“I think it’s time”: Chris Froome says 2025 could “potentially” be his last season and suggests retiring at Vuelta would be a “nice way to close the circle”; UN Road Safety Ambassador Tadej Pogačar using phone on the bike?! + more on the live blog

What are we? Some sort of association football athletes?

> Track cyclist banned for a month for “indecent” behaviour after swearing and showing officials the middle finger following disqualification for “dangerous” close pass during world championship race

> Owner of custom bike specialists Spoon and WyndyMilla enters liquidation, after falling demand and rising costs put business in “impossible position”

The 2025 Vuelta route is garnering a lot of reactions from fans, and what is a Friday road.cc live blog without some good old fan reactions?

Besides the lack of flat stages for sprinters, there was another glaring omission from the route presented by the organisers last evening — the entirety of southern Spain.

In fact, not only are regions like Andalucía and Murcia snubbed, the southern-most point the Grand Tour will be visiting is Madrid — an egregious decision at best if you ask your live blog host. However, with the mercury likely to rise up to 40 in late August and early September, there’s chatter they didn’t want to put the peloton through treacherous conditions, making it especially alluring to riders whose Kryptonite is heat, *ahem* like Tadej Pogačar.

Or, they perhaps didn’t any deer crashing into the peloton…

> Wild scenes at Vuelta a España as herds of deer crossing the road jump over race cars and cause crash in the peloton, bringing down two riders

Fans nonetheless seemed to be disappointed. One person wrote: “Are they playing Southern Spain is lava? Well in August, that might be true. I wonder if that could be a factor in their decisions.”

Another person wrote: “Tour de France route often gets people angry for not doing all French regions but that’s something else here.”

Meanwhile, one fan suggested: “Looks like the ‘Pogi, please come do the Vuelta’ edition of the race,” but another replied asking: “Not that I disagree with you, but at this point, what does a ‘Pog-unfriendly’ route even look like? Does it exist? Isn’t he still basically the favourite for literally every conceivable Vuelta route, barring, y’know, some kind of stupid 200km ITT nonsense?”

Another person said: “Heat and altitudes above 2000m have been his [Pogačar’s] traditional achilles heel. He seems to have addressed the heat issue, but this year’s Tour only had the Galibier, Tourmalet, Bonette, and (narrowly) Isola as climbs above 2000. Two of those came in the middle of the stage where they did little. So I don't think we got a good sense whether he can still be vulnerable at high altitude. On the Galibier stage he at least ‘only’ put 35s into everyone.

“Maybe they should do 10 repeats of Col de la Loze in a row. He didn't have much luck on that climb in 2020, and things famously went even worse for him in 2023.

“We have also never seen how well he deals with genuine rampas like the Angliru has where it’s just crazy steep for long stretches.”

Adam Yates wins stage 9 of the 2024 Vuelta a España (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Finally, there are also suggestions that the Vuelta organisers actively took such a decision to address sustainability issues, after they were accused of ill-planned transfers this year, costing them a terrible look in the commitment to reduce pro cycling’s carbon footprint.

The worst transfer for the riders and the teams, came after the stage nine, as the riders finished in Granada at 5:30pm in the evening and embarked on a “travelling circus” taking them 1,000km away to the north-west in the Galician town of Ponteareas — a move which was questioned by many at the time for not considering the environmental impact of such a transfer.

Is this the most brutal Grand Tour stage map… since the last Vuelta?

Perhaps not, but in case you missed it last night, the route for 2025 La Vuelta has been announced, and besides a surprising start in Torino, Italy and a snub to Andalucía (more on that in a minute), it seems that sprinters have been given the short end of the stick for the next year, with only one truly flat stage and maybe four which have the possibility of ending in a bunch sprint.

What was even confusing is that no one seems to be sure how the stages have been classified. The official Twitter of the Spanish Grand Tour account initially posted a video writing: “one flat stages [sic], 13 hilly and mountain stages, five hilly stages (2 with a high finish), one ITT, and one TTT.”

However, the post has been updated and now reads: “Four flat stages (one with a high finish), six hilly stages, five mountain stages, three hilly stages with high finish, one ITT, and one TTT.”

Other people also commented on the blurred lines between stage distinctions. I love how we commenters can’t agree on how many uphill/summit finishes are here. I don’t know myself. Each time I count, I get a different number. Nine, 10, 11, 13?” one person wrote, adding: “Definitely Roglič time.”

If you ask your live blog host (who’d like to think of possessing decent arithmetic skills), he’d count 10 uphill finishes in total. What’s he most excited about, you ask? Well, L’Angliru’s back baby!

🔥 #LaVuelta25 🔥

🛣 4 flat stages (1 with a high finish) / 4 etapas llanas (1 con un final en alto)
⛰ 6 hilly stages / 6 hilly stages
🏔️ 5 mountain stages / 5 etapas de montaña
〰️ 3 hilly stages with high finish / 3 etapas onduladas con final en alto
⏱ 1 ITT / 1 CRI
⏱ 1… pic.twitter.com/v6gRE4syhY

— La Vuelta (@lavuelta) December 19, 2024

But what seemed to disappoint and bother most fans was the lack of flat stages favouring bunch finishes and going easy on the sprinters legs. Essentially, I can just see the first, eight and the last stage offering some respite to the those who struggle on the climbs, with a plausible likelihood of a sprint finish on stage 15 as well.

“‘One flat stages’ I’M CRYING… The sprinters shouldn’t even bother with this,” wrote Mihai Simion. Although, he added: “It's not that bad for the sprinters actually. I count at least 4 stages which are very likely to end in a bunch sprint.”

However, some (looking at you, sprint stage haters) seemed to not mind it too much. “Sprinters are over. No one likes flat stages in 2024 and following. Stages should at least be hilly,” said one such sprint stage-hating fan. I’d like to vehemently express my disagreement.

Meanwhile, The Fantasy Cycling Podcast pondered: “Groves handled hilly days better than I thought he would this year. Milan as well at the Giro. Are the days of the pure sprinter dead?”

And yet some fans remained unimpressed: “Your average Vuelta, maybe even a tick harder with a bigger number of hard mountain finishes and fewer shorter/easier climbs. I like how the Angliru stage is longer. Probably could use a bit more ITT-ing though.”

But of course, the big question, does this abundance of uphill stages mean Tadej Pogačar, who has is yet to decide between doing the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta this year, come to Italy anyway for the third and final Grand Tour of the year? And if he does so, how many stages is he destined to win?

On the other hand, there’s always Roglič, who tends to excel in these hilly/mountainous conditions, and after a relatively convincing victory last year, would anyone want to bet against the four-time Vuelta winner in defending the red jersey?

Let us know your thoughts about the route, how many sprint and uphill finishes do you think there will be, and of course, what are your predictions for the winner in the comments.