The country of the
beetles
has its fifth great cycle tour. His second Giro d'Italia. Accustomed to the epic suffering of those climbers who accumulated mountain shirts, Colombia now savors, once again, a resounding triumph of those that were previously elusive. And he does it at a convulsive moment, at the hands of Egan Bernal, a 24-year-old phenomenon, the only Colombian to have won a Tour de France, just when young people overwhelmed by despair have spent more than a month on the streets of Colombian cities in a sustained wave of marches, protests and riots that corner the government of Iván Duque and have crashed against the repression of the security forces.
“Finally yes it is my second great. At this moment I look calm, but inside I am that I exploded with happiness ", declared a reborn Egan, dressed in the pink jersey that he defended with success all week, just after finishing the Milan time trial. After fulfilling the country's long-overdue yellow dream on the 2019 Tour, Zipaquira's Wonder Boy has suffered to get back to his best form. He did not refer to the protests, but had already done so on the eve of the start of the Giro. “It hurts me and I feel sorry for what is happening in Colombia. In fact, I would like to be there and be able to be close to my family and, in some way, support my people ”, he had written at the beginning of the month, when the social outbreak was reaching its first week.In that message he was outraged both with the abuses by the authorities and with the acts of vandalism, and asked the president to "find a solution to all this chaos."
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Egan won the Giro on his first attempt, as Nairo Quintana had already done in the 2014 edition. “It was a Colombian show.
I am very happy for the country, for all the people, that this type of happiness comes to the Colombian people that we so need ”, said Nairo, the Boyacense who has led the new generation of cyclists.
To the Tour de Egan and those two titles in Italy are added those of the Tour of Spain, with a very high load of symbolism, which also came at critical moments for Colombia.
Lucho Herrera was the first Colombian champion of the Iberian round, in 1987, and he moved with his words. "I just want there to be peace in Colombia," he declared when the country came from the takeover of the Palace of Justice by the M-19 guerrillas in 1985, an episode known as "the holocaust", and faced the prolonged conflict an armed force that involved the forces of the State, guerrillas and paramilitaries, in a prelude to the onslaught of the large drug trafficking cartels in the Government of Virgilio Barco (1986-1990). Many years passed, and Nairo again deluded with the feats of the beetles that were not only imposed on mountain stages. He won the Vuelta a España in 2016 just as Colombia was preparing to sign a hard-negotiated peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas,a process that has since polarized society. "Let the world know that our country is peace, sport and love," said Nairo, in red, in the Plaza Cibeles in Madrid.
The call for dialogue and reconciliation now belongs to Egan, who was crowned in Milan thanks also to the work of another humble young man, Daniel Felipe Martínez, 25, his partner at Ineos Grenadiers, who ran a great time trial to sneak into fifth place in the ranking. He is from Soacha, a municipality bordering Bogotá that, like so many other places in the Colombian geography, has been the scene of mobilizations and riots in the last month. The sports postcard of the year is the image of those two twenty-somethings during a climb in which Dani Martínez, a gregarious person, encourages and tows the champion on the climb to the Sega di Ala, the only stage in which he was on the verge of fainting. Along with them pedaled a country that does not want to be taken off the hook, which has found it difficult to turn the page of violence.
In a Colombia plunged into tension, with the dialogue between the Government and the organizers of the strike stagnant and with no exits in sight, cycling has emerged, once again, as one of the few reasons for union. Politicians from different shores were quick to celebrate the triumphs of Egan and Dani Martínez. “Both are a sample of the talent, effort, dedication and resilience of our young Colombians. Thank you for so much joy and for raising the name of the country, ”said Duque, who despite being the youngest president in recent history has seen the insurmountable gap that separates him from those sections of the population deepen. "What a moment of happiness for Colombia, so timely and so necessary," seconded former President Álvaro Uribe, his political mentor."Congratulations to our two champions Egan Bernal and Daniel Martínez for teaching us the value of friendship, passion, discipline and teamwork," trilled Claudia López, the mayor of Bogotá, who this week recognized the legitimacy of the claims and he apologized to the young people for not having understood from the beginning the magnitude of their anguish.
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