Rui Costa, victory at Lekunberri. Manuel Bruque (EFE)
At the door of the hotel in Pamplona where Movistar, Lotto and Soudal are sleeping on Saturday, Fernando Gaviria, his right arm in a sling and his collarbone broken two days earlier in the Tour of Britain, lingers for a moment stand to talk to Enric Mas, Oier Lazkano, Imanol Erviti, Jorge Arcas, his Movistar partners, ask them how their Vuelta is going, Mas tells them like that he would like to have better legs, that his big day might be in Guadarrama will be when he arrives in Madrid next Saturday. The others respond with a summary in a few words: “He goes so fast every day that there is not even time to form a group: the group consists of 100 or more, the majority of the platoon.” “There is no grouping, but the strongest escape, and there aren’t many of them.”
The children swarming around the hotel, Movistar’s second home, only ask for Remco Evenepoel, the brave boy who leaves early and stops to pick up breakfast from his team’s food truck parked outside. The Soudal assistants carry mattresses and suitcases to the truck, and when a boy sees Remco’s name on a suitcase, he offers to carry it himself, what an honor.
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A few hours later, in the Battle of Lizarraga, 20 kilometers of smooth and constant slope of the Urbasa Mountains between Abarzuza, in Tierra Estella, where José Miguel Echávarri dreamed of the Reynolds of Irurtzun and Peluso, Perico, Arroyo and Indurain, and Extarri Aranaz , the peloton is a living flame. Evenepoel lights the fire, the UAE, Soler and Almeida encourage him, the jumbos, sheepdogs in the Belagua meadows, how lively Vingegaard calms the flock. They put out the flames. Evenepoel escapes. Fourteen remain stuck to his steering wheel. Two are able to escape its hypnotic and devastating rhythm, always ahead and never looking back. After Irurtzun and the Dos Hermanas rocks, Buitrago attacks from Bogotá by ascending. She leaves all but two bad customers, the veteran Rui Costa, who holds on to her steering wheel, gives her conversation, makes her doubt and leads her to discouragement, and to unrest leads the third, the Teutonic German Lennard Kämna, so Prussian and strong, who tries to escape during the descent and falls to the ground in fear. The three united, one confident, two trembling, reach the home stretch. Costa wins, a wise Portuguese, 36 years old, world champion 10 years ago, three tours of Switzerland and an assumed role as leader of the second team, the big organized breakaways, for whose rights he always demands respect from the others Jumbo and an activist against the age phobia of an ever younger generation. “Veterans still have a lot to give,” proclaims Costa, who is already a stage winner in the Tour and has never taken part in the Vuelta. “The young guys are coming in very quickly now, better prepared and very strong, and a lot of teams didn’t want to hire me because of my age because they thought I was ready.”
In two days in the Pyrenees, north and south, in the mother mountains of great cycling, the Vuelta produced two stages that will inspire memories and imagination for many years. In one, between Aubisque, Spandelles and Tourmalet, the jumbo of all figures reached the fullness of the best team in the world, the triple triduo, passion and agony, three best of the stage, three best of the general, third Great year in the bag, Giro, Tour and Vuelta, the first team to do it in history. That will be the case if the champion’s pride, which encourages the greats Vingegaard and Roglic to go beyond their limits, does not lead them to fratricidal nonsense, through Sepp Kuss and his Rocío bracelet, which he kisses every morning when he goes, and the more he advances towards Madrid Butterflies fly in your stomach every day, in the third of the three big ones that run the way Lejarreta ran them.
In the second, on Saturday through the high meadows and beech forests of Hourcère, Larrau and Belagua, the Vuelta lost the day before, victim of stress, wounded by fear, Evenepoel, the victorious youth, pride on wheels, the big class, he has given more warmth to his legend, more layers, shadows and depth to his character, a boxer who gets up from the canvas and accelerates on the bike, punching hard with his electric fists, than the one who even took his victory at last year’s Vuelta gave him . He grows and gains wisdom and only impatience slows him down. Maybe that’s why, to complete himself, he asked Mikel Landa, the master of serenity, to accompany him as often as possible next year. And the man from Alava happily accepts the role. “It’s not about conquering the world in one bite and then suffocating it,” says Landa. “You have to do it little by little…”
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