The Vuelta a España never takes very long to go back to the mountains. Even in the opening, seemingly unchallenging stages in Portugal, the 2024 Vuelta peloton has already faced some relentlessly undulating terrain, capped by a brief incursion, early on stage 3, across one of the country’s toughest mountain ranges, the Serra da Estrela.
However, come stage 4 on the return to Spain, the Vuelta really gets back to climbing business with a vengeance. That’s courtesy of its first summit finish, at the Pico Villuercas in the little-known region of Extremadura.
