Arrate
Distance: 6.93 km
Elevation Gain: 415 m
Elevation Loss: 50 m
Difficulty:
388 (Moderate)
FIETS Index: 2.92 FIETS
Avg Grade: 7.02 %
Max cat climb: 2
Min elevation: 164 m
Max elevation: 580 m
Ride Category:
Climb
Arrate is Eibar’s climb, in Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country of Spain, and it was raced long before the big tours came. The Subida a Arrate hill-climb began in 1941; Federico Bahamontes won it five years running, from 1958 to 1962, and Raymond Poulidor, Luis Ocaña and Stephen Roche are among its other winners. The Itzulia, the Tour of the Basque Country, finished here every year from 2010 to 2019. The Vuelta a España has finished here too. In 2012 Alberto Contador attacked seven times on the climb; each time Alejandro Valverde, Joaquim Rodríguez and Chris Froome came back, and Valverde won the photo-finish to take the red jersey. In 2020 Primoz Roglic won the opening stage here and took red.
The ride climbs out of Eibar on the race road through Matxaria. Eibar was a gunmaking town, and two of its arms makers turned to bicycles: BH in 1919 and Orbea in 1930. Gustaaf Deloor won the first Vuelta, in 1935, on a BH. Past Usartza the road tops out at Krabelin and drops to the finish at the sanctuary of Arrate, first recorded in 1498, whose Virgin has been the patron of Eibar since 1928.
