Turin start for cycling’s Vuelta a Espana in 2025
Sign up now: Get the biggest sports news in your inbox
Hansgrohe's Primoz Roglic celebrates with his team and bike after winning the Vuelta a Espana in September.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
MADRID – Italy’s Piedmont region will host the first three stages of the 2025 Vuelta a Espana to mark the race’s 90th edition, organisers announced on Dec 2.
“Italy is a country that has undoubtedly marked the history of the Vuelta,” organisers said of the race, in which Italian riders have won 187 stages and the overall title six times.
“Surrounded by mountains, history and natural beauty, (Italy) extends the list of international locations visited by the Spanish race and further strengthens the links between the great countries of European cycling.”
The first stage starts at Turin’s Reggia di Venaria on Aug 23 with the next two getting under way in Alba and San Maurizio Canavese respectively in north-western Italy.
The remaining stages of the three-week event ending on Sept 14 will be unveiled on Dec 19.
Since 1935, La Vuelta has visited several countries with strong cycling traditions such as France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The 2025 edition will be the sixth foreign start after Lisbon, Portugal (1997), Assen, Netherlands (2009), Nimes, France (2017), Utrecht, Netherlands (2022) and Lisbon-Oeiras-Cascais (2024). Monaco will host the 2026 start.
Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic won the La Vuelta for a record-equalling fourth time in September.
In other cycling news, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) said the rebreathing of carbon monoxide to measure blood values should have no impact on athletic performance.
Carbon monoxide rebreathing is used to monitor athletes’ haemoglobin levels, which are a predictor of exercise performance, but there has been suggestions that repeated inhalation can be used to improve athletic performance.
Earlier last week, the International Cycling Union asked teams and riders to avoid repeated carbon monoxide inhalation and called on Wada to take a position on the use of the gas, which is not on its list of banned substances.
“Exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) has been discussed by Wada’s prohibited list expert advisory group on several occasions,” Wada said.
“There is no general consensus on whether CO can have a performance-enhancing effect and no sufficiently robust data currently supports that proposition.”
When used to measure haemoglobin mass, the amount of CO used is low and should not be performance enhancing, it added.
However, it said it was investigating the effects of repeated and frequent use of the rebreathing method with respect to, “artificially enhancing the uptake, transport or delivery of oxygen” in its list of prohibited substances and methods.
“In any event, it is generally acknowledged that it can be dangerous for health, so it would not be recommended,” Wada said.
AFP, REUTERS
