Vuelta stage 8 preview: Race returns to brutal climb of Xorret de Cati

After a seven-year absence, stage 8 of the Vuelta a Espana sees the race return to a finish at the Xorret de Catí climb, one of the most brutally steep ascents in southern Spain.

Xorret de Cati is considered to all extents and purposes to be a summit finish, the second of nine in this year’s Vuelta. This is because the descent afterwards is a very short one - less than three kilometres - and is so fast that whatever gaps there are at the top tend to remain in place by the finish. And gaps there will be, for sure.

Even without attacks, the five kilometre climb is so steep, with its three mid-section kilometres never dropping below 11 per cent and rising to 18 per cent at one point, that it is all but impossible for the peloton to keep together on the climb.

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First tackled in 1998 the Xorret de Cati finish has always followed the same format: after a long approach on relatively flat roads, the route passes through the town of Castalla, then almost immediately tackles the climb itself on a narrow single-lane road. This is followed by a fast descent, a last kilometre of downhill and flatter roads to the finish. In 1998, the year it was first used, the erratic climbing genius Jose María Jiménez took the win (and a certain Lance Armstrong finished fourth), and in 2010, David Moncoutie, four times the Vuelta’s King of the Mountains winner, made it over the summit and onto victory.

Basque Igor Anton (Dimension Data) took the race lead that stage in 2010, and he held it, barring one brief interlude, all the way to the northern coast and Peña Cabarga six days later, where the Basque crashed badly at the foot of the tough ascent where, as it happens, Chris Froome won last year. The 2010 stage had a grim beginning, with a minute’s silence being held after the death of Txema Gonzalez, and Team Sky pulling out of the race en masse.

This time round Sky are very much present on the race and Froome is the Vuelta leader but Anton, as he tells Cyclingnews, recalls the Xorret de Cati ascent perfectly. Seventh on the stage he took over in the lead, tied on time with Joaquim Rodriguez.

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