Alto de l’Angliru it’s one of the most demanding and wild climbs in professional road bicycle racing around the world. It arrives to the 24% in some points, and the top of the climb is 1,573 metres above sea level.
Some professional bikers have refused to climb this road due its roughness. It’s a steep mountain road in Asturias, near La Vega-Riosa, in northern Spain and has been used in the Vuelta a España stage race several times.
The organizers of this race wanted a mountain to rival the Alpe d'Huez and Mont Ventoux in the Tour de France and the Stelvio and Mortirolo in the Giro d'Italia, which would go on in 2003 to add one of the world's most demanding climbs, the Zoncolan, in an attempt to compete with the new Spanish climb. The Angliru was first included in 1999, on stage eight from León. José Maria Jiménez won after catching Pavel Tonkov a kilometer from the finish. He dedicated the win to Marco Pantani, disqualified from that year's Giro d'Italia, saying: "I dedicate it to Pantani by everything that he has suffered in this time".
The top of the climb is 1,573 metres (5,161 ft) above sea level. The height difference is 1,266 m (4,154 ft). The climb is 12.5 kilometres (7.8 mi) long, an average of 10.13%. It is near 24% at its steepest. The first 5 km (3.1 mi) are an average of 7.6%— stiff but not over-demanding for world-class cyclists. The sixth kilometre lessens to 2.1% and has a short descent. The last half of the climb is more severe. From six kilometres to the summit, it averages 13.1%. The steepest part, the Cueña les Cabres at 23.6%, is 3 km (1.9 mi) from the summit. There are two later ramps at 18% to 21% (sources vary).
The surface has good conditions and the traffic is really short. Only at weekends there’s some traffic. Weather conditions, like fog and rain, are really usual daily, even on summer.
Controversy about this road
The manager of the Kelme team, Vicente Belda, said: ‘What do they want? Blood? They ask us to stay clean and avoid doping and then they make the riders tackle this kind of barbarity’.
Patrice Halgand, a French rider, said the Union Cycliste Internationale had rules about the distance and frequency of races but not about hills: ‘The rules haven't foreseen everything. The proof. I find it ridiculous to go looking for a hill on a narrow road, dangerous and winding, because it's not like that that you change the way a race develops. There are other cols than the Angliru to climb in the Vuelta. Differences in the riders would show just as well on a col that's less steep and on a wider road. It would also be better for spectacle, because on the Angliru the guys go too pitifully for the climb to have any sporting interest. Even the winner goes up in slow motion. There's no attacking. From front to front, everyone just gets up as best he can’.
The former climber Charly Mottet approved the climb: I saw the climb of the Angliru and I thought it was good for cycling. I watched on television and saw a superb race. I am for these difficulties out of the normal, these extreme gradients. The steepness doesn't shock me because there is always a solution in choosing the right gears. The organiser should give an idea of what's needed in the race bible. I would see it, as a former rider (and organiser of the Dauphiné Libéré) as my duty.
The former Tour of France winner, Pedro Delgado, described the Angliru: "You're pedalling like mad but every time you look up you don't seem to have advanced much at all."
In 2002 David Millar stopped just feet from the finishing line and angrily ripped his number off, threw his bike on the ground and refused to cross the line in protest of such brutality of a stage. The former driver Fernando Escartin said that other mountains used in cycling races are "child's play in comparison", and Oscar Sevilla, Kelme’s biker, said: "It's an inhumane climb".
The road has appeared 3 times on Vuelta of Spain: 1999, 2000, and 2002. After this year it seems that the organizers considered the climb too tough and/or dangerous even for the greatest, and they didn’t include it anymore in the Spanish race. Anyway, in 2011, this mountain road has been added again to the route.
Related articles:
http://www.dangerousroads.org/news/275-ride-it-like-you-stole-it.html
http://www.dangerousroads.org/news/274-angliru-an-epic-stage-of-road-racing-.html
