Madrid (AFP)
The 2022 Tour of Spain cycling will begin in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where the first three stages of the Spanish Loop will take place next year, organizers said in a statement on Monday.
La Vuelta had planned to leave the Netherlands during its 2020 edition, but the Covid-19 pandemic had forced the organizers to cancel the stages planned abroad and to cut the Tour of Spain from its stages also planned in France and Portugal.
Two years later, the Vuelta therefore returns to its plan to start in the Netherlands for its 2022 edition, which will be contested between August 19 and September 11, organizers said on Monday.
"These months of waiting have not altered our desire to collaborate (with the Netherlands), the enthusiasm and the ambition that we have put from the first day in the organization of this official departure", affirmed the director of the Vuelta, Javier Guillén, quoted in the press release.
"A start for history, which will mark a milestone for Spanish and Dutch cycling," he added.
The Spanish loop, whose 2021 edition has just ended with a third consecutive coronation for Primoz Roglic, will start on August 19 with a team time trial in the streets of Utrecht.
The peloton will then rally Bolduque in Utrecht, then the Dutch parenthesis will close on August 21 with "a loop stage with a start and a finish in the city of Breda".
"We can finally give an official date. We have been anxiously awaiting the start of the La Vuelta Holanda project and we are eager to get it going," concluded the mayor of the city of Utrecht, Sharon Dijksma.
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