As if forced to fantasy and dream by its landscape, the lack of oxygen in the heights of the Andean moors and the sun that stings hard in the cold land of Boyacá, and despite the military rigidity of its organization, the Tour peloton Colombia happily welcomes cyclists like Óscar Sevilla, 47 years old and counting, more Colombian than Albacete now, who arrives at the exits, with more color and magic, in a
chiva
(a means of collective transport with large wheels, almost like a tractor, capable of overcoming impossible slopes on irregular surfaces) brought from Medellín, and then runs away, or how Alejandro Gaínza, who is from Tarifa and races on a Moroccan team, played table tennis as a child and discovered the world and gave weight to his dreams as a cyclist in races like the Tour of Mauritania, endless straights in the desert always whipped by the wind, which for him, from Tarifa, is an old friend who speaks in his ear, and the fans.
They are the exotic quota, which Alejandro Valverde would happily complete, who accompanies his Movistar on the Colombian adventure and, unable to sit still, takes out his bike and goes running a couple of minutes after the peloton on the same road.
Nairo says that on the bus, in the hotel, Valverde, a kind of coach, is the voice that speaks in the ear, and it seems to the 44-year-old from Murcia that it is becoming less and less difficult for him not to think about continuing to be a cyclist, that he has fewer and fewer monkeys, but one day Urán tells him why don't he put on a number and run instead of his teammate Andrey Amador, who had to go home, and it takes Valverde a few seconds to realize that he isn't on the right track. seio.
He would have liked it so much.
The weirdos pepper a race that Colombian cyclists take very seriously.
There is Harold Tejada, 27 years old, a cyclist from the lost generation, who races in Astana, where he arrived with Superman López and Vicente Belda, and wins the stage in Santa Rosa Viterbo, where a giant meteorite fell more than 200 years ago. years and the blacksmith turned it into a magnificent stone anvil.
Tejada had not won anything as a professional, but at the exit from Paipa was his mother, Gladys Canacué, who was mayor of her city, Pitalito in Huila, and gave him the necessary strength to infiltrate the escape and to be the stronger on arrival.
And he is a leader.
He is third in the stage, after the Italian Piccolo, and second overall, Seville.
Alejandro Valverde and Óscar Sevilla, on the podium in Santa Rosa de Viterbo.IRAIA CALVO
And on the final podium, stately in an armchair that looks like a throne, Valverde presides over the awards ceremony, and cannot help laughing when Sevilla goes up to receive the best foreign jersey.
He gets up and runs to hug, laughing, his partner at Kelme more than 20 years ago.
There are the figures of the last decade, elderly, gray hair, limping, tired, Nairo Quintana, Egan Bernal, Rigo Urán.
And the fans are almost praying, for God, for God, for a worthy successor, another Nairo, another Lucho, another Cochise, another Egan.
And they all speak with desire of young people who promise, and they say many names, but they all repeat one, that of Diego Pescador, who last September, when he was still 18 years old, escaped like Pogacar 50 kilometers from the finish line of the stage. queen of the RCN Classic, Alto de Minas no less, and she beat them all.
“Yes, I think that the fans are suffering a lot, that everything is quite hard, and let's say that when you start winning several things at such a young age, there is a lot of social networking and one sees comments in which they already want to make you champion from a very young age. ", says, with a soft, calm voice, so calm, Fisherman, who is from a land of coffee and wax palms, from Quimbaya in Quindío, long-distance athlete from eight to 12 years old, and a cyclist since then because it is the hobby from his father, who sells boots and clothing for coffee plantation workers, and his uncle left him an old, almost iron bike from the 90s, with gear shift levers on the frame, and he started.
“It really is a long process.
And we have seen the case of the last young people who have unfortunately returned here to Colombia a year after trying in Europe.
The ideal is to go slowly but surely.”
Fisherman, after the Santa Rosa de Viterbo stage. Iraia Calvo
Like young people his age in Europe, the generation marked by the flights of Remco, a professional at 18, Pescador, who turned 19 last December, is a cyclist because he wants to be a champion.
He seeks sporting glory, not just economic survival.
“I see a Remco, I see a Pogacar, and I think that they have a gift, that they are born to be cyclists,” says Pescador.
"In my case, to walk a lot, I have to train very hard, and I think it is harder to emerge here, in this part of the world, in Latin America because of the lack of support, let's put it that way, and in Europe they have a more biotype. cycling and also has many races.
The two months I was there running as a youth we ran almost every eight days, and here in Colombia in those categories there are very few races, when what makes you go hard are the races,” says Pescador, who ran in Europe last year. with all the best in the Giro de Sicilia, and he was the youngest cyclist to finish it in the history of the race, and his most admired rider, outside of Nairo, the idol of all of Colombia, is Alberto Contador for his nonconformity, his attacks .
“But it motivates me to see Ayuso, Remco, Pogacar, Egan, who won the Tour at 22. If they can, I can too, with a lot of work, with a lot of discipline, and that is my path.
I'm heading towards that and I hope to achieve it."
He talks about them, he wants to be them, and the scouts of the WorldTour teams, who do not want to miss any gem under 20 years old, also think so, and Movistar and Ineos have already made him an offer, but in reality he would like to be Alberto counter.
“My victories have almost all been solo and I do better when I go upwards, but I have always attacked from afar,” says Pescador, who races in Luis Alfonso Cely's GW Erco.
“And there is a cyclist who is the idol for me, Alberto Contador, who always made his ambushes from a distance 80, 100 from the finish line.
Let's say I think he is my style.”
They know him for that in Colombia, and even more so for his way of celebrating his victories, as if he only wanted to win alone to have time, upon reaching the finish line, to get up on the pedals and make the gesture of the fisherman who casts the rod. and picks up the line after the salmon bites.
And maybe on Saturday, in Alto del Vino, 2,800m next to Bogotá, I will catch the big catch, and smile.
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