Women's peloton to face 'inhumane' Spanish climb for first time at Vuelta Femenina

The women’s peloton will tackle Spain’s Alto de L’Angliru, a climb described as “inhumane” by multiple professional cyclists who have ridden it, for the first time this May.

The Asturian mountain, 12.4km-long and pitched at an average gradient of 9.7%, will host the finale of the Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es on 9 May.

The Angliru is known as one of the hardest climbs in global cycling, due to its unrelenting gradient which features ramps up to 23%. It is located in Spain’s mountainous north, and was originally built as a goat path, paved only two years ahead of the Vuelta a España’s first visit there in 1999.

“We have had a few doubts about [whether] to [include it in the Vuelta Femenina route] or not,” the race’s technical director Kiko García told Cyclingnews.

“A few teams say, ‘Yes, it’s a good idea to do it’, and other ones say, ‘maybe it’s too early, maybe just wait a couple of years’ because we were still building women’s cycling.

“After many consultations with the teams and with athletes, we considered that it was the right moment to do it.”

The climb will come at the end of day seven of the Vuelta Femenina, a stage that the organisers have hailed as “the hardest in the history of the race”. Over 132km, the peloton will ascend more than 3,200m of elevation, around half of which will come on the Angliru.

The climb has featured 10 times at the men’s Vuelta, most recently in 2025, when João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) held off Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) at its summit.

In 2002, on its third appearance in the Spanish Grand Tour, British rider David Millar famously stopped half a metre short of the Angliru’s finish line and ripped off his race number in protest, announcing: “We’re not animals and this is inhuman.”

Millar’s words were echoed by Óscar Sevilla, the race’s eventual fourth-place finisher, who described the climb as “inhumane”. Sevilla’s Kelme team manager, Vicente Belda, also said: “What do they want? Blood? They ask us to stay clean and avoid doping and then they make the riders tackle this kind of barbarity.”

The current Strava KOM on the climb is held by Almeida, following his stage win in 2025, when he rode the segment in a time of 42:15. The best women’s time, the QOM, belongs to British hill-climber Illi Gardner, who clocked 52:56 last June. Only 556 women have completed the climb on Strava.

The seven-day Vuelta Femenina will take place entirely in Spain’s north-western corner, starting in the Galician seaside town of Marín. It will finish with two summit finishes, the first to Les Praeres, with a maximum gradient of 27%, on stage six, before the Angliru finale.

Details of the full race route are below.

Vuelta Femenina 2026 route