Sebastián Mora, the runner who triumphs in the cycling of the future and suffers the hardships of the old

Sebastián Mora, during the Track Champions League in London.TCL

London Olympic Velodrome, where the track arouses passions.

Sebastián Mora can't take it anymore.

He has competed in elimination – the cyclist who passes last in each sprint is eliminated – like never before, at the head of the group.

"It costs more, you spend more because you always have to hit it hard, but he is safer," explains the 34-year-old Pistard from Villarreal.

"In the other way, it's like you're going with the car accelerating and decelerating, and taking the risk every sprint."

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The tactic, so tired, has been about to succeed.

He needs to be in the top three of the last test of the fifth and final day of the UCI Track Champions League to prevail in the final overall in the long-distance category.

When, exhausted, he does not even have the strength to accelerate in the last pedal strokes of the lap and is eliminated, there are three cyclists still spinning in the velodrome.

Since he has finished fourth, in order to prevail in the general classification, his main rival, the Swiss Claudio Imhof, another velodrome animal, needs to finish neither first nor second.

He needs him to be the next one out and so when he sees one of the survivors, the Dutchman Matthijs Büchli, let go, he can't help but turn around and cheer him on, even giving him a push to keep him in the fight. .

Futile effort.

Büchli fails to link.

In the women's category, the final victory of the second edition of the Champions League, five events in four weeks at the Palma, Berlin, Paris and London velodromes, two days, went to the American Jennifer Valente;

in women's sprint, for the world champion, the French Mathilde Gros, and in men's sprint, for the Australian Matthew Richardson.

The final victory and the economic reward attached (25,000 euros for the first, 15,000, for the second) would not have hurt Mora, the best Spanish pistard at the end of a year in which he has verified that despite the fact that his cycling accelerates into the future at breakneck speed, the ugly old habits of lifelong cycling still prevail.

And he suffers them, the Spanish Olympic hope for velodromes, six times European champion and once world champion, right in the same London velodrome, despite the fact that he can be considered one of the stars of the screen, an avatar of

almost, or a complex computer game in the metaverse, the immersive television broadcasts that the patron of the competition and director for events of Discovery Warner Bros, François Ribeiro, has announced for 2023 in conjunction with the Californians of Infinite and Amazon Web Services .

“I have nothing at all for next year”

But before that he began the year with a contract in a continental team, the Manuela Fundación from Granada, which should allow him to take part in road tests to get bottom and pedal stroke.

The story lasted three months.

When he verified that the old adage of modest cycling was going to come true – if the first, the second and the third month you don't get paid, you can endure;

if the room neither, you have lost money-.

The saying refers to the fact that the teams must deposit a deposit with the UCI of 25% of the annual salary mass as a guarantee in case of non-payment.

Manuel Fundación has already announced to the Spanish federation that he cannot assume any payment and it has already begun the procedures to execute the guarantee.

Each runner, Mora as well, will receive a quarter of his salary, three months, and now, after December and January,

strong months of the Six Days in the velodromes of Europe, to look for a new team.

What rushes with little hope.

"For next year I still don't have anything at all," says an exceptional athlete, capable of being a champion coming from a country where there are hardly any velodromes, where almost no competitions are organized and in which the teams have always looked askance at the pistards, even though some of the best road cyclists, like Thomas, like Wiggins, like Ganna, have come off the track.

“It is seen that the Spanish teams do not dare or do not see the potential that exists with track cycling both sportingly and economically.

These days two foreign runners have signed a contract there in England”.

When he was younger, and not yet a recent father like he is now, Mora raced for teams in Japan and England, at the historic Raleigh brand.

The last few years he has been in Spain, a couple of years at Movistar,

one in the Caja Rural and a few months in the Manuela.

And in a year and a half, he will be one of the great hopes of a medal in Spanish sports at the Paris Games.

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