Súria > Arinsal 159km

Hopefully, after two days severely impacted by rain, this is a much calmer day. The bunch head north to Andorra and despite it only being the third stage, we have our first mountaintop finish.  

Weather 

A day without rain! Temperatures will be around 20 degrees on the road up to Andorra but will dip to around 7 degrees at the top of the mountains. The wind will sit between 10 and 20km/h, and it’s a headwind for almost the whole stage. 

The Climbs 

Coll d’Ordino is the first of the day, it’s a well-known climb which has been used before in this race. 14.7km at 4.9% isn’t the hardest in the world, but it does get up to almost 2000m above sea level. A nice descent follows which bounces straight into the final climb of the day. 

Arinsal is the final climb of the day, it’s not one I know. On GCN today they mistakenly said it was the climb Kuss won on in the 2021 Tour de France, it is not. The numbers suggest it’s hard, 6.8km at 7.9% isn’t to be sniffed at. Until 4.5km to go, the climb is on a main road and into a block headwind, then it moves onto a smaller road and the riders pick up a tailwind for most of the next 3km. This section contains several hairpin bends and some double-digit sections. The final 1.7km is back into the headwind and as it’s 15km/h, it will have a big impact on the finale.