de Gata. However, the sprint party will be short-lived since the twelfth stage finishes on the flanks of Peñas Blancas.
Tough final week
The stage hijackers will circle the thirteenth stage, from Ronda to Montilla, in red in their agenda. There may not be any serious obstacles on the route, but the course is anything but flat. There will be no flat roads at all in stages fourteen and fifteen. The riders are now in the extreme south of Spain, in the region of Andalusia, for mountain stages to Sierra de la Pandera and Sierra Nevada, a popular place for cyclists to do altitude training.
After yet another showdown between the classification riders in Sierra Nevada and a third and final rest day, the riders begin the final week of the Vuelta. The organization grants the riders some respite, since the sixteenth stage to Tomares is almost flat. Then the fun stops, however, because in stages seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty it is climbing again. The eighteenth stage finishes on the Alto del Piornal and also in the twentieth stage the finish is on a real col: the Puerto de Navacerrada.
Beside this preview route Vuelta 2022, more information about the Vuelta a España 2022? Read on!