Re-Cycle: The arrival of the Angliru - When Jiménez won the first ascent of Vuelta's steepest climb

It might lack the history of the so-called Dutch Mountain, but it is often said that the Angliru can become to the Vuelta a España what Alpe d'Huez is to the Tour de France.

Such has been the impact of this savagely steep climb south-west of the city of Oviedo in Spain's lush, green, mountainous north, the 12.5km test – which peaks at 1,570m and boasts an average gradient well into double figures – has fast become a fan favourite. Ranked among the hardest uphill tests in pro cycling, the Angliru is not without its detractors. Some say it's too steep, others that it is a mere gimmick – synonymous with the way the Vuelta organisers, Unipublic, have favoured shock tactics over balanced route planning.

Similarities perhaps better lie with the Italian climbs of the Mortirolo or Zoncolan, the latter an arduous ascent first introduced to the Giro in 2003 as a direct response to the Angliru's maiden appearance in the Vuelta four years earlier. The winner of the first two stages up the Zoncolan was Gilberto Simoni – the same Italian who won on the Angliru's second finish in 2000.

But this is not Simoni's story. Instead, we’re looking back to that sodden first Angliru ascent, when Jiménez emerged miraculously through the fog and rain to beat Pavel Tonkov amid controversy and confusion.

Eager to add to their roster a climb to rival Alpe d'Huez or Mont Ventoux in the Tour, or the Giro's Passo del Mortirolo, the Vuelta organisers were on the hunt for a showpiece summit finish in the mid-90s as they endeavoured to broaden the appeal of a race still viewed as the least compelling of the three Grand Tours.

Unipublic hoped to add something that could quickly attain the same reputation, resonance, and toughness as the ascent to Lagos de Covadonga, the Asturian climb that had been successfully introduced in 1983. In the event, they didn't have to look too far.

In his book Mountain High, the author and cycling journalist Daniel Friebe explains how a tip from a figure dubbed the "blind visionary" did not fall on deaf ears. Miguel Prietro, the partially-sighted communications director of ONCE, the Spanish charity for the blind (and sponsor of a top cycling team), had just the ticket. In 1996, the Asturian wrote to the organisers:

"There exists in Asturias, in the middle of the Sierra del Aramo, in the municipality of Riosa, around 15km from Oviedo, a mountain whose road is barely marked on maps because it is a cattle road that was only recently paved.

"This mountain is known as La Gamonal and its altitude is 1,570m. The climb is 12km long and ascends just over 1,200m in altitude, which gives it an average gradient of slightly above 10 per cent, higher than the well-known Higa de Monreal.

"Please note in fact that the last seven kilometres of the climb have an average gradient of above 13 per cent, dotted with multiple ramps at 20, 18, 17 and even 23.5 per cent. This ascent, if ever used, is guaranteed to leave unforgettable memories burnt into the retinas of the viewers. Just as people have said the Lagos de Covadonga will become the Spanish Alpe d'Huez, so the Gamonal could equal and, no exaggeration, eclipse the Italian Mortirolo."

Perhaps attracted by the severe 23.5 per cent section of the Cueña de las Cabres, three kilometres from the summit, coupled with a consistent gradient barely dropping below double digits, the organisers were quick to react. The road was paved in 1997 and then, two years later, unveiled on the Vuelta as the Angliru.

While local rider Samuel Sanchez would later label it "the perfect climb," the Angliru was not exactly welcomed with open arms by the sport. The Italian climber Leonardo Piepolo was one of the first riders to recce the climb in 1999, instantly labelling it "impossible".

"Critics said this was a lame attempt to revive the Vuelta, and indeed cycling in Spain, with silly gimmickry," writes Friebe, recalling the reaction of the Kelme team manager, Vincente Belda: "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 Italian Marzio Bruseghin, who was in his first year as a pro at the Spanish Banesto team, chipped in: "What's the point of riding up a mountain that it'd be quicker to go up by foot?"

Even Pedro Delgado, working as a TV pundit five years after hanging up his cycling shoes, had his say after giving it a go.

"There were moments on the climb when I felt as if time had stopped," said the double Vuelta winner. "You're pedalling like mad but every time you look up you don't seem to have advanced much. It's like one of those dreams where you're running but not getting anywhere... When you reach the false flat [after 6km], there are words painted on the road warning of what's to come. 'Hell starts here,' they say."

It does, indeed. From this point, the average gradient is a fiendish 13.1 per cent and includes that savage ramp of almost 24 per cent.

But, as Friebe explains in Mountain High, for every former French pro like Patrice Halgand – who complained, "On the Angliru the guys go too pitifully for the climb to have any sporting interest. Even the winner goes up in slow motion. There's no attacking." – there has been a Charly Mottet, the former Tour star turned race-course inspector, who said: "I think it's good for cycling. I am in favour of these extraordinary difficulties, these extreme gradients. The steepness doesn't shock me because there is always a solution in choosing the right gears."

The debate about brutal gradients nullifying the ability for the riders to actually race often overlooks what Friebe describes as the "smouldering, emerald beauty" of the Angliru, with its unique meteorological system, jagged rocks, green pastures, grazing cows and staggered horizons piling up, on a clear day, all the way to the Bay of Biscay.

In the words of the Swiss triple Vuelta winner Tony Rominger, who had the good fortune of retiring two years before the inaugural ascent: "Climbing the Angliru is like looking out of the window of a plane". A plane that, in 1999, was heading right through the eye of a storm…

So, who was the man who would write himself into the history books as the first winner on the Angliru?

José María Jiménez had already ridden eight Grand Tours before the 1999 Vuelta, most notably finishing eighth in the 1997 Tour de France and being part of an all-Spanish Vuelta podium a year later behind teammate Abraham Olano and Fernando Escartín.

Jiménez was that rare breed of riders who spent his entire career at the same team – graduating as a trainee at Banesto with his first professional contract in 1993. His powerful build and climbing ability meant many expected him to follow in the footsteps of teammates Pedro Delgado and Miguel Induráin. But his time trialling left a lot to be desired, and Jiménez was a mercurial, erratic talent who often gave up when the going got tough.

The first of his nine Vuelta stage wins came in 1997, a few months after the 26-year-old was crowned national champion. Nicknamed El Chava – derived from El Chabacano, an endearing term for someone with rustic and humble origins – Jiménez came from El Barraco, a poor village in Castille-Leon in the mountains west of Madrid.

Mentored by Víctor Sastre, the father of his future brother-in-law Carlos Sastre, the 2008 Tour winner, Jiménez would over the course of his career win the mountains classification of the Vuelta on four occasions – a testament to his fine climbing legs. His stand-out race came in 1998, when he won four stages and enjoyed two stints in the leader's Yellow Jersey.

On both occasions, he conceded the race lead to teammate Olano after pedalling squares in the individual time trials, his Achilles' heel. If on his day he was unbeatable, Jiménez's day did not come often enough, and he was deemed too unpredictable to pose a viable threat in stage races – a rider who relied on form, but who had a reputation of being lazy and unambitious. He became renowned for his gung-ho attitude and predilection to attack without considering the consequences – kamikaze moves that occasionally resulted in spectacular wins on tough mountain stages, but which were so often followed by a total crash-and-burn the next day.

As such, the divisive Jiménez had relentless critics and staunch defenders behind him in equal measure. His capriciousness was reflected in his off-the-bike temperament. El Chava was your archetypal go-big-or-go-home kind of guy – a man capable of all-night partying, capped by an ability to drop the world's finest the next day in a way that would have made his contemporary Frank Vandenbroucke proud.

He once even went AWOL ahead of a stage in the Tour of Catalonia, reappearing just before the start in a new Ferrari that he'd acquired on a whim. Such indiscipline, coupled with his perpetual struggles against the clock, held him back in filling the shoes of a rider of Induráin's clinical calibre. This partially explains, perhaps, Jiménez's knee-jerk decision to quit the sport in 2001 without warning, aged 30, so soon after capping back-to-back stage wins in the Vuelta with a fourth Polka-Dot Jersey and the Points Classification.

As Induráin would later say: "He was a rider in the old style. When things went well, they went very well. When things didn't go well, they didn't go at all. He lost a lot due to reasons beyond his control, leaving cycling just like that... all of a sudden."

The Vuelta's first summit finish on the Angliru came in Stage 8 of the 1999 race at the end of the opening week. Jiménez had already struggled in the Stage 6 time trial, finishing 85th in Salamanca on a day his Banesto teammate Abraham Olano took the spoils to move into the race's new Golden Jersey. Olano, the defending champion, comprehensively beat the German specialist Jan Ullrich by 57 seconds to go 1'07" ahead of the Team Telekom rider in the General Classification.

Ullrich was riding his first and only Vuelta after a knee injury forced him out of defending his Tour de France title in July. The 25-year-old had entered the race to help his return to fitness and prepare for the World Championships in Verona; he never seriously thought he could win the thing.

The 176km eighth stage featured the first-category climbs of the Cobertoria and the Cordal before the unveiling of the new climb whose frightful reputation had led many riders to get their mechanics to install triple cranksets or mountain bike cassettes on their bikes. Mother Nature had certainly risen to the occasion, with the entire stage played out in cold rain showers and dense fog – hellish conditions that caused an estimated 90 of the peloton's 171 riders to hit the deck.

Olano, the race leader, was one of them; the Spaniard skidding off the road in a tangle with Belgium's Kurt van der Wouwer on the treacherous descent of the penultimate climb with around 20km remaining. At this point, the Moldovan rider Ruslan Ivanov was almost two minutes clear of the race favourites as they hurtled towards the start of the decisive climb. An estimated 120,000 rain-soaked fans had gathered on the Angliru to watch the sufferfest – the majority gathered on the steepest section, where numerous riders were expected to walk up the 20 per cent pitches.

But by the time the Angliru raised its fearsome head, a selection had been made, with Ivanov being pursued by a group featuring Ullrich, Kelme duo Roberto Heras and José Rubiera, the Russian Pavel Tonkov of Mapei and our man Jiménez. Behind, the Spanish national champion Angel Casero chased, with the Gold Jersey of Olano being paced back into contention by his ONCE teammate Mikel Zarrabeitia, and the fresh-faced Italian Davide Rebellin of Polti.

Tonkov, the 1996 Giro champion, made his move early on the climb, catching Ivanov after 5km as the road flattened out ahead of the brutal finale. This was the Moldovan's cue to sink like a stone – Ivanov eventually finished the stage more than seven minutes down, in 27th place.

With 6km remaining, as the battling Olano finally made the connection with the leaders, Heras upped the tempo to put Ullrich against the ropes and coax a few jabs from Jiménez. Fifth and sixth in his previous Vuelta appearances, the 25-year-old Heras had been elevated to Kelme team leader over the course of the afternoon after a crash had forced the withdrawal of compatriot Fernando Escartín, runner-up for the past two years.

As Heras and Jiménez rode clear, Ullrich and Olano formed a truce. It didn't last long. Churning a ridiculous gear in defiance of both the gradient and his recovering knee, Ullrich was dropped by Olano with 3km remaining just ahead of the savage Cueña de las Cabres section. Olano's performance was admirable, considering he had cracked a rib in his earlier crash and was probably riding on adrenaline.

It was here, with around 2.5km remaining, that Jiménez made his move, despatching Heras to the gloom amid the frenzied cheers of the sodden spectators lining the road. Approaching the 2km banner, with the gradient marked as 21 per cent, Jiménez put in a large out-of-the-saddle surge in what was a finale that became increasingly hard to follow for the millions of fans at home.

Thick fog, rain on the camera lens, glare from the clouds, and regular interruptions of static fuzz and white noise from the broadcast outage – all this contributed to the general confusion, with even the commentators unsure how the race was unfolding. With 1.5km remaining, Jiménez still trailed Tonkov by 40 seconds as he passed the Russian's Mapei team car. As the Spaniard approached another stationary car, which seemed to be blocking his way, the increasingly erratic broadcast shifted to the camera following Tonkov. Then, yet more fuzz.

Suddenly, as the road flattened and then dropped following the summit, Jiménez appeared on Tonkov's wheel, much to the bafflement of the commentators. In the event, the victory was something of an anti-climax, the fixed camera at the finish a haze of mist and glaring headlights from vehicles with nowhere to go. When the two riders were finally picked up on screen, they had already crossed the line – and Jiménez had rolled over a bike length clear, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to celebrate.

Eighteen years later, on the eve of the Vuelta's seventh finish on the Angliru, the Spanish newspaper El País wrote: "When El Chava Jiménez emerged from the fog on the Angliru in 1999, the myth of the Vuelta was created."

The retrospective piece spoke of the rain, wind, cold and fog as "all the ingredients that blinded the television, obscured it in a black fuzz of adjustment, until the headlights of the cars appeared to cast a Chinese shadow across the steep ramps."

Such conditions contributed to the doubts that still lingered, the paper said.

"The Russian Tonkov was ahead then, suddenly, flapping through that inhospitable place, like Diogenes with his lamp, El Chava appeared and beat him to the line in a way that recast this epic tail as something not just from a mystery novel, but a crime novel too."

The insinuations were clear. "There were suspicions," the paper said, playing on its Cluedo metaphor, "not that the assassin was the butler, but that El Chava had held onto the cars to help him climb while taking advantage of the cloak of anonymity offered by the fog."

Tonkov was up in arms. But nothing was ever proven. While some fans said they witnessed Jiménez with the candlestick in the library, so to speak, others said they saw nothing untoward. Whatever went down that day, there is certainly a delicious irony that the first winner on a climb discovered by a blind man was a rider who allegedly benefited from the TV cameras and spectators being blinded by the fog to hold onto a car up the steepest, most feared part of the ascent.

Jiménez showed his class by finishing third in three of the remaining mountain stages of the 1999 Vuelta on his way to a top-five finish in Madrid. It was the German juggernaut Ullrich who took home the Vuelta's first Jersey De Oro, despite conceding just over a minute to Olano on the Angliru. Olano's fifth place on the Vuelta's newest summit finish saw him extend his lead to 2'08" on Ullrich, but it came at a cost – namely, that broken rib.

A few days later, Olano imploded on Stage 12 to Andorra, the crocked Spaniard coming home more than eight minutes down to relinquish the lead to Ullrich and plummet down the standings. After shipping another seven minutes in Stage 13, the defending champion withdrew.

After a final week of the race that saw a resplendent Frank Vandenbroucke – at the peak of his powers, yet on the edge of the abyss – swashbuckle himself to a brace of wins Ullrich capped his Vuelta with a commanding performance in the final time trial. Beating his nearest rival by 2'50", Ullrich ended up 4'15" in front of Igor González de Galdeano, with Heras completing the final podium ahead of Tonkov and Jiménez. Heras's time would come: the Spaniard would win the 2000 Vuelta before adding another three titles in what remains a record haul to this day.

Jiménez dedicated his victory on the Angliru to his close friend Marco Pantani, the disgraced Italian climber on a self-imposed exile after being booted out of the Giro months earlier following his fourth stage win at Madonna di Campiglio.

As it happened, it was Pantani who denied Jiménez his best chance of a stage win on the Tour de France a year later in Stage 15 to Courchevel, the Italian riding clear of Jiménez, Heras and eventual (but asterisked) winner Lance Armstrong in the Alps. The year 2000 was not kind to Jiménez. After winning the Volta a Catalunya, he failed to click in the Tour before crashing out of the Vuelta in the opening week.

In 2001, which would be his last year as a pro, the increasingly nonconformist and renegade Jiménez did not race outside Spain. A hat-trick of stage wins at the Vuelta – including the uphill time trial in Andorra – plus the points and mountains jerseys saw El Chava leave his mark on what proved to be his final ever race.

Living with depression, Jiménez retired at the end of the season. He married the sister of Carlos Sastre, but his personal troubles continued. Following a painful battle with drugs and alcohol, Jiménez checked himself into a clinic for psychological treatment, but died in December 2003 after suffering a heart attack. He was just 32.

More than 2,000 people attended his funeral in El Barraco. The ABC newspaper entitled its obituary to Jiménez, The First Man On The Moon (Or At Least The Angliru). There was never a more melancholic conqueror for such a malevolent mountain as El Angliru than its first victor. Like two other icons of Spanish cycling before him, José Manuel Fuente and Luis Ocaña, El Chava's life was cut short in tragic circumstances. Two months after his death, his friend Pantani committed suicide following a cocaine overdose; Vandenbroucke would follow them both by the end of the decade.

"It was an inevitable death," said Eusebio Unzué, Jiménez's sporting director at Banesto. "He had chosen this path."

Five years after his brother-in-law passed away, Sastre dedicated his victory in the 2008 Tour de France to the memory of Jiménez.

Despite the foul weather and controversy enshrouding the finish, the Angliru sufficiently justified its hype on its inaugural deployment to be reused again in 2000. This time Gilberto Simoni soloed to glory.

Third in both 1999 and 2000, Heras won as the Vuelta returned in 2002 on another rain-lashed day when Britain's David Millar famously left his bike on the finish line and quit the race in protest at the poor safety conditions. "This is inhuman. We're not animals," Millar harrumphed after taking issue with the same slippery Cordal descent that had sent Olano sprawling in 1999.

Seeing the Mortirolo trumped by the success of the even steeper Angliru, Giro organisers RSC unveiled their own answer to the double-digit savagery with Monte Zoncolan in 2003, a peak where Simoni triumphed on the first two occasions. Sandwiched between two Alberto Contador triumphs on the Angliru in 2008 and 2017 were wins for another Spaniard, Juanjo Cobo, in 2011 (a result that was later overturned and awarded to the Dutchman Wout Poels), and for Frenchman Kenny Elissonde in 2013.

Poels finished behind Contador and alongside Sky teammate Chris Froome when the Vuelta last raced up the Angliru. Now at Bahrain-McLaren, Poels says the Angliru is most comparable to the Zoncolan for sheer brutality: "I've suffered more on other climbs; it's not the hardest when it comes to suffering, but it is when it comes to steepness," he tells Eurosport, before elaborating on the unrelenting gradient.

"If you have good legs, it's not so bad. It's simple why it's so hard – it's just a super steep climb and pretty long. It just keeps ramping up – the middle part and towards the end is just so steep, all the time."

Winning on the Angliru was the first and last time Elissonde rode the climb. His victory, he says, was "the best you can dream of as a climber". He arrived at the foot of the Angliru in a trance – what he describes as almost a "second state" – because of the excitement, nearly causing him to overshoot a tight corner into the spectators.

Like the day Jiménez triumphed, the Angliru was covered in dense fog in 2013. It was the penultimate day of the race, with the American veteran Chris Horner on the cusp of a surprise overall win. The last man standing from the day's break, Elissonde could hear the fans screaming a few hairpins below but he could see nothing, and his radio was not working.

"I just went full gas in the last few kilometres because I was scared of being caught by a GC guy fighting because it was the final battle of the Vuelta behind," he says.

The Frenchman describes the climb as "a fight against gravity" and puts it alongside the Mortirolo as "the hardest I have done in my career".

"It's so steep and you can't recover. It's a constant fight. You even feel it in your arms because it's so steep that to keep the bike straight, you have to force it with every part of your body."

Critics of the Angliru claim its steepness actually levels the playing field, dulling the racing and nullifying any potential threat in the GC battle. But over seven appearances, the average time gap between first and second place on the climb is 52 seconds – compared to 32 seconds on the Zoncolan or 40 seconds on Alpe d'Huez.

For the most part, it is true that the Angliru has had little bearing on the battle for gold or red. But when Juanjo Cobo rode clear in 2011, Chris Froome was caught in two minds as to whether he should follow the Spaniard or help protect teammate Bradley Wiggins' Red Jersey. In the event, Wiggins cracked and Froome finished in the wheel of Poels and Denis Menchov in fourth place – 48 seconds down on Cobo, who went on to win the Vuelta (at least, until being stripped of the title seven years later) by 13 seconds. Proof, perhaps, that the Angliru made the difference.

When Froome won the Vuelta outright in 2017, he and Poels once again finished behind the stage winner in what was arguably the most memorable finish on the Angliru since Jiménez took the inaugural spoils. On the penultimate day of the race, and on his last competitive day in the pro peloton, Alberto Contador picked up a farewell stage win that could not have been scripted any better.

"That was definitely one of the most memorable days I had at a bike race," says Trek-Segafredo communications manager Eva Tomé, who at the time was working for Eurosport Portugal. "Everyone knew that Alberto would take the bull by the horns and try one of his trademark attacks to go out with a bang. There was a sense that it was already written in the stars – it was just a matter of bearing witness to it."

The kind of apocalyptic weather that we associate with the Angliru had rolled in, with vehicular access to the summit banned and journalists forced to walk up the steep slopes amid the sea of spectators. Tomé was among them.

"The weather deteriorated badly," she recalls. "Strong winds and relentless rain pounded the summit and destroyed part of the structure of the finishing line. The journalists were all packed inside two precarious plastics tents – the only available shelter at the top.

"It was freezing! Dense fog moved in and while the peloton rode in sunshine, we were all questioning whether they would cancel the finish because it was that dramatic at the top. Then came Alberto's attack – and almost on cue the weather started to clear."

Contador zipped clear with his Colombian teammate Jarlinson Pantano on the long descent ahead of the final climb before picking off the remnants of the day's break, including compatriot Enric Mas of Quick-Step.

"Pantano went full gas and then Mas – who was on one of Contador's junior foundation teams – started working for Alberto," recalls Steven de Jongh, the Trek directeur sportive that day. "For Enric it was quite an honour for him to give something back and thank Alberto for help starting his career. It was unexpected, so it was really nice that he did it."

Help then came from another Spaniard in the form of Movistar's Marc Soler, who paced his countryman up some of the steep ramps. With 6km remaining, the gap over the Red Jersey group was only 50 seconds – forcing Contador to strike out on his own. De Jongh was following in the Trek team car, grateful he was driving an automatic and not burning the clutch on the hairpin bends.

"If the Angliru is hard for the riders, it's not so easy for the drivers either," De Jongh quips. "We had to drive really slowly – it's virtually a wall and you can feel the gradient. On some climbs it's hard to see if the riders are suffering because they go so fast, but on this climb the riders go so slow and you can almost hear them suffering.

"There were people everywhere and it was hard to follow Alberto because the fans were swarming across the road and shouting, "Un año mas" – one more year – because they didn't want him to retire."

When Froome and Poels rode clear of the chasing pack, Contador's lead was touch-and-go. As the gap came down, De Jongh was forced to pull the car aside and let the duo pass.

"Froomey's Red Jersey was the priority, but we were both flying that day," Poels recalls. "We were getting closer and closer. And for sure, I was thinking: 'If we take him, I can go for the win'. Would it have been bad for the fans? I didn't think about it at the time. But we didn't catch him – Contador was the strongest and Chris let me finish second."

De Jongh says there were "no hard feelings" that Froome and Poels were racing full gas – even if it would not have gone down well with the locals, or Contador, had they succeeded.

"It's a race and the Angliru is a mythical stage. Everyone wants to win there. The sprinters have the Champs-Élysées, the climbers have Ventoux, Alpe d'Huez, the Angliru… They're the kind of stages that riders maybe only have one or two occasions to win in their careers, so it's normal Sky pushed for the win. But in the end, Alberto held on and it was a great closure for his career."

For Tomé, Contador's victory represented the end of an era – "the cowboy racing style winning one last rodeo against the clinical tempo-setting of a new world order in cycling".

She says she will never forget the moment a jubilant Contador was mobbed by the media at the finish: "I stood back and just looked to his mechanic, Faustino, who was crying his eyes out at the side of the tent, holding Alberto's bike, looking down at it. Proper ugly crying – the emotion of that moment overpowering him, a man who had stood by Alberto for most of his victories as a professional. A guy who was always pragmatic, poised and collected. Nothing fazed him.

"But that moment he just stood there, compulsively crying; no high-fives to teammates, no cheering or clapping, just a lonely figure overcome with emotion, a mechanic holding the last winning bike of Alberto.

"For some reason that moment really touched me. It felt like it was the end of a chapter. I got goose bumps because at that moment I knew there would be no comeback, no un año mas. This was it, Faustino knew it, and now I knew it. The last flight of El Pistolero, bidding adieu in a blaze of glory, and I was there to witness it."

For his part, De Jongh recalls the relief and celebrations that day. "Alberto was chasing that victory for the whole Vuelta. And finally, on the last Saturday, he got the win. I've never seen riders and staff enjoy a victory as much – we partied so hard the bus needed new suspension afterwards."

In the event, the retroactive doping ban of Austria's Stefan Denifl meant Contador was also awarded victory in Stage 17 to Los Machucos – so the Spaniard would have got a farewell victory of a sort even if Poels and Froome had caught him after all. With its maximum gradient of 28 per cent, the addition of the Alto de Los Machucos in the nearby Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain in 2017 was the Vuelta's response to the Giro's discovery of the Zoncolan – and the latest assault in an ongoing skirmish for steepness between the two races, a battle that can be dated back to 1999 and the unveiling of the Angliru.

Whether or not the Angliru will stand the test of time remains to be seen. But Contador's fairytale triumph in 2017 reinvigorated the discovery of the "blind visionary" and ensured that the myth of the mammoth Asturian peak lives on.

In 2020, the iconic climb returns for an eighth time to the Vuelta as the race looks for an heir to Contador's crown – 21 years after José María Jiménez emerged through the mist, to write a thrilling first chapter of a story that shows no sign of concluding any time soon.