By @amatiz12
After years where the success of several in Europe disguised the cracks in the cycling system in Colombia, the moment comes when the public begins to perceive a crisis due to the lack of relief for those figures who are already on the way out. And so that you don’t think that those who talk about “crisis” do it just to gain attention, Rigoberto Urán spoke bluntly about the present practice in the country.
“The reality is that we don’t have any good cyclists in Colombia,” he asserted without hesitation in an interview with TeleMedellín, listing Sergio Higuita, Daniel Martínez and Santiago Buitrago as the last decent products exported by his nation, which has stopped producing for some time. talents massively.
Examples like his, who has been competing abroad for more than 15 years, are almost an impossible mission to replicate for young cyclists who emigrate today. “Many cyclists have gone to Europe and they only last one or two years,” he recalled, with innumerable cases such as Rodrigo Contreras, Alejandro Osorio, Hernando Bohórquez, Cristian Muñoz, Juan Diego Alba, etc.
“They are not able to adapt to the pace of the race and they send them back here (Colombia),” he added about the obstacles his team have had, who suffer from the drastic change in style between the national and European calendars.
Urán is in his last years as a professional – he will surely retire in 2024 – and other great exponents, even not as veterans as him, have an uncertain future: Quintana with the tramadol thing, López for his investigation and Bernal with his accident. Just at the moment when he calls for a litter to relieve them, reality indicates that there is none. “It’s worrying, because right now there’s no one to replace us,” stated ‘Rigo’.
Alejandro Matiz
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