Foldable Bikes Party: Technical TTT kicks off 2019 Vuelta a Espana

Saturday 24 August 2019

Technical TTT kicks off 2019 Vuelta a Espana - Preview

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The 2019 Vuelta a España’s opening team time trial in Torrevieja is only 13.4 kilometres long, but with technical sections, possible coastal crosswinds and a ‘hidden’ uphill segment, there are plenty of challenges for the race’s 22 squads.

The Vuelta has started its recent opening time trials on a beach, outside an art museum and even on a giant batea - a raft in Galicia for growing oysters - so it’s possibly no surprise that Saturday’s start location is equally unusual: the edge of a salt lagoon.

A quarter of Spain’s salt comes from Torrevieja, the start town, and one of the stranger features of its 800-year-old industry is that the lagoons where the salt evaporates shine pink and blue because of the minerals they contain.

The Vuelta’s opening team time trial rapidly moves away from a lagoon, however (for the record this one shines pink) and gets down to cycling business as usual after crossing under a busy A-road on a flat and fairly straight access road leading away from the salt-processing buildings.

After about a kilometre, the course turns left at a crossroads into the town itself for the rest of a completely urban route that snakes through Torrevieja in a shape similar, barring a couple of wiggles at the beginning and end, to a stretched out, upside-down letter ‘U’.

The first segment of the ‘U’, heads north through the more modern areas of Torrevieja and is about seven kilometres long on fairly broad, well-surfaced road.

There are two sharp right-angle turns on this opening section as it rolls past an unremarkable, never ending stream of small shops and other businesses. The first takes the course hard left after two kilometres onto a wider avenue. However, the first big landmark of the TTT comes before the road angles back right and broadens out onto a lengthy, steady climb.