On the straight of Barreal, between deciduous trees, the record holder of the hour, Filippo Ganna, a locomotive for himself, but a high-speed locomotive, throws his counter. One kilometer started. strength and desire. So big, so fast, Fernando Gaviria couldn’t ask for a better pitcher. The Colombian sprinter measures the distance, measures his strength, calculates his speed and shoots at the Piedmontese at the right moment to reach his bike and clearly overtake him in the last meters. It’s Gaviria’s first win with the Movistar jersey. The ninth he has achieved in the five Vueltas a San Juan in which he has participated. None like him, ending a nearly year-long drought in Argentina as he hadn’t won since the Tour of Oman on February 22.
“I prepared very well all winter and today it happened. The team behaved really well as they have done all week. We knew this block wasn’t as pure for rolling as other Sprinters, but today’s profile favored our characteristics. The boys were the best today. The whole team worked for me. We looked for it, we deserved it and we got it,” exclaimed the cyclist from La Ceja, repeating incessantly that he knew which team he was coming to and that he would not have pitchers, but that he did didn’t need. “The mountain pass became very difficult; The heat has increased in recent days and it has been difficult for all of us, but we knew how to be patient, we were able to cross the pass together, we stayed calm and worked until the finish line to get this beautiful victory. “
Incidentally, thanks to the bonus, Gaviria is the new leader of a race that rests on Thursday and takes on Friday’s king stage, the climb to Alto Colorado, where Remco is expected. Cyclists are beings who live between dreams and memories and always desire. Memory is the landscape. Before leaving for the mountains on old roads Before leaving for the mountains on old roads, Óscar Sevilla, the eldest of them all, talks about the roads of the Dauphiné, its always uncomfortable slopes, even without it appearing so, about its asphalt stuck to the wheels, loose gravel, and, I might add, as you enter through the Calingasta gate, Route 149, the seven-colored Alcázar hill on your left and on your right a river of mud and over the peaks of the Andes , and some with snow mixing with the clouds, Cerro Mercedario, so high, 6,720 m, and from above you can see the Pacific, Chile at your feet, that’s like stepping into the Caisse Déserte, because the landscape is that of the Izoard, son of dust and erosion, the wind of the Alps. The memory of great races, says Sevilla, will whet the appetite of the greatest, from Egan Bernal, sure, his friend, that of Remco Evenepoel, perhaps warns that some will ride the climb to more than 2,000 meters from the viewpoint Andacollo Grotto .
Egan moves naturally, mingling with the cyclists from San Juan’s community teams, the city’s cyclists. His move is fatal to Sam Bennett, the previous leader and stage one winner, and to Fabio Jakobsen, the smart sprinter who lags behind. He has already said, he warned, I will not work to climb better because then I would lose speed. If there’s a mountain, I’ll stay. Further stages will follow. The ones from Barreal, for Gaviria who needs them.
The cyclist speaks and his sensitive soul may be overwhelmed by the landscape, the memory, and he feels closer to the farmhands of the towns of the last few kilometers, mud houses, horses at the door, goats and garlic plantations and vineyards, their poverty, and they had only running water two years ago, or think of the miners in Veladero, who mine gold at almost 5,000 meters above sea level for the Canadian bosses of the Barrick Gold Corporation, who use their profits to help organize the race. And maybe they feel, their pride, their loneliness, like the aroma of Atahualpa Yupanqui whom everyone envies for his wealth, character, strength, beauty and sorrow rooted in the stone, and behind the viewpoint and its dizzying Descent , Egan no longer moves, none of the big ones move. They don’t attack. They are farmers, miners, they work, they work hard, in solidarity, give each other their bikes, protect themselves from the wind that burns fans, first-class cyclists. Or is it the heat. It’s not the Dauphiné, it’s not the Tour, the size is the landscape, the cyclist continues in the peloton, denies the sprint.
And the Movistar, miners, farmers, workers, astound Gaviria. “They gave everything for me,” says the grateful Colombian, who was a little sad when Egan left everyone speechless at the Virgen de Andacollo viewpoint, already at over 2,000 meters, his habitat. “They believed in me more than in myself.” Pablo Lastras, the team manager, had already told him who is also amazed at the respect with which Gaviria, a sprinter, treats his teammates, how he leads them. “I already said to him, ‘Fernando, we don’t have a train for the arrival, but we already know how to pull the car, we already know…” says Lastras.
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