In the hotels of Benidorm on Sunday, breakfast time is a hubbub of children running between the tables with waffles, colacaos and cereals, and parents who gawk and confess, we are here because the children wanted to see Mathieu Van der Poel.
Vanderpúl
, loudly pronounces the
speaker
in the Foietes park, and accentuates the last syllable, púl!, dryly, as if it were the onomatopoeia of an explosion, boom, and following the trail of his voice the children go towards the cyclocross circuit , where emotions and fun are announced.
An aubergine-colored atomic Porsche with a black band that bursts in, hoarsely backfiring and deafening the speakers, distracts them for a few seconds.
They follow his trail as they would follow the Pied Piper of Hamelin until their driver finds a space to park next to the Ineos bus.
It's Tom Pidcock.
He gets off and lets the kids cheer him on, photos, selfies, autographs.
Object of fascination, a cyclist.
The time has changed.
Cyclists are children too, and they know how to be idols, like Van der Poel, who arrives by bicycle from his Spanish home, 40 kilometers away, next to Moraira, because the Lamborghini he drives with his girlfriend to go to the races in Flanders has left at his Belgian home, and relaxed, he talks to everyone before starting the race, always smiling.
It is the eleventh of winter.
He has won the previous 10.
Your ass in the saddle, your head in the clouds, there is no one to bother you.
Pressure?
What's that?
Neither the children who adore him, so many who want to be like him, nor the mass of fans who come from the north to drink beer and eat chips and enjoy it watching him waste wild watts like a bazooka in the sand, make him tremble at all, the stairs, the asphalt slope on which, when you accelerate, even the television drone has a hard time following you, keeping up with your speed.
More than 15,000 paying viewers.
And Wout van Aert, the most discreet of the big three of cyclocross and cycling, who meet in a park on the Costa Blanca in winter, and so much sun, for the last time in the season, shows the same indifference towards destiny.
They smile and enjoy, and everything seems like a happy and inconsequential
show
, but competing is their life, winning their need, and displaying themselves generously.
Van Aert and Van der Poel, both 29 years old, Poulidor's grandson four months younger, have been rivals since they were aware of their existence.
When they were 14, 15 years old there was no cyclocross race that didn't end up being a duel between them.
12 years ago, Van der Poel won his first youth World Cup.
Van Aert was second.
They consciously practice the altruism of fantasy and even though the years pass, their imagination does not exhaust.
They are masters of the extraordinary.
Cartoon heroes.
As soon as the race began, barely a minute and a half into the hour that it will last, the chain came off Van der Poel's bike.
The waiter seeks to give emotion, everyone interprets.
He knows that if, as he usually does, he runs away unreachable right from the start, the spectators will get bored and, stuffed with beer, will end up insulting him.
Everyone is preparing for an epic comeback, something to marvel at.
Van der Poel answers them infallibly.
After the breakdown, Van der Poel is beyond 30th place. In three laps, just nine kilometers, less than 20 minutes, with lightning accelerations, overtaking through incredible gaps, roadrunners against the coyote, he is already in the lead.
The circuit is fast.
It is not easy to make differences.
Van Aert and Van der Poel sleep the race.
Tactical games.
Pidcock, a pocket cyclist, agile and bouncy, appears ahead and disappears.
Felipe Orts, the best Spaniard, a cyclist determined to be as good as the Belgians or the Dutch, a hard worker, he doesn't give up, he fights, he fights, he accelerates, he recovers, he stays close.
It's all under control.
Everything will be decided in the last round.
Maybe in the final sprint, the last stretch so short.
“He didn't have the freshest legs,” Van der Poel confesses.
“I couldn't make a difference after the comeback.
“I had to wait”
Everything should have been like this, but the calm kills Van der Poel, who not even his good white pants protect and when leaving the penultimate step through the sand pool he stumbles and hits a sandbag without realizing that behind him There is an iron post that his shoulder collides with.
He falls to the ground.
Minute 50. His career is lost.
Van Aert accelerates.
Only his compatriot and contemporary Michael Vanthourenhout resisted his attack, and he got rid of him in the 58th minute with an acceleration, watts at a time, on the asphalt slope.
The rest should have been a triumphant march for the Belgian four times second to Van der Poel this winter (and again third and again fifth), but he also could not deprive himself of the right to dress with emotion what he has already written with a start, ode to the unexpected, just 200 meters from the end.
“It was a super stupid action on my part,” acknowledged the Belgian, who fell clumsily while trying to get back on his bicycle after crossing the three-plank obstacle on foot that he had overcome in the previous eight laps by nimbly lifting the two wheels of his bike. bicycle without getting off it.
“As I saw that I had a big advantage, I decided not to risk it and cross the planks on foot.
But at the same time I wanted to do it very quickly.
And made a mistake".
When he failed in his jump, the bike fell to the ground, where it hit the saddle hard, and as he did so it flew, the material is so light, so fragile.
Van Aert walked the last few meters with fear in his body and his ass on the seat post, the seat tube, from which he stood up when crossing the finish line, so that everyone could see and appreciate him.
“My wrist hurts a little, but that's how it had to be,” explained Van Aert, who believes in premonitions.
“Yesterday my mother broke her wrist, and my parents got married on July 13, so when I saw that she was wearing number 13 [and she wore it straight, not inverted, as most do to avoid the jinx] I knew that It would be my day.
Yes, I had a bit of bad luck in the race, but I was able to do everything.”
Van der Poel finished fifth – “and I couldn't have finished better, it's a fair result,” he said – and his streak of invincibility that lasted 10 races, all of which were held this winter, was broken.
“It was a topic that interested journalists more than me.
Someday he had to break,” said the double world champion, of cyclocross and road, two simultaneous rainbows.
“And it would be better that it was here than in two weeks, when he will compete in the world championship.”
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