The 2024 edition of the Tour Colombia 2.1 will feature a stage finish in Egan Bernal’s hometown of Zipaquirá and a summit finish atop the Alto del Vino ahead of the final stage in Bogotá.
The race returns to the UCI calendar on February 6-11 after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a subsequent lack of funding. In October, the Colombian Cycling Federation and the Colombian Sports Ministry confirmed that the event would be revived for 2024.
The route of the fourth edition of the Tour Colombia was unveiled on Tuesday, with the race set to take place in the departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca before the finish in the capital city.
The opening stage features roads that will be familiar from the 1995 World Championships, with the race setting out from Paipa and taking in five laps of a hilly circuit ahead of the finish in Duitama.
Stage 2 again sets out from Paipa, and the opening kilometres follow the route of the 1995 Worlds time trial to Tunja before the race continues towards the finish in Santa Rosa de Viterbo.
The race remains in Boyacá for stage 3, which sees the peloton take in nine laps of a 12.5km circuit around Tunja.
At 188km, stage 4 is the longest of the race, and it brings the riders from Paipa into the department of Cundinamarca for a stage finish in Zipaquirá, where Bernal was so memorably welcomed home as Tour de France champion in 2019.
The Ineos rider has yet to confirm his race programme for 2024, but he recently signalled his preference to start his campaign at the National Championships and the Tour Colombia.
The organisation has described the penultimate day as the etapa reina, the queen stage, with a summit finish on the 2,800m-high Alto del Vino.
The sixth and final stage brings the Tour Colombia into Bogotá by way of the Alto de Patios, and the route takes in the city’s main thoroughfare of Carrera Séptima before a finish in the Parque Nacional.
Bernal won the first edition in 2018, when the event was known as Colombia Paz y Oro and the route was centred on the Valle del Cauca department. The 2019 event, held primarily in Antioquia, was won by Miguel Ángel López, while Sergio Higuita led a sweep of the podium for EF in 2020, when the race was also held in Boyacá and Cundinamarca.
The participating teams for the 2024 Tour Colombia 2.1 have yet to be announced, but Portuguese media has reported that Movistar will skip the Volta ao Algarve in order to focus their attention on the Colombian race.
It is not clear if Nairo Quintana, who rejoined Movistar this winter, will ride the Tour Colombia after he indicated that he would start his 2024 season at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana (January 31-February 4). Quintana missed the 2023 season when he was unable to find a team in the aftermath of his positive tests for Tramadol on the 2022 Tour de France.
In 2020, six WorldTour teams participated in the Tour Colombia, including Ineos, QuickStep and UAE Team Emirates, who had also lined out at the Vuelta a San Juan in Argentina the previous month. The Vuelta a San Juan is not on the UCI calendar in 2024 and it will instead be held as a local event.
