At first glance, the presence of monster summit finishes like the Calar Alto, Sierra Nevada, Machucos and the Angliru in the 2017 Vuelta a España makes the route seem very similar to 2016. What the Vuelta organisation like to call their "trademark" format of multiple mountain-top finishes peppering the route is back again with a vengeance, right?
Not exactly, for all there's only one less summit finish than in 2016 - nine in 2017 as opposed to 10 last September and we've got three summit finishes distributed equally between the first, second and third week. As Vuelta boss Javier Guillén recognised during Thursday evening's Vuelta presentation, the number of shorter, punchy uphill finishes in 2017 - think of the Mirador de Ezaro last year, or Chris Froome's favourite ascent of Peña Cabarga or Mas de la Costa's 'welcome to hell' greeting daubed in graffiti at the foot of the lungburstingly hard climb - is actually lower.
Yet there's no denying 2017's route has a different flavour to 2016, for all Guillen was adamant that the hideously steep new ascent of Los Machucos in the third week "would more than compensate [for the lack of punchy climbs]. It's like we've put all those shorter tough finishes all together in one single climb."
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Maybe. In fact, one frequent comment in the Vuelta presentation in Madrid late on Thursday evening was that the first week is, on balance, not quite as tough as in 2016, and that slight reduction in difficulty could ultimately make a big difference.
Yes, stage 3 to Andorra represents a significant incursion into the Pyrenees. There are three brutally steep summit finishes in the Vuelta's long first week, too, to Alcossebre on stage 5, Cumbres del Sol on stage 8 and Xorret de Cati on stage 9. And stage 10, straight after the first rest day, features a climb over the first category Collado Bermejo, a favourite launching pad for Marco Pantani back in the 1990s when he used to turn up and pan the field in the Vuelta a Murcia.
But the Andorra stage is nothing like the 'hardest Grand Tour stage ever' that the Vuelta's last trip to Andorra in 2015 was touted to be. There is ample time on stage 10 after the descent from the Collado Bermejo before the finish in El Pozo Alimentación for the bunch to regroup. (The Vuelta's presentation book even has the nerve to summarize the stage as being 'flat'.) And although brutally steep, none of those ultra-hard summit finish climbs in the first week are more than four kilometres long.
First week should be less decisive
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