Thirty years after its final summit end on the Alt de Montserrat, the 2025 Volta a Catalunya will return to what’s arguably the nation’s most emblematic ascent for a full-scale mountain battle.
The final time the Volta visited the Alt de Montserrat was in June 1995, with a victory for French champion Laurent Jalabert on stage 1, within the course of permitting ‘Ja-ja’ to clinch what proved to be an unbreakable maintain on the general lead.
The Volta triumph was all a part of Jalabert’s best-ever season, claiming Milan-San Remo, Il Lombardia and the Vuelta a España in the identical season, in addition to placing five-times Tour winner Miguel Indurain up towards the ropes in a memorable ambush that July within the Tour en path to Mende airfield.
Not like 30 years in the past and given the very balanced nature of the ends in the opening mountain stage on Wednesday, it is by no means sure whoever wins within the shadow of the traditional monastery on the Montserrat this yr will take the Volta a Catalunya outright. Might it’s new race chief Juan Ayuso (UAE Workforce Emirates-XRG) or high rival and second-placed Primož Roglič (Purple Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe)? Will a brand new contender rise to the event?
Besides, Thursday’s ascent, ranked class 1 and totalling 8.8 kilometres at 6.6% is difficult sufficient to make sure that whoever is available in as GC chief for the Volta’s showdown stage on Saturday can have proved they’ve some critical climbing credentials.
Whereas the one different categorized ascent of stage 4 is the class 2 Turó del Puig, practically 60 kilometres from the end, all the day has over 3,000 metres of vertical climbing. The previous day’s 5,000 metres of vertical climbing by means of the Pyrenees will doubtless have a knock-on impact on riders’ ranges of tiredness, too. As Mikel Landa, second general final yr, informed Cyclingnews, “the stage is certainly laborious sufficient for there to be some good GC gaps”.
“The final climb is kind of lengthy, even when it would not have any actually tough gradients. It isn’t a Pyrenean climb, but it surely’s very a lot within the line of these lengthy, regular climbs you get in these mountains within the Tour de France,” Sergi López-Egea, a Catalan journalist with El Periódico de Catalunya who reported on the 1995 Volta and who has been up the Montserrat climb each by bike and by automobile on a number of events, informed Cyclingnews.
The most recent race content material, interviews, options, opinions and skilled shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
“The riders will get into a gradual tempo, they will not want to make use of any of these actually excessive gears which might be so widespread within the peloton now. The primary climb itself is broad and well-surfaced as a result of so many buses go as much as the monastery on the high.
“It is a very well-known climb right here in Catalunya, the entire space round Montserrat is sort of a ‘temple of Catalan cyclotourism’.”
The Volta a Catalunya’s summit end at Montserrat varieties a part of the millennium celebrations for the monastery on the high of the climb, however biking is way from being the one sport with robust connections to one of many nation’s most vital non secular websites. As López de Egea factors out, again when Catalunya’s premier soccer facet, FC Barcelona, was coached by legendary Dutch coach Johan Cruyff, if the workforce gained the league or every other vital championship – as occurred loads again then – the gamers would have a good time by biking up the climb in homage to the Madonna of Monserrat, the patron saint of the nation.
Other than the Volta Montserrat has been tackled by different races, most not too long ago by the Vuelta a España in 2019 as a part of a stage that completed in a bunch dash some kilometres additional on, within the metropolis of Igualada.
“Nevertheless it’s principally very well-known for cyclo-tourists as a result of there are many gravel tracks and sideroads resulting in the principle one,” López de Egea stated. “And one among Catalunya’s most well-known cyclo-tourist MTB occasions, La Portals, takes place on it yearly. On Thursday, although, I am predicting a distinct type of battle – one between the 2 high riders at La Moliina, [Primoz] Roglič and [race leader Juan] Ayuso.”
Picture 1 of 1
