The Tour Colombia names Cavendish third chief of Zipaquirá

The platoon accelerates quickly along the slides of the Sabana de Bogotá highway towards Zipaquirá, where García Márquez spent so much cold studying high school at high school, and Mark Cavendish stays and returns, and his companions, Lutsenko, Tejada, are waiting for him and they return to him, and he stays and comes back.

Almost everyone, except the Englishman, Gaviria, Persico, Bonifacio, Soto from Barranquilla, the half dozen sprinters, has their sights set on the hills that surround them and their thoughts on Alto del Vino, the climb that on Saturday will decide the champion.

Some think of the victory of the day, others of the victory of tomorrow and few think of history, in which, so appropriately, Zipaquirá means in the Muisca language the girlfriend of Zipa, the wife of the chief, and there Efraín Forero, the Indomitable, was born. Zipa, the cyclist whose victory in the first Vuelta a Colombia, in 1951, marked a truce in the fierce civil war of great violence, and a new collective feeling in a torn country.

Egan Bernal, the boy wonder, was also born in Zipaquirá, and the race passes in a flash before the hospital where the first Colombian to win the Tour, already in 2019, a 22-year-old boy, was resurrected from the injuries of his serious accident, two years ago, and in front of the beautiful mural with which his land celebrates his life.

Two chiefs.

And there, after the distractions, in his bubble, Cavendish, perhaps the greatest pure sprinter in history, only has eyes, final stretch, for the rear wheel of his launcher, the Dutch colossus Cees Bol, who crosses the impetuous peloton, an unstoppable mass.

In front of the TV, his son Finn, 18 years old, has to get up from his chair and stop looking at the screen, his legs are shaking so much, so many nerves and anguish are flooding him, like a fan facing a series of penalties. his team in a grand final.

250 meters from the line, to the left of him, a blue reflection on the fence, a flash, warns him that at the speed of light Fernando Gaviria, his best rival, whom he has never been able to defeat in America, it has started.

Cavendish jumps in too.

Agile jumping gives him the right of way.

Gaviria can only try to come back on the inside, between the fence and Cavendish, who skillfully blocks his path by extending his left elbow.

Gaviria desists from the

He lifts his chest.

Half a wheel before the Englishman has already crossed the finish line.

The rocket gives up his effort and smiles under the brush of his mustache watching the English bullet bent over the bar, pass to the right of him launching the bike.

Cavendish, master of speed and

, has acted as he himself would have acted, just as he did three days ago in Duitama, dancing on his bike from left to right to avoid the passage between his left and the fence of the Italian Persico .

Afterwards, the two hugged each other warmly, and perhaps Gaviria would then remember another arrival, that of the last stage of the last Giro, in Rome, in which half the peloton, Gaviria included, contributed with their help to Cavendish saying goodbye to the

with a victory.

“I remember Gaviria when he was a kid.

It was 10 years ago.

He jumped off my back and beat me twice in Argentina.

And I've known him since then,” says the Astana sprinter.

“He was at my house in 2016. My wife washed his clothes and we had dinner together.

“I have seen him grow from a boy to a man.”

After achieving on its streets, in front of the university library, the 163rd victory in 20 years of professional career, the first on Colombian soil, Mark Cavendish can well proclaim himself the proud third chief of Zipaquirá at the age of 38.

All he needs to do to close his sporting life happily is win a victory in the Tour de France in five months.

It would be the 35th.

He would finally break the tie with Eddy Merckx.

No one would doubt anymore, no one would protest, not even Rick van Looy, the Emperor of Herentals or anyone else, that he is the best in history.

And the Tour Colombia, only four years old, would be the one who would complain the least: the name of Man's Englishman among his winners magnifies his record.

Only Cavendish himself protests.

“No, I don't like being told that I am the Cacique or the king of the sprint.

“We are in times of democracy,” says the cyclist who was also world champion in 2011. “Sprinting is more of a republic.

Republic, that.

That's a better way to define it.

“We can all put on a good

and have our fan club and make this dance something beautiful to see.”

Some think about tomorrow, others about yesterday, Esteban Chaves thinks about his life, about his childhood as a restless child on the streets of Chía, the Muisca moon, about his youth as a restless cyclist training every morning, before school, on the slopes from Alto del Vino, at the exit from Bogotá towards Medellín, and on Saturday the queen stage, the decisive one, will end at its summit.

“It does not have the grandeur, the excessiveness, of the great Colombian climbs, of Minas, Letras, la Línea, much longer, endless, and higher, up to beyond 3,000 meters, and so steep that they can be climbed with a plate” , explains Chavito, who seems sincerely excited at the prospect of competing with the best, his teammate at EF Carapaz, Egan, Rigo, Nairo, in his childhood playground.

“Alto del Vino, which reaches 2,854 meters, is shorter and steeper.

Harder, very similar to Alto de Calderas, in Granada, Antioquia.”

The Wine will be raised twice.

The first from the start, in Cota, a short ascent, from halfway to launch into a descent that will allow you to gain momentum for the final fight: 30 kilometers from La Vega, at only 1,100 meters of altitude, to overcome a difference in altitude of 1,773 meters and take the elevator from the warm floor to the cold floor of Colombia, so vertical.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on