“Who do you love more, Miguel? After Pogacar or after Vingegaard?” one asks Indurain, who is waiting on the podium at Alto do Castelo in Rubiá to crown the Dane again for now, only with the yellow jersey on his shoulders. “Who wins,” replies the Navarrese transformed into Galician, perhaps an effect of the landscape of the Valdeorras valleys at its feet, Godellos and Mencías, bare vines awaiting spring leaves. “But which do you like best, which style?” insists the curious. “If both are the same. Look at that,” replies the winner of five tours, pointing to Vingegaard, who is rolling like he was at the tour, on the back of the podium and on the phone with Trine, his partner and mother of his daughter. “Look how much he likes to win, as does Pogacar. None of them waste a single day. He won yesterday, he won today and he will certainly win the time trial tomorrow as well, although Pogacar might be a bit more spectacular.”
And a few minutes later, as if by magic, seven tours meet on stage in a remote and harsh Galician village, against a landscape that seems alien, distant and scarred by the forest fire that burned down forests and villages in the summer. , white snow and it looks like Poland or Russia from old black and white movies, and shadows of colored cyclists on a road leading up to the Alto, where traces of old gravel and tar can sometimes be seen. Indurain’s five are added to those of Óscar Pereiro, one of the organizers of the race, and to those of Vingegaard, who won minutes earlier in yellow like he won at the last Tour in Hautacam, and he celebrates it almost shyly, affectionately, sends only two air kisses, one for his Trine, the other for Frida, his daughter, and he does not raise an arm, winner, alone, after a compatriot, aptly named Attila and surnamed Valter, annihilates the force and reduces it to his Jonas and two others, the Portuguese Ruben Guerreiro and the Gipuzkoan Ion Izagirre. At 1,500 meters, the Hungarian champion with his tricolor jersey, white, red, green, takes off and Vingegaard changes the pace and leaves. The Portuguese and the Basque follow him at their own pace to avoid getting burned and Izagirre seems to be stronger and he is unluckier as he slips and falls on a small, dangerous downhill turn. And at the finish line he cries, and Vingegaard embarrassedly approaches him to comfort him, almost suffering from the Basque pains in his body too.
On the podium, he sips a bottle of sparkling Godello and receives yellow, blue, green, mountain, points, a small tree, a carvalho (oak) he asks to the burned forest with every jersey he is dressed in to be planted to aid in their recolonization. “They told me about the fire and it made me very sad, what beautiful landscapes,” he says. “I suffered more than on Friday in the Via Crucis. The day was colder, harder and the final climb was tougher. I wasn’t feeling very well, but since I had decided to win the stage, I had to take a chance. It’s good that I won.”
Vingegaard, on the podium.IRAIA CALVO
It’s the story of O Gran Camiño 2023, a race where there’s a lot of talk about Tour winners and their future and the joy of seeing one of them compete in their country as if their life depended on victory, like one does over the snow says that fell at night and the fear of some teams before their demand to shorten the stage, removing two passes through Santa Mariña, the so-called Galician Mortiroliño, the mountain is so hard that it is like the Italian port, but in abbreviated version . And even wilder, as triathlete Iván Raña recounts, when visiting the Esgos exit, where the snow frightens cyclists and the cold shortens the stage to 123 kilometers, pedaling for little more than three hours and leading to a steep finish at the end. “I feel very fit,” repeats the Dane. “I hope to be like that in Paris-Nice in two weeks, where I will also try to win.” In the finish truck, the screen printing technicians will stamp their team’s name, Jumbo, on the suit for the final time trial in Santiago, 18 kilometers. It looks like a little boy’s jumpsuit. “And it’s bigger than he wants,” say the Stompers. “He asked us for a size XXS and we don’t have it.”
In the streets of A Rúa, 20 kilometers from Rubiá, posters on the walls announce that As Bestas will be shown in the cinema, and shortly after the train has passed near Santoalla do Monte, the village, almost in ruins, where the tragedy happened happened. Vingegaard finishes his conversation with Trine, puts his phone in his pocket and as he keeps pedaling, Ezequiel Mosquera, the creator of O Gran Camiño, comes over to have a chat. “He told me that he loves the race, that he enjoys it very much,” says Mosquera. “And that we can count on him next year, he wants to come back.”
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