"Like riding up a wall" is how Chris Froome (Team Sky) defines his expectations of Wednesday's summit finish of Los Machucos, and the Vuelta a Espana leader may well find some daunting parallels between the Vuelta's newest climbing discovery, and Saturday's more familiar slopes of the ultra-steep Angliru.
Los Machucos is shorter than the Angliru, just 7.2 kilometres compared to 12.5, but it has ramps that, at 28 percent, can match the Anglriu's slopes that are rated as ranging between 26 and 30 percent at their very toughest. But in any case, when riding up a narrow, winding mountain track somewhere in the middle of the wildest nowhere in northern Spain, be it the Angliru or los Machucos, the degree of steepness is so infernally hard that a few percentage points up or down don't really matter. That's even more the case when, as is the case on Wednesday, it's forecast to rain.
Like the Angliru, Los Machucos has its origins in cattle herding. It started life as a track for shifting cows from one upland pasture to another. Indeed, the Machucos stage's 'subtitle' of Monumento al Vaca Pasiega means the "Monument to the Pasiega Cow", and there is a metal version of said bovine at the top of the Machucos climb.
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The Pasiega is a popular local breed of milking cow, a key part of the region's agriculture, with a "mistrustful but docile temperament," that wanders freely in the area. Roaming Pasiega cows create a fair amount of churned up mud and dung on los Machucos, and even if the surface muck is cleared away for the sake of the stage, if it rains the residue risks making steep roads even slippier, according to Basque cycling journalist Jesus Gomez Peña of El Correo Español, who recently rode up Los Machucos.
The biggest challenge, though, is the brutally steep uphill ramps, including one segment, midway up, that has a cement surface
"There are parts that are very similar to the Angliru in difficulty, too," Gomez Peña told Cyclingnews.
More than just Los Machucos
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