The most difficult climb in the history of the UCI: that’s how Babadag was described in advance. The monstrous ascent was the decisive factor in the third stage of the Tour of Turkey on Tuesday (10.10), and it more than lived up to expectations. The winner, Alexey Lutsenko, completed the 18.3 km climb with an average gradient of 10.4% in a time of 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 15 seconds. “Was this really necessary?” was the question that followed.
“I hope I never have to conquer that monster again,” laughs Kenneth van Rooy (Bingoal WB) after the race to the Dutch website WielerFlits. “It was really a matter of counting down. You see that in the middle of the climb, you’re going at 8 kilometers per hour. But at that moment, you also know: ah, I have to try to speed up a bit, or it will be another hour of climbing (laughs). It was a struggle to reach the top.”
“You have the steepness, which is extremely high, but it also lasts for kilometers. Compare it to a tough climb in Belgium, but with 18 kilometers in length. I normally use a 42-55 gear ratio, but now it went up to 36 teeth in the front and even 30 in the rear. Thank goodness!”
Not even in the Vuelta are there such high gradients for so long.
Xandro Meurisse (Alpecin-Deceuninck) was also impressed. “You use a tool like Veloviewer beforehand, and the first things you see are quite disturbing. You see some gravel, high gradients, and not much more. But it was truly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve participated in the Tour and the Vuelta, but I’ve never climbed such high gradients for such a long time.”
Praise for the race organization.
Maurice adds, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the last two years, all organizers have been so eager to make the route even harder. They look for extremes to make their route even more challenging and to show off.”
Check out Mark Cavendish’s finish, 52 minutes after the winner.
Kenneth van Rooy concludes with praise for the race organization. “I would like to say that the organization did their best. Everything was provided at the top. We easily descended with the cable cars. And the deadline was extended from 12% to 25% after consultation with the team leaders. They showed a lot of goodwill towards the riders, but they still need to ask themselves if this is really necessary.”
Notice the difficulty of the Astana car in climbing with the peloton.