There will be just one flat stage at the 2024 Vuelta a España, with the mountains set to take centre stage at the Grand Tour once again.
The full route for the 2024 edition of the race was unveiled on Tuesday night in Madrid’s Marriott Auditorium Hall.
It will be bookended by two short individual time trials - totalling 34km - beginning on 17 August in Lisbon, Portugal, and finishing in the Spanish capital on 8 September.
Announcing the route on X, the official race account wrote that there will be only “1 flat stage” - news that will be unwelcome to the peloton’s sprinters - which falls on day five into Sevilla.
🔥 #LaVuelta24 🔥🛣 1 etapa llana / 1 flat stage⛰ 13 etapas de media y alta montaña / 13 hilly and mountain stages〰️5 etapas onduladas (2 de ellas con final en alto) / 5 hilly stages (2 of them with high finish)⏱ 2 CRI / 2 ITT🏁 3.265 km pic.twitter.com/4rRLH32d8QDecember 19, 2023
Otherwise, it is the mountains that will once again star at the Vuelta a España. The first summit finish will come on day four, with a final ascent of the category-one Pico Villuercas in the centre of the country.
The race will then travel south, with mid-mountains stages in Andalucía, including three category-one climbs on day nine from Motril to Granada.
From there, the riders will make a 1,000km transfer to Galica in the north-west of Spain.
As the race then makes its way along the country’s northern ridge, the mountains keep coming, with the first especial (HC) summit finish on stage 15 to Cuitu Negru, where the gradients reach almost 30%.
The iconic Lagos de Covadonga will return after a two-year absence on stage 16 to give back-to-back especial finales, albeit either side of a rest day. The 22km-long Asturian ascent hosted a dramatic finale of the Vuelta Femenina this year, with Movistar’s Annemiek van Vleuten hanging onto the red jersey by just nine seconds.
A few easier days follow, before two final tests for the GC riders.
Stages 19 and 20 will again feature consecutive summit finishes, this time on the Alto de Moncalvillo, where then Jumbo-Visma rider Primož Roglič last won in 2020, and the Picón Blanco, the site of Rein Taaramäe's (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) victory in 2021.
There will be no procession for the red jersey in Madrid on the final day, with the winner decided instead in a 22km individual time trial.
This year’s edition of the race was won by Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma), the first American Grand Tour winner in a decade.
