Spanish media “leaks” details of Spanish tour route on the eve of the official presentation
The 2012 edition of the Vuelta a España will feature no less than ten summit finishes, according to Spanish sportspaper AS. The official route will be presented by organiser Unipublic in Pamplona, Navarre, this afternoon, but AS claims to have advance knowledge of what looks like a very hard course.
The ten uphill finishes will consist of six in the high mountains, which reportedly consist of Valdezcaray on stage four, the Coll de la Gallina on stage eight, Ancares on stage 14, Lagos de Covadonga on stage 15, Cuitu Negro on stage 16, and the Bola del Mundo on the twentieth, and penultimate stage; just as it did at the end of the 2010 edition of the race.
In addition to the high mountaintops, stage three is said to finish on the first category climb to the Santuario de Arrate, while stage 17 will finish on the second category Fuente Dé. Stages six and twelve will also finish atop the short steep climbs to Fuerte Rapitán in Jaca, and the Mirador de Ézaro respectively.
Of the ten summits, only Arrate, Valdezcaray, Lagos and Bola del Mundo have been visited by the Vuelta before.
The race will start in Pamplona on August 18th, and the reported position of the mountain stages means that the whole of the race would take place in the northern part of the country. According to AS, the finish in Madrid will be the southernmost part of the race, meaning that it will completely miss out the regions of Alicante, Murcia, Granada, Jaén, Andalucia and Toledo, where the 2011 race spent its first week.