In the hotels of Benidorm on Sunday at breakfast there is a hustle and bustle of children running back and forth between the tables with waffles, cola and cereal, and parents gaping and confessing: “We are here because of the children Mathieu Van der Poel wanted to see.” Vanderpúl loudly pronounces the speaker in Foietes Park and emphasizes the last syllable, púl!, dryly, as if it were the onomatopoeia of an explosion, boom, and following the trail of his voice, the children go to the cyclocross race track, where emotions and fun are the order of the day. An eggplant-colored atomic Porsche with a black band bursting in, backfiring hoarsely and deafening the speakers, distracts them for a few seconds. They follow his trail like they would follow the Pied Piper of Hamelin until their driver finds a parking space next to the Ineos bus. It's Tom Pidcock. He gets out and lets the children, photos, selfies and autographs cheer him on. Object of fascination, a cyclist. Time has changed.
Cyclists are also children and know how to be idols, like Van der Poel, who travels by bike from his Spanish home near Moraira, 40 kilometers away, because he drives the Lamborghini with his girlfriend to go to the races in Flanders He has left for his Belgian home and is relaxed, talking to everyone before starting the race, always smiling. It is the eleventh winter. He has won the last 10. Your ass in the saddle, your head in the clouds, there's no one to bother you.
Pressure? What is that?
Neither the children who idolize him, so many who want to be like him, nor the masses of fans who come from the north to drink beer and eat chips and enjoy watching him run wild Cotton wasted like a bazooka in the sand, making it tremble in general, the stairs, the asphalt slope on which even the television drone found it difficult to follow you and keep up with the speed when accelerating. More than 15,000 paying spectators. And Wout van Aert, the most discreet of the big three of cyclocross and cycling, meeting in a park on the Costa Blanca for the last time this season in winter and with so much sun, shows the same indifference to fate.
They smile and enjoy it, and everything seems to be a happy and inconsequential show, but their life consists of competing, satisfying their needs, and displaying themselves generously. Van Aert and Van der Poel, both 29 years old, Poulidor's grandson four months younger, have been rivals since they knew of their existence. When they were 14 or 15 years old, there wasn't a cyclocross race that didn't end in a duel between them. 12 years ago Van der Poel won his first youth world title. Van Aert came second. They consciously practice the altruism of imagination and even as the years pass, their imagination does not exhaust itself. They are masters of the extraordinary. Cartoon heroes.
Right at the start of the race, barely a minute and a half into the hour of racing, the chain on Van der Poel's bike came off. The waiter wants to convey emotions, everyone interprets. He knows that if he runs out of reach at the start, as he usually does, the audience will get bored and, full of beer, end up insulting him. Everyone is gearing up for an epic comeback, something to marvel at. Van der Poel answers them without fail. After the breakdown, Van der Poel is in 30th place. In three laps, just nine kilometers, less than 20 minutes, with rapid accelerations, overtaking maneuvers through incredible gaps, road runners against the coyote, he is already in the lead. The route is fast. It's not easy to make distinctions. Van Aert and Van der Poel sleep the race. Tactical games. Pidcock, an agile and springy pocket cyclist, appears before them and disappears. Felipe Orts, the best Spaniard, a cyclist determined to be as good as the Belgians or the Dutch, a hard worker, he doesn't give up, he fights, he fights, he accelerates, he recovers, he stays close your turn.
Everything is under control. Everything will be decided in the last round. Maybe in the final spurt, the last part is so short. “My legs weren’t any fresher,” admits Van der Poel. “I couldn’t make a difference after the comeback. “I had to wait”
Everything should have been like this, but the calm kills Van der Poel, who is not even protected by his good white trousers and as he leaves the penultimate step through the sand basin, he stumbles and hits a sandbag, without noticing that there is an iron post behind him stands his shoulder collides with. Falls to the ground. Minute 50. His career is lost. Van Aert accelerates. Only his compatriot and contemporary Michael Vanthourenhout defended himself against his attack, which he got rid of in the 58th minute with a watt-by-watt acceleration on the asphalt track. The rest should have been a triumph for the Belgian, who finished second to Van der Poel four times this winter (and third again and fifth again), but he also couldn't claim the right to take what he's already written with him Emotions begin, ode to the unexpected, just 200 meters from the end. “That was a super stupid move on my part,” admitted the Belgian, who fell awkwardly as he tried to get back on his bike after negotiating on foot the three-plank obstacle he had skilfully managed over the last eight laps Lifting the two boards had overcome wheels of his bicycle. Bike without getting off. “When I saw that I had a big advantage, I decided not to risk it and cross the planks on foot. But at the same time I wanted to do it really quickly. And made a mistake.” When he failed the jump, the bike fell to the ground, where it hit the saddle hard and went flying. The material is so light, so fragile. Van Aert walked the last few meters with fear in his body and his butt on the seat post, the seat tube from which he stood as he crossed the finish line for everyone to see and appreciate. “My wrist hurts a little bit, but that's how it had to be,” explained Van Aert, who believes in premonitions. “Yesterday my mother broke her wrist and my parents got married on July 13th when I saw I was wearing number 13 [y lo llevó derecho, no invertido, como hacen la mayoría para conjurar el gafe] I knew it would be my day. Yes, I was a bit unlucky in the race, but I was able to do everything.”
Van der Poel finished fifth – “and I couldn't have done better, it's a fair result,” he said – and his streak of invincibility, which lasted ten races, all this winter, was broken. “It was a topic that interested journalists more than me. “One day it had to break,” said the double world champion in cyclocross and road, two rainbows at the same time. “And it would be better if it was here than in two weeks when I compete at the World Championships.”
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