Chris Froome doesn’t always picture the climbs he’s done in stage races, but Manzaneda is printed in his memory for ever. We caught up with him on the phone on the eve of the return of La Vuelta to the ski station of Galicia thirteen years after he rode to the top wearing La Roja. On the previous stage, a 47km long time trial in Salamanca won by Tony Martin, he had moved from 14th overall into the lead of the general classification. It came as a huge surprise as he was fairly unknown and had received a last-minute call from Sky Procycling to substitute Norway’s Lars Petter Nordhaug and the British outfit had started La Vuelta third last in the opening team time trial in Benidorm.
“I remember my first ever day in the red jersey and in the lead of a Grand Tour”, Froome said. “Manzaneda is a tough climb! It goes up in different steps. The speed reduces every time we hit another steep part then it flattens then it’s steep again. I remember the main section was quite rolling and we were still a big bunch, but it exploded in the final two or three kilometers when it became steeper again.”
La Vuelta 2011 had had several overall leaders in the first nine stages: Jakob Fuglsang, Daniele Bennati, Pablo Lastras, Sylvain Chavanel, Joaquim “Purito” Rodriguez and Bauke Mollema. Many observers got to know Chris Froome as the lanky climber who rode at the front of the main peloton as a perfect gregario for Bradley Wiggins who eventually took over from him at Manzaneda.
“I had been asked to do the team job”, Froome recalled, “so I was pulling as much as I could for about 10km till 2km to go when the race went away from me. I handed the jersey to Bradley as per the plan.” The stage was won from the breakaway by France’s David Moncoutié and Sky Procycling eventually changed their plan to give the leadership to Froome in the third week of La Vuelta 2011.
“I’ve had better moments of shining during that Vuelta”, Froome continued, “at Peña Cabarga for example. At Manzaneda, I had done so much work at the front that I was not able to be there in the finale [he finished 27 seconds after the Wiggins group that also included defending champion Vincenzo Nibali]. But it’s definitely a day that stood up in my career. I’ve got the jersey somewhere, I’ve not put it up yet but I’ll do it one day.”
Interestingly, stage 11 from Verin to Manzaneda is the only one he raced in La Roja until he took it back for nineteen days in La Vuelta 17, all the way to the finish in Madrid. He’s been a major contender the eight times he rode the Spanish Grand Tour and was declared the winner of La Vuelta 2011 after the disqualification of Juanjo Cobo, so that’s the first of his seven Grand Tour victories (Tour de France in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 and Giro d’Italia 2018).
Still racing for Israel-Premier Tech at the age of 39, Froome took part in the recent Arctic Race of Norway. He watches La Vuelta 24 when he’s not busy training for the end of the season. “I believe the last 2km of Manzaneda will be decisive”, he concluded. “If [Primoz] Roglic goes from the bottom, he can make a difference.”
Stage 12 of La Vuelta 24 is the second in the history to Estación de Montaña de Manzaneda that was also the venue for a 7.3km uphill time trial of the 2021 CERATITIZ Challenge by La Vuelta won by Annemiek van Vleuten.
