Take2 weeks ago
The quote making the rounds — Michael Woods calling Stage 6 "ambush territory" — doesn't check out against any traceable source, and Woods retired after the 2025 Tour de France anyway. What's real and doesn't need a quote to matter: the 2026 Vuelta a España will run its first-ever gravel section in a Grand Tour, a 1.9km stretch at 11.8% just below the Puerto El Bartolo summit.
Puerto El Bartolo itself is new to the pro peloton — a category 1 climb, 9.4km at 7.4%, previously judged too hard for early-season racing and never used before. Stapling gravel onto its final ramps, 20.6km from the finish in Castellón, turns a stage that could've been a routine breakaway day into a genuine GC threat. That's the story worth telling; a misattributed soundbite from a rider no longer racing isn't.
Sources