"You'll probably see some guys explode, hopefully one of them isn't me," was how Ben O'Connor summed up his feelings about Tuesday's first summit finish of the Vuelta a España at Pico Villuercas, and he surely wasn't the only rider in this year's Vuelta peloton to feel that way.
This year all three of the Grand Tours have featured major climbs in the first week, with the Giro d'Italia tackling the Oropa summit finish and the Tour de France the Galibier, and on both occasions the stage winner - one Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) - has gone on to take the overall.
Pogačar's domination may have been a case apart on those first-week mountain stages as it has been in everything else this season. However, the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale leader is confident, nonetheless, that Villuercas "will have a pretty huge effect."
He is adamant though, that there will not be a repeat of Pogačar-type all-out assault on the lead, which he attempted to follow in Oropa and ended up paying a hefty toll, losing a minute by the summit.
"It's a completely different climb to Oropa," he told Cyclingnews, "Because Villuercas is so steep, you're riding at the pace you can do and that's kind of it."
"Oropa was very different, it was fast, Pogi' launched his move, I doubt there will be attacks like that, though, at more than 10 per cent you just can't do that." So rather than follow another rider, O'Connor agreed, that he would be concentrating on his performance and getting through the climb as best as possible.
A stage of the Vuelta a España route finished on the Villuercas climb in 2021, but barring the last few kilometres, it was mostly on a different approach road - coming up from the south through the nearby town of Guadalupe. This time the race tackles Villuercas from its northern side. Slightly confusingly, the hardest sub-segment of the Villuercas that the Vuelta will use this August, known as the Alto Collado de Ballesteros (2.9 kilometres at 13.4%) also formed part of its 2021 route as a separate, mid-stage, climb.
"With this heat, it'll have a pretty huge effect, it's going to be close to 40 degrees and you've got nearly 3 ks at 13, 14%," O'Connor told a small group of reporters at the stage 3 start.
"You're not moving quickly, and you just get super, super hot, so that can make for a pretty huge gap."
"Relatively you're coming in fresh, so you won't get there with a ton of fatigue. But it doesn't really matter when it's 40 degrees all day, you'll probably see some guys explode, just because of that fact. Hopefully one of them isn't me."
Currently 55 seconds down on race leader Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), O'Connor says he is a fan of such hard stages in the first week of a Grand Tour, and would even approve of them forming part of the race in the first two days. That's even though he says that with the 2024 Vuelta a España containing the most vertical climbing of any Grand Tour in over two decades, "it'd be better if things were a bit more balanced, with more sprint stages and medium mountain stages."
When it comes to something as hard as the Vuelta's ascent of Villuercas, he says, rather than a really strategic stage, the question comes down to something much simpler.
"If it's that steep, in any case, these are not really climbs you actually attack on," he explained. "It's more a watts per kilo, all pure power and weight set up." But no matter what the physiological explanation is for what happens on Villuercas, he says, "It'll probably make for some big differences. We'll see a lot going on tomorrow."
