The Volta a Catalunya defines a 2024 route full of novelties

January 4 ^th 2024 - 10:30 [GMT + 1]

The Volta Ciclista a Catalunya has already defined all the venues of the route of its 103rd edition, which will be held between March 18 and 24, 2024. The best cyclists in the world will compete one more year on the Catalan roads in an edition that promises a great show, with three high altitude finishes, unprecedented venues, and highly anticipated returns.

The historic Catalan UCI World Tour race will have seven stages full of novelties between Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Barcelona, in a route that has already been defined after the announcements of all the venues of the 2024 edition.

Route 103rd edition of the Volta a Catalunya:

•  Stage 1. Monday 18 de March: Sant Feliu de Guíxols – Sant Feliu de Guíxols.
•  Stage 2. Tuesday 19 de March: Mataró – Vallter / Setcases (Vall de Camprodon)
•  Stage 3. Wednesday 20 de March: Sant Joan de les Abadesses – Port Ainé (Pallars     Sobirà) ·        
•  Stage 4. Thursday 21 de March: Sort (Turisme Pallars Sobirà) – Lleida
•  Stage 5. Friday 22 de March: Altafulla – Viladecans The Style Outlets
•  Stage 6. Saturday 23 de March: Berga – Queralt
•  Stage 7. Sunday 24 de March:  Barcelona – Barcelona

The 103rd edition of the Volta will have for the second consecutive year three high altitude finishes, as the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya stations of Vallter and Port Ainé will be joined by Queralt, which will take place on the penultimate day of the race. Thus, the race will discover new venues in its history such as the sanctuary of Queralt and Viladecans, which will host stage finishes, and Altafulla, which will be the protagonist with a stage start.

There will also be long-awaited returns such as Berga, which will be a stage start after six decades since the last visit, Lleida, which returns with a stage finish eleven years later, or the starts from Sort and Sant Joan de les Abadesses. Along with well-known venues such as the great start from Sant Feliu de Guíxols, the iconic final stage in Barcelona and a stage starts from Mataró, the route of the race is completed one more year. As in the last edition, three high altitude finishes will make the Volta one of the toughest stage races in the calendar of the elite of world cycling.

For the third consecutive year, Sant Feliu de Guíxols will be the town that will host the big start of the race, being the starting and finishing point of the first stage, apart from hosting all the preparations prior to the race. Last season, Primoz Roglic finished with victory in Sant Feliu in the first chapter of his duel with Remco Evenepoel that led him to the final victory. Mataró will be the start of the stage for the eighth time in the last decade, in a second day that will take the cyclists to the top of the Vallter resort, in what will be the first of the three high altitude finishes of this edition. It will be the eighth stage finish of the Volta on the cycling roof of Catalunya, which in the last edition saw Italian Giulio Ciccone win in a thrilling finish against Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel.  

The second mountain stage will not be long in coming and will be on the third day, which will link Sant Joan de les Abadesses, which returns to the route fifty years after its last and only presence, with the Pallaresan mountain resort of Port Ainé, which was a protagonist on the race route for the last time in 2021, with victory for the Colombian Esteban Chaves.

The fourth stage will leave Sort, the capital of Pallars Sobirà, a town where there was a stage finish in 1976, to finish in the city of Lleida, a long-awaited return to one of the historic venues of the Volta a Catalunya, present since the first edition and which had not hosted a stage since 2013. And after this day of novelties, the fifth stage will be no less, as it will join two unprecedented venues in the history of the race: it will start in the Tarragona town of Altafulla and finish in Viladecans, a municipality linked to the Volta in the last edition with an intermediate sprint in the seventh stage.

One of the great novelties will be experienced on Saturday, thanks to a stage that is expected to be full of strong emotions with full protagonism by the Berguedà region. The stage will start from the capital, Berga, which was not in the route of the Volta since 1959 and will end in the third high altitude finish of this edition in Queralt, which will be released in the Catalan race. A real mountain day that promises a great sporting, scenic and fan spectacle as it will become one of the key stages of the race, which will close on Sunday with the traditional stage starting and finishing in the city of Barcelona.

The capital of Catalonia will decide one more year a race that will bring together the best cyclists in the world for a week on the Catalan roads, looking for the successor of the last winner, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, one of the best cyclists of the last decade. All the details about the route, such as mileage, elevation gain or mountain passes of the stages will be explained in the official presentation of the race.