When cycling beats football by a landslide

Colombian Egan Bernal during the stage at the Zoncolan, this Saturday.Fabio Ferrari / LaPresse / AP

With Egan Bernal in pink, the Giro travels the northeastern border of the peninsula and touches Trieste, where Joyce left his soul, where Nairo won the Giro of 14, where, in 1946, in the first Giro after the war, Giordano Cottur insisted to arrive despite the fact that Yugoslav partisans blocked the road claiming the city for their homeland. Cottur arrived in Trieste and by bicycle he proclaimed his Italianness among the cheers of the citizens, perhaps as happy as those inhabitants of Manizales who cheered and walked on their shoulders like a bullfighter in triumph to Efraín Forero, who ascending, and descending, the tremendous Alto de Letras en bicicleta, had proven in October 1950 that it was possible to make a cycling Tour of a Colombia torn then in a real civil war between liberals and conservatives."There were no conditions for a national race, and yet there was a race," says Matt Rendell in his magnificent book

"This historical paradox reflects both the country of surprises that is Colombia and the place that cycling occupies in its soul," he adds.

Forero won, of course, the first Tour of Colombia, which began in Bogotá on January 5, 1951, and in its wake crowds gathered that, suddenly, became aware that they were part of a national unity, that they were, among all , creating a national identity, that there was something beyond the mountains that surrounded their villages.

Cycling has turned the bicycle, the basic mobility tool of the peasant community, into an object of luxury, desired and exhibited by the wealthiest classes, and has made a peasant son of Boyacá peasants, Nairo Quintana, a venerated god who he stands on the podium of the Vuelta a España that he wins, in September 2015, and proclaims the goodness of the peace process of President Santos.

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And echoing it, from the Italy that conquers in pink, Egan Bernal, from Zipaquirá, in the highlands of Cundinamarca, like Forero, remembers almost daily that he does not forget the social conflict that has been in Colombia for three weeks but does not want to talk about them That for him the best way to contribute to his end is victory, it gives joy to the people of Colombia, gives them hope. And the news of his exploits in the Italian mountains, from Abruzzo to the Alps, compete with unemployment to occupy the space in the first of the newspapers.

Nairo or Egan are not the only ones who, leaving their Colombia to succeed in Europe, make Colombians feel proud from time to time. Before that, other sons of the people led the way, such as Cochise Rodríguez, the first Colombian who triumphed in Italy, won stages of the Giro and broke the hour record; like Lucho Herrera, who won the Vuelta in 1987; like Fabio Parra, podium in the Tour of 88; like Santiago Botero, world time trial champion, and together they have created a unique cultural tradition in Latin America, and a sense of collective belonging. And when the FARC kidnapped Lucho in March 2000, the whole society rose up against the guerrillas, and the movement was such that the Jardinerito de Fusagasugá was released in just 24 hours when the FARC accepted the first economic offer, 4,000 million Colombian pesos. ,of the cyclist's family.

The strength, and the quality, and its roots in popular culture, of his cycling are so great that Colombia is perhaps the first country in the world in which football, its national team, is worth competing in popularity with it. Not only is it a team with a long series of failures behind it, but where cycling unites those who otherwise would have nothing to talk about, football faces, generates violence, anger, conflict. She fails in the World Cup in the United States, where she had gone after the 0-5 in Buenos Aires convinced that she would become world champion, and a few days after her quick elimination Andrés Escobar, the defender who committed the crime of scoring a goal, was murdered. own goal. Soccer is lucky, that cycling is at hand.Colombia loses the organization of the 86 World Cup and the following year Lucho wins the Tour of Spain, and eight years later it organizes a cycling World Cup for Indurain, Olano and Pantani. He loses the Copa América because the country, amid police-military violence and brutality, cannot ensure the proper development of a tournament, while Egan, the new indomitable Zipa, shows in Italy that Colombian cycling has no borders or limits.