The bike race that began inside an actual supermarket
jamón iberico, into part of a shopping mall, and through a tricky chicane until they finally emerged into the Spanish daylight. (To be clear, this section of the race was neutralized for safety—no one was allowed to launch an attack before the bunch had made it outdoors.) How a major bike race even wound up in a supermarket comes down to a question of sponsorship. Carrefour is one of the Vuelta’s major backers and organizers promised a “unique and original event that will make cycling history." The thing is, cycling history is already full of absurd detours.
Grand Tours—the prestigious three-week races held annually in Italy, France, and Spain—have visited all sorts of unexpected places in recent years, such as Italian motor-racing circuits and Alpine airports perched on mountaintops. Also, the country of Denmark. Even by those standards, the Vuelta has made a concerted effort to set itself apart.
If the Giro d’Italia is for the purists, and the Tour de France is the mass-appeal showstopper, then the Vuelta a España is the collection of kooky and experimental B-sides. It exists for fanatics, completists, and people who don’t have a lot going on in the afternoon in late August. Before the Vuelta rolled through cathedrals of consumerism, it was rolling through actual cathedrals.
In 2021, the race began inside the cathedral in Burgos. And in 2022, the peloton made its way into the Great Church in Breda in the Netherlands, where riders jumped off to light candles and walk their bikes through the nave. All that gimmickry belies another truth about this race: Vuelta stages can be notoriously brutal.
This year’s edition comes with an extra 30,000 feet of climbing compared with the Tour. The late-summer heat is unbearable. And
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