The stories

2026.10.17 Gran Fondo La Nucia cycling (Esp)

Relive the highlights and autograph encounters from the Gran Fondo in La Nucía, Spain.

This day  Michel van Loon went to the city of La Nucia (near Benidorm) for a cyclingevent called Gran Fondo La Nucia. It's a two day cycling event with a criterium for riders and former riders on saturday. The weather forecast called for caution since heavy rain, thunderstorms and possible problems due to flooding of main roads was expected for the weekend. We did deceide to go last minute since the forecasts told us we would have little to no problems. So we arrived early after a 1.45 hour drive and good a good parkingspot. The event included a fanzone with a lot of stuff bike related and some event-catering. A number of events were planned such a pointcourse, eliminationrace, a duel and some other cool stuff of which you ca see some shots in the photogallery below. For me, as an autograph collector, the event was interesting because of the many well known (ex)riders that would attend. Their names included Miguel Indurain, Alejandro Valverde & Enric Mas, all of which i had already collected previously and also Paula Blasi, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, Dylan van Baarle, Isaac del Toro, Samuel Sanchez and other riders from Spanish teams such as Kern-Pharma, Burgos and Caja. Unfortunately due to the expected problems with weather a lot of riders cancelled so the event was a bit less interesting from collecting point of view. However the big man Pedro Delgado was there as well as mas & Blasi, both the latest Vuelta winners. we had a good time with the riders and enjoyed the events which were all very easy to watch....