From the gun the riders enter the Alto de la Campa, a warm-up climb of 8.3 kilometres at 4%. Following 50 kilometres on the flat the real uphill action commences with still 170 kilometres left to race. So that’s a killer mountain every 40 kilometres or so.
Consecutively, the riders crest the Alto de la Colladona (7 kilometres at 6.5%), Alto de la Cobertoria (9.8 kilometres at 9%) and Puerto de San Lorenzo (10 kilometres at 8.6%) before continuing onto La Farrapona.
A GC battle is next to certain on this demanding terrain. A likely scenario is that Jumbo-Visma, Movistar and/or Ineos sets a high pace on the intermediate climbs to wear out the competition before the big guns come to the fore in the steep final kilometres of the finishing climb.
La Farrapone is a long climb – 16.5 kilometres -, but the average gradient of 6.2% is not very remarkable. That’s because the ascent is easy until kilometre 11. It goes up at shallow gradients, but this changes in the last 5 kilometres. It happens gradually. First 1 kilometre at 8.5%, then another at 9.5%, and before you know it the climb continues with 3 kilometres at more than 11%. The climb evens out again in the last 500 metres.
Favourites 11th stage 2020 Vuelta a España
*** Primoz Roglic, Richard Carapaz, Hugh Carthy
** Aleksandr Vlasov, Enric Mas, Esteban Chaves
* Daniel Martin, Michael Woods, Wout Poels, Ion Izagirre
Another interesting read: route 11th stage of the 2020 Vuelta.