Alto del Angliru — Too Tough for the Tour?
La Vuelta boasts countless climbs that strike fear into the heart of cyclists, but one stands alone.
Alto del Angliru — Too Tough for the Tour?
The Alto del Angliru has beaten the will of professionals, tested champions and been a source of bragging rights for those who have summited. With 16 hairpins, gradients of over 20% and an elevation gain of over 4,000ft, the climb is a beast. The stats are just half the story. Conquer this climb and you’ll talk about it forever.
Appearing in La Vuelta for the first time in 1999, the Angliru has quickly become an infamous staple of the race. Journalists of the time talk of a painfully slow bus journey to the summit, the diesel engine struggling with the 23% ramps and the narrow passage through a tunnel of excited fans. The aroma of the burned clutches of stalled cars, pushed by enthusiastic on-lookers hung in the mountain air as helicopters hovered high above the clouds.
Later these same fans would push struggling riders, realising too late how this new Spanish climb would dwarf the suffering on the Mortirolo, Stelvio, Galibier and Tourmalet. Triple chainsets were plentiful amongst the powerful riders of the peloton, outnumbered only by the faces of pain that greeted the summit. The Angliru had arrived, and we were all transfixed.
All black and white images — Francis Tsang
Expressions of Exhaustion
Those pain faces were so evident that professional photographer, Francis Tsang, was inspired to document the efforts of both the peloton and the fans who ride the climb ahead of the race. In multiple years from 2000 to 2008, he positioned himself a mile from the summit, on one of the hardest sections, where he was to witness a plethora of pain faces.
Fans, who had been waiting for hours, were whipped into a frenzy of excitement producing a charged atmosphere that willed riders on, giving them that extra few watts required to keep moving. "We’re not animals and this is inhuman," David Millar famously cursed while refusing to cross the line in 2002, beaten by the efforts of a stage finishing on this epic mountain. Tsang’s images of pros and amateurs capture that pain, but not the exhilaration of cresting to the peak. That feeling would be worth millions if bottled.
We ride this legendary climb on our visit to La Vuelta this year in September. Will you add your name to the list of those capable of cresting? The ultimate bragging rights in cycling, courtesy of La Vuelta.
