Stage 14, 15 and 16 Pyrenees Previews 2013 Vuelta a España

Collective profiles of stages 14, 15 and 16 through the Pyrenees

The Pyrenean stages visit three countries

Stages 14, 15 and 16 take the Vuelta a España into the majestic Pyrenees. The peloton will spend time in Andorra and France, cross eleven categorized climbs—five of which are category 1 or above—and only the strong will survive. Each of the next three stages ends with a category-1 summit finish.  Not one is a walk in the park, but stage 15 stands out as the big killer. I don’t know what other folks think, but in my opinion, stage 15 (which traverses four cat-1 climbs, and ends with the Peyresourde-Peyragudes double) is the queen stage of this Vuelta.

I am not going to be around for a few days, so I am writing this before stage 13. This post is a brief, single preview now for all three Pyrenean stages...

Stage 9 Report and Results 2013 Tour De France

168.5k from Saint-Girons to Bagneres-de-Bigorre

High Mountains

Mostly sunny, around 28c (82f) at lower elevations, several degrees lower at altitude.

Much climbing is on the menu today. Should be a good one.

Check out my stage 9 Preview to see specs on the climbs. And you can always find previous posts in the right column of the page under “Archive”.

Chris Froome stamped his authority on the race yesterday on the first big mountain stage. The other teams will have to come up with some creative tactics to unseat the talented Team Sky leader.

Cadel Evans, whose team BMC had a terrible day on stage 8, put it succinctly when asked about his time loss yesterday: “A lot of guys went faster than me…”

Stage 9 Profile

TO THE ACTION:

185 riders took the start this morning.

DNS: Rohan Dennis (GRS), and Michael Schär (BMC).

At the drop of the starting flag, Johnny Hoogerland (VCD) attacked immediately. The Vacansoleil rider was one of the early attackers on stage 8, yesterday, too. He jumped right at the start yesterday just as today, and was with the lead group for the first 150 kilometers.

It’s good to see Hoogs attacking like this again. He has had a long hard recovery from the crash that took him out of the 2011 Tour de France. You probably recall one of the most horrible crashes in recent memory, when a France Television car made the absurd decision to avoid hitting a tree by wildly swerving right into the front of the peloton, taking out Juan Antonio Flecha and sending Hoogerland flying into a barbed wire fence. He says he still suffers from that injury. It could only have been exacerbated in February of this year when Hoogerland was hit by a car while training, breaking several ribs and other bones around his spine, and suffered internal bleeding and a bruised liver.

JH is soon joined by Cyril Lemoine (Sojasun) and Laurent Didier (Radioshack).

Well, that did not last long. The peloton has caught the first three escapees.

-160k: Now, Jeremy Roy (FDJ), and Michael Albasini (Orica) try a move, but it is quickly foiled.