Bernardo Ruiz, the oldest living winner of a Grand Tour (one hundred years old on 8 January 2025), doesn't miss the daily live broadcasts of La Vuelta or the evening highlights of each stage from the comfort of his sofa in Orihuela (Valencian Community). The fifteen or so winners of La Vuelta who made their way to the Spanish capital to celebrate the ninety-year anniversary of the event (the first edition was won in 1935 by Belgium’s Gustaaf Deloor) had a special place in their hearts for the winner in 1948 and for Angelino Soler, 85, who remains the youngest rider to have won the final overall classification (at the age of 21 in 1961). Agustin Tamames, 80, who triumphed almost fifty years ago (in 1975), loved the reunion in Madrid with his successors, the most famous of them in Spain being Pedro Delgado and Alberto Contador.
On this anniversary, La Vuelta wants to bring back to life some of the climbs that have made history, some of which were on the edge of being forgotten. The Angliru was the obvious choice, as it symbolises the modern La Vuelta. The giant of Asturias, which has been climbed nine times since José Maria Jiménez’s victory in 1999 and has made Alberto Contador a prestigious victor on two occasions (in 2008 and on the eve of his retirement in 2017), will take place in the second week (stage 13), in a sequence identical to that of 2020 with La Farrapona (stage 14), the scene of another Contador feat (in 2014).
While the first of the ten summit finishes is inevitably unprecedented, as La Vuelta will be visiting Italy for the first time, all the others represent familiar territories. However, the race has not returned to Pal (Andorra) since Igor Anton’s success in 2010, to Cerler since 2007 even though it is one of the most frequent mountain finishes in history (11 times), and to Valdezcaray since Australian Simon Clarke, who is still in the pelotons, initiated his quest of the King of the Mountains competition in 2012, Larra Belagua since Remco Evenepoel took his revenge the day after he lost ground at the Tourmalet in 2023, and the Alto de El Morredero (Ponferrada) since Alejandro Valverde, another Spanish great, won a stage there in 2006.
The last major fight for GC will have a special flavour with the spectacular finish on the cement road of La Bola del Mundo, the summit most recognisable from Madrid by its television aerials. It’s where Vincenzo Nibali and Alberto Contador sealed their respective final victories back in 2010 and 2012. Culminating at an altitude of 2,258 metres in the Sierra de Guadarrama, it will be the highest peak of La Vuelta 25 and consequently called “Cima Alberto Fernandez”. In addition, the route offers between four and six possibilities for bunch sprints, including the one that will award the first red jersey (La Roja) in Novara, the birthplace of 1982 world champion Giuseppe Saronni. Two time trials for specialists are on the menu, a team time trial (20km, stage 5) around Figueres, in Catalunya, to mark the race’s debut on Iberian soil, and an individual time trial (25km, stage 18) in Valladolid, very similar to the one won in 2023 by Filippo Ganna ahead of Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic.
But the outcome of La Vuelta 25 could just as well be decided on stages of medium difficulty: in the vicinity of Bilbao (stage 11) with the Pike climb and a double ascent of El Vivero that promises immense Basque fervour, the following day with the Collada de Brenes, a first category climb located 23km from the finish in Los Corrales de Buelna, in Cantabria, and on the occasion of the replica of Liège-Bastogne-Liège in Galicia suggested by Oscar Pereiro, winner of the 2006 Tour de France and ambassador for La Vuelta. The route proved to being very spectacular in 2021 and will be repeated on the 16th day of the race in 2025 with very few changes before the finish in Mos. Castro de Herville.
La Vuelta 25 will be a highly international event, with stages held in four countries (Italy, France, Andorra and Spain). The first ever start in Italy completes the tour of the world’s hot beds of cycling, following in the footsteps of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The start in Piedmont is a wink to history, since the first of the six Italian winners of La Vuelta, Angelo Conterno, who won in 1956, before Felice Gimondi (1968), Giovanni Battaglin (1981), Marco Giovanetti (1990), Vincenzo Nibali (2010) and Fabio Aru (2015), was a Piedmontese, born and died in Turin (aged 82 in 2007).
The 90th anniversary will be celebrated at a prestigious venue, Venaria Reale, one of the largest royal residences in the world (17th century), well known to cyclists since the Giro d’Italia kicked of from there twice (2011 and 2024). It was also the starting point for stage 19, which enabled Chris Froome, a major player in La Vuelta over the last decade (winner in 2011 and 2017), to turn the 2018 Giro upside down.
