Nairo Quintana, at the last Tour de France. MARCO BERTORELLO (AFP)
Sorrowful epitaphs are being written in Bogotá, emotional sports obituaries for Nairo Quintana, the best Colombian cyclist of the decade, who 10 days after his 33rd birthday finds that there is no European team that wants him after an unusual sanction for taking the painkiller tramadol on tour. In San Juan, these days of southern summer, the other figures of a cycling sport that was the envy of the world three or four years ago are now sad and unsympathetic.
There are worries about the future of Superman López, who was also rejected by the best teams in Europe and fired from Astana because the Civil Guard told them they have evidence that he was doping and that the anti-doping authorities will open a file on him sooner rather than later. Pedal with hope Egan Bernal, the only non-European cyclist to win the Giro and Tour, a year after a collision with a bus that left him with multiple broken bones and iron lacerations on his body; and Fernando Gaviria, the best sprinter on the continent and the best in the world, he also speaks of hope, smiles, of being back after signing with Movistar. Only Sergio Higuita, the youngest of the so-called golden decade, the latest product of the Medellín school of Luis Fernando Saldarriaga, that of Nairo, Sergio Henao or Esteban Chaves, keeps its substance and leads a whole German team, the Bora . Away from San Juan, the father of all, Rigo Urán, lives in his world.
Nairo, who was fired by Arkea, preventing him from refereing the Vuelta when his tramadol sanction was revealed, has called a press conference in Bogotá for Wednesday. Few in Colombia doubt that the winner of a Giro and a Vuelta, three Tour podiums and another Giro, will announce Tirrenos, Vuelta al País Vasco, Volta a Catalunya, mountain stages in almost all of them His retirement The races of the world… Nobody in Europe wants to know anything about a cyclist who is considered one of the best climbers in the world, a worthy heir of the great Lucho Herrera, who is still young enough to continue winning.
WorldTour teams, including the Movistar team he started his career with, would like it, but his sponsors are afraid. They don’t want to be associated with negative or seemingly negative news because Nairo has never had a doping problem. Those in the second division who need an invitation to the best races are being blackmailed by organizers, who are demanding they join a French professional body run by the sulphurous Roger Legeay, calling for a credible cycling sport that’s much more rigorous is behavior and medication rules than those of the World Anti-Doping Code. No one can sign him even though they want to do it like crazy. Tramadol was poison for them even before the World Anti-Doping Agency put it on the list of banned substances.
Nairo also doesn’t seem ready to follow the path of Superman López, four years his junior, who doesn’t understand life without moving on, and has signed for Medellín, a third-rate team with whom he will play national competitions in Colombia. Superman, whose decline perhaps began with his sudden and inexplicable withdrawal from the 2021 Vuelta two days before he stood on the podium and with his inevitable departure from Movistar, enters the illusion that his return to his country of Monaco is a Bracket, a few months in which it will be clear, he promises that what the Civil Guard can say is wrong and what the judge of Cáceres can believe, about his relationship with Vicente Belda Jr., the Astana masseur who allegedly gave him an injection of the banned hormone menotropin last Giro. Not only did Astana fire him, the son of Vicente Belda, who, like his father and Dr. Marcos Maynar is being investigated for an alleged conspiracy to sell and distribute drugs no longer appears in the list of assistants published by Team Alexander Vinokurov on its website.
When the fire of veterans is quenched, that of youth is not kindled. After Higuita, none of the Colombian cyclists who have arrived at the WorldTour have been able to fulfill their promises and hopes. As in the tough ’90s and 2000s, the runners who ravage their country drag in Europe in a cycling sport where, at 47, Óscar Sevilla is still one of the best. Luis Fernando Saldarriaga, whose sponsor closed the Manzana Postobón after two doping cases, has not found sponsors for his project, and from the sidelines, he is a television commentator, he does not stop regretting how doping has once again infected all the processes in your country. Coming out of his chest, from a process with sharp rules and values, patience and work, Sergio Higuita also regrets that the current processes, working with youth, are not similar to those he or Nairo have followed.
While one eagerly awaits what the young people enrolled at GW Shimano Sidermec will bring with them, the team that puts the country’s best young talent at the disposal of veteran Italian director and entrepreneur Gianni Savio to place them in the European showcase can accommodate the direction of Luis Cely. Óscar Sevilla is not very optimistic either for the present or for the future. For the Spanish cyclist, who has been based in Bogotá for 12 years after Operation Puerto expelled him from European cycling and from Telecom, where he excelled, the problem with young people is that they are instantly idolized , as soon as they win some money they think they are rich because they grew up in fatherless families, poor, without values, children of a society that gives them no hope.
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