Most cycling races start beside a host town’s most renowned place of interest. Museums, town halls, beaches and parks are the standard choice.

But this Sunday, the final stage of the Vuelta a España will start outside a supermarket in Granada.

That may sound unusual but it’s a slight downgrade on events from two years ago, when stage six of the 2024 Vuelta began inside a Carrefour supermarket in Jerez de la Frontera on southern Spain’s coast.

That’s right, inside. In the narrow passage between the checkouts and the information booth and parallel to the dairy aisle.

“For a stage to start from inside a hypermarket was honestly something iconic, epic. And I don’t think it’ll ever happen again,” Domingo Acedo Sirviente, the manager of Carrefour Jerez Sur for the past four years, tells The Athletic. (He insists, by the way, that it’s a hypermarket, not a standard supermarket).

So how did such a bizarre event come about — and what was it like for the 174 riders who resisted the temptation to pull skids on the polished white tiles or reach across to the tills and pop a candy bar into their pocket?

This article was published by The Athletic/NYT during September 2026. You can read the full article here