La Volta a Catalunya 2024

Stage road bicycle race around Catalonia

The best cyclists in the world will compete in 2024 on the Catalan roads in an edition that promises a great show, with three high altitude finishes, unprecedented venues, and highly anticipated returns.

Event date:
18th to 24th March 2024

Event location:
Catalonia, Spain

Final stage:
Av de la Reina Maria Cristina by Montjuic magic fountain

Information:
Volta a Catalanya Final stage 7 is in Barcelona on Sunday 24th March 2024.

The Tour de Catalonia bike race is a professional road bike race around Catalonia, Spain. The Volta a Catalunya stage race is one of the three oldest stage bike races in the world, only preceded by the Tour de France and the Gira d'Italia. The first edition of the Volta a Catalunya was on January 6th 1911 to 8th January 1911. The very first Volta a Catalunya was 363 km in total with a first stage from Barcelona to Tarragona via Sitges. The second stage was from Tarragona to Lleida. And the third from Lerida to Barcelona. Girona was not in the first Volta a Catalunya because the roads to Girona apparently were not good enough in those days. 34 riders started on Barcelona's Plaça de Sarrià. The first stage was from Barcelona to Tarragona at 97 km, the second from Tarragona to Lleida at 111 km and the final 157 km stage from Lleida back to Barcelona, totaling 363 km. 22 riders finished the race at the Velodrome di Sants. Catalan rider Sebastià Masdeu won the first and third stages and became the first overall winner. The winner's average speed was 23 km/h. 

Final stage
The 7th final stage of the modern day Volta a Catalunya is always in Barcelona and usually starts and ends on Avinguda Reina Maria Cristina with laps round a circuit of 154,8km on Montjuïc hill.  Around 25 teams usually compete in the Volta.

Route 2024

Route 103rd edition of the Volta a Catalunya:

Stage 1. Monday 18 March:
Sant Feliu de Guíxols – Sant Feliu de Guíxols.

Stage 2. Tuesday 19 March:
Mataró – Vallter / Setcases (Vall de Camprodon)

Stage 3. Wednesday 20 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 March:
Altafulla – Viladecans

Stage 6. Saturday 23 March:
Berga – Queralt

Stage 7. Sunday 24 March:
Barcelona – Barcelona

Description 2024 Volta
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.

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