The first stage of the 74th edition of the VCV – Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana Gran Premi Banc Sabadell cycle race will start from Orihuela, on February 1, 2023.
Carolina Gracia, the Mayor of Orihuela, together with Ángel Casero, director of the Cycling Tour of the Valencian Community, Patricia Menárguez, Councillor for Sports and Manuel Villalgordo, Regional Director of Orihuela Vega Baja Banco Sabadell, announced the news at a presentation at the Puerta de la Olma, the point from where the starting gun will be fired to this new edition of the VCV 2023, a test that the city hosts for the twelfth time. For this reason, Ángel Casero has highlighted that Orihuela is “the home of cycling”.
The 2023 edition will feature nearly 20 teams, 10 of them of outstanding international prestige and more than a hundred riders. Casero, director of the event, has highlighted that the first stage of the VCV 2023 “will start this year very strong. We wanted to do a route in the five days of the race in which the massive sprint will practically disappear and we have placed two high finishes in all the stages, with quite hard climbs with ramps of 20 or 24% unevenness”. And he recalled that in 2022 the return had a follow-up impact in Europe of 17 million households through Eurosport and through Tele Deporte in Spain and reached 550 million impacts in the media, so “in the month February we also sell our territory through sports tourism”.
For his part, Manuel Villalgordo, Regional Director of Orihuela Vega Baja Banco Sabadell, the sponsoring entity, highlighted that “the event has values that are fully shared with the entity it represents, such as personal effort, solidarity, persistence and teamwork”.
The Mayor of Orihuela, Carolina Gracia, has affirmed that for Orihuela it is a satisfaction to be the venue for the first stage, “it is a very striking spectacle, it is a cycling festival that we are very happy to start here and obviously, for a city like Orihuela is a clear opportunity for the name of the city and its attractions to be better known”. She has also thanked the organisation of ‘La Volta’ for having the city as a trial start and has encouraged all citizens to “embrace and support this event on February 1”.
