The cycling of the new era is quoted in the Wollongong World Championship

Tadej Pogacar beats Van Aert in the Montreal GP sprint two Sundays ago.Peter McCabe (AP)

From Wollongong reach Europe stories of greedy magpies that attack the deceptive shine of the helmets of cyclists engaged on the Pacific coast of Australia, the surf waves south of Sydney, in the hunt for rainbows.

In Wollongong and its beaches and its parks they talk about the showers and clouds that their spring has brought and about the prodigious Belgians and enemies, about Wout van Aert, the most admired cyclist on the Tour, and about Remco Evenepoel, emperor of the Vuelta and Liège, and all the others, all the cyclists, except Jonas Vingegaard, who have filled the year with their names --Tadej Pogacar, the phenomenon of the Tour and the Strade Bianche;

Mathieu van der Poel, unbeatable in the Koppenberg and Flanders;

Biniam Girmay, the Eritrean who fought with Van der Poel in the Giro, and beat him, before a cap of

he KO'd him in a victory celebration;

Julian Alaphilippe, the rainbow of the last two years, the king of the falls, Strade, Liège, Vuelta, in the 22nd, and many Frenchmen—chase, waiting for his anger and the outpouring of his spirit.

They speak of another spirit, the team spirit, stronger than their navel, they proclaim, and everyone watches and ironically, but who says they don't get along, if I've seen them have coffee together...

It's the World Cup.

The race that will make official who among many will be considered the best of the year, if any.

It's 266.9 kilometres, six and a half hours, from 2.15 on Sunday morning until dawn, until 8.45, more or less (TDP and Eurosport), eight more hours in Australia, Helensburgh and Mount Keira in the first 62 kilometers , and the remaining 205 divided into 12 laps of a 17.1-kilometre circuit, slides, highways and a scary slope, Mount Pleasant (1,100 meters at 7.7%, with a pass at 19% according to the Garmin of the corridors), planted in the middle.

In Portugal they talk about the future, about the amazing António Morgado, 18 years old, mustache and goatee, student of Nelson Oliveira and João Almeida, who came second in the rain in the junior race after having maintained a lead of a few seconds for 18 kilometers, and Only the German who beat him, Emil Herzog, reached him, and the Spanish team does not talk about who else has been talked about in the past months, not about the phenomena Juan Ayuso and Carlos Rodríguez, absent because they and their teams They think more about other races, such as Lombardy, nor do they talk about Alejandro Valverde, the best Spaniard in the last decade, whose retirement plans, and those of his Movistar, do not go through Australia.

Pascual Momparler, the coach, speaks, instead, of Marc Soler, the Catalan from the UAE, who, he says, is out of it,

and his spirits in the clouds after having discovered that his soul multiplies in his solitary escapades.

“And his style, his form, has a lot to say on a circuit like this, in which it is not just the slope, and the 12 times he goes over it, that makes him tough, but the permanent whip, with so many curves and slides”, analyzes Momparler, by phone from Wollongong.

“And, look, the Kazakh Fedorov has won the U23 race running like Marc Soler did to win the Bilbao stage of the Vuelta.

Of course, in professionals, with teams of eight and not five as in the sub23, the tactic will not be as practical, but we have Iván García Cortina, who if he passes the slope can say something at the end... And, as if that were not enough, Soler he is a friend of Pogacar, and the Slovenian can even tell him where he is going to attack, and it will be important, because when Pogacar attacks,

They are not waiting and the fans are waiting for them, and it will be sunny and hot, the meteorologists announce, and the fans remember that Evenepoel, his style, his need to attack from afar, like in Liège, like in San Sebastián, to win, annoyed him to Van Aert the last World Cup, the one that should have been the one of the Belgian apotheosis in the shadow of his University of Leuven, and it became his crying and his gnashing of teeth, and the joy of Alaphilippe, who left alone .

But the fans know that it will not be easy for the scenario to be repeated, that Van Aert, already seen on the Tour, knows how to win in a sprint and knows how to win by attacking alone and far away, as Van der Poel also knows how to do, in both situations, and also Pogacar, near, far, Blas and Epi, as he demonstrated recently by defeating Van Aert himself, the green jersey of the Tour, in the Montreal GP sprint,

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