They went up Mount Etna on a mule to collect the snow, the bishop’s property, and transport it to the port of Trapani, where it was bought by fishermen who used it to preserve fish or confectioners to make ice cream and slushies needed . You get in a car to descend the slopes of its crater, always on fire, and you get in a bike to fly down, feel the freedom of the wind on your face or touch the glory of the Giro d’Italia. that’s a pink shirt and how well it suits Juan Pedro López, a cyclist from Lebrija, Seville, where the good bread of Juan Peña and Domi Vélez is.
He finished second on the Rifugio Sapienza stage, which bordered on 2,000 meters and almost touched the snow, and the very bright sun couldn’t fool the cold. He’s beaten by German Lennard Kämna, his breakaway partner, in a fake heads-up match – both cyclists have already talked about it, the old deal, stage for you, jersey for me – and yet they’re ready at the last corner to collide, very closed, and the Sevillian proposes anger, anger, joy on the handlebars of the bike. “They told me in the car it was going to be a pink jersey [el líder, Mathieu van der Poel, ya se ha quedado en Biancavilla, a las puertas del Etna, y llega a 23 minutos], but I didn’t believe it,” he says, bursting into emotional tears. “I had very difficult times. So a friend’s son is in heaven and nothing [y se seca las lágrimas con la bocamanga de su rosa]I think it’s for him, for my family.”
López, Juanpe for fans, is 24 years old, 1.70 meters tall, 60 kilos, he is pure will and one of the Spanish cyclists who come to fill a very deep gap and have worked hard for the glory that fulfilled him as much, or more, as the emotions he felt when his Betis won the cup against Valencia. He did it all with intelligence and a coldness that seems impossible in his excited voice at the finish line when all he can say is that he doesn’t believe it, that it took him 10 minutes to process it and that he only The pink thinks of enjoyment, enjoying every kilometer that it has seen. “And if I have to work for my bosses, Ciccone or Mollema, then I do it, that’s my job,” says the cyclist from Lebrija, who started out as a cyclist in the youth team organized by Alberto Contador and has been running for three years Trek de Luca Guercilena. “Everyone already tells me that Contador was just the last Spaniard to wear the pink jersey when he won the Giro in 2015, and also that Contador also wore pink on Mount Etna in 2011, but at that time I didn’t follow cycling, I did only football. I was 13 years old. Then I saw everything on video.”
Juanpe sneaks into the great escape, 14 cyclists, at the exit of the Avola beach, where the almond trees and the Avola ink and its wine, which the Greeks already enjoyed in Syracuse, are grown. Etna is still nothing but a great hazy and uncertain mass, a great curtain behind Catania, and its houses crowd its slopes and are the color of the ash that rains regularly when the volcano burns. The joint blurs as the road gets steeper, however far from the top, and the lines of the volcano lighten and are defined by cyclists through their clean roads and the dry lava slope blacker than their asphalt and the basalt brick walls that are renewed every year to be born, like nature, pines, new oaks and the graffiti that sprout every morning like on the walls of the train tracks and the cold wind on your face. Some of the breakaways look back, awaiting the arrival of their captains, all so calm in the peloton, except for the other López del Giro, Superman, who has resigned because his legs have been sore for days.
Others look ahead. They want to win the stage. Juanpe is one of them. His ideas are as clear as the lines of the volcano. Let everyone move, explain themselves, exhaust themselves and only when the road becomes steeper and reaches 14% 12 kilometers from the finish, it leaves the protection of the group, there are only six of them, survivors of the escape and he definitely starts for Oldani , one who attacked too early and is left in the lurch. Juanpe advances alone. He’s already thinking about the stage win, the pink jersey, everything. “I attacked there in the most difficult part, when the director advised me to do so,” says Juanpe. “I didn’t know the rise.” The director is Adriano Baffi, Italian from Cremona who is wise and experienced. And only when loneliness weighs him down does Juanpe get the help of Kämna, a 25-year-old German who got into cycling bright and lively, winning a stage at the Tour via Carapaz at 23 and at 24 feeling empty and overwhelmed by pressure. He has so much talent that nobody was satisfied with anything he did. “I went a year without running and was looking for myself,” he says. “I found cycling was too much fun for me that I just had to change my focus. I no longer think of winning the General of the Greats. I find it much more fun to look for the stages.” To look for the stage, he goes in search of Juanpe with seven kilometers to go. It reaches it at 2.5. Both support each other, protect each other. You speak. When there is a price for everyone, nobody refuses to cooperate. It’s the usual cycling. For one, the stage. For the others the jersey. And one sentence sums it up, says Juanpe: “I think this is one of the happiest moments of my life.”
Behind them, the Giro favorites forget the bridgeheads they started and the fight for the stage. It’s not Etna too sprawling, so much wind, a place to attack, but to ride on a bike. Richard Carapaz and his Ineos know it. They decide to make life impossible for the wheels. You pull hard. Anyone. One after the other. Narvaez, Sivakov, Castroviejo, Porte. A train leaving loose wagons behind. Valverde, Bilbao, Mikel Landa, the Spaniards go well together. Yates and Kelderman too, but Guillaume Martin, arriving at his beloved Rifugio Sapienza, lost more than a minute, Nibali two and Dumoulin, the most hit, more than six. Second mountain attack on Friday on the way to Potenza along the Apennine ridge. Where probably Juanpe López, a spark of Lebrija, will happily continue to wear pink.
Now López, a product of the Contador factory – where he made his debut as an amateur cyclist in 2016 – is 39 seconds ahead of second place overall, Kämna, and 58 seconds ahead of third place, Rein Taaramae. Pello Bilbao is seventh, two minutes behind López, and twelfth at 2:15.
The fourth day of the Italian round was also marked by the departure of another López, Miguel Ángel, after some complaints that prevented him from continuing.
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