Male Team 14 - 18 Apr
V. Comunitat Valenciana
617 Kilometers 5 Stages
The race will be broadcast live every day on Eurosport 1 and GCN, at 2pm CEST. The final stage will be shown at 5pm.
There will be 10-6-4″ at the finish of all road stages, plus 3-2-1″ at intermediate sprints.
The Movistar Team has won the race overall five times, with Julián Gorospe (1993), Toni Colom (2006), Nairo Quintana (2017) and Alejandro Valverde (2007, 2018).
Second time’s the charm! It wasn’t allowed to go ahead in February, yet the 72nd Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana will actually take place, under the same health security precautions, in mid April, retaining a strong lineup and conserving a route not as biased towards pure stageracers as in previous years.
Five stages will again be on the menu of the Spanish race, featuring a decisive individual time trial -14.3km from Xilxes to Almenara, Saturday 17th April-, almost completely flat and suited to specialists.
The race will start three days before that (Wednesday 14th) in Elche, climbing four traditional ascents from the interior of the Alicante province before heading towards Ondara. A clearer chance for the sprinters will be available on stage two (Thursday 15th) around Alicante, with only one rated ascent in the opening part of the route.
Stage three (Friday 16th), pivotal to the race’s result, will cover 165km between Torrent and Dos Aguas, with five categorized climbs -including the finish atop the Alto de la Reina, Cat-2- and as many little ascents which should favour both climbers and classics specialists in good form at this early stage of the year. After the TT, and just like in previous years, a sprint stage from Paterna to Valencia will complete the race on Sunday 7th.
** As a means of respecting the organisers’ work and avoiding any gatherings around the race, the Movistar Team is not publishing any route descriptions nor race profiles. We kindly ask everybody in the area to watch on TV.