Los guys from the return They no longer ride a bike but they are a part of the living history of cycling in recent years. They tell their stories, they remember old times, when they dressed in shorts, when they threw themselves into an open grave, to laugh at the expression, and even when from time to time they raised their hands at the finish line to comfort themselves with a stage win.
Seeing them is like looking back, like being the protagonist of a movie in which they appear as actors. We are at the end of the last century, they have more hair, no gray hair and even a few kilos less. They wear the uniforms of the past, of the banestoof ONCEof Clasof Clothof the old cycling cards, of when television images did not arrive in HD, nor was there a helicopter turned into a spy that catches everything the filmmaker wants to see, except when the shot changes at the exact moment that the runner wants to use an imaginary sink between the road and nature.
sports advisers
They are called ‘sports advisors’ and they work at the Vuelta. They are Spanish ex-cyclists, former participants in the race, who also have some triumphs in the Tour and in the Giro. For some it is a three and a half week vacation that requires their regular job and for others a waiting year to relive past emotions and meet old colleagues, often rivals. They take guests in the cars or go on motorcycles ordering the traffic of the race, they help some of the media and they are even part of the race management by devising the route and trying to discover objectives in the winter, almost always in ascent form for future editions of the race.
Seeing them is like sitting in the grandstand of a football stadium and, suddenly, while today’s kids hit the ball and try to destabilize the game by scoring a goal, to find themselves surrounded in the neighboring seats by the old stars of the favorite club, them sitting while commenting on the play or cheering on those who they are his successors, the stars that have taken over from him.
They are counting down the days until the Vuelta begins and when they say goodbye in Madrid on September 11 they will already begin to talk about seeing each other in Barcelona, at the end of August next year to once again get behind the wheel of a car from the organization or behind the goal fences.
The chosen ones
It is a festival of names, although not all of them work for the Vuelta. He is, at the head of this platoon of old figures, peter slim with the television microphone, and also Oscar Pereiro, as an ambassador for the race while lending his voice on the radio. And then there are riders who have won stages of the Tour, like Roberto Laisekawho drives the test director’s car, Javier Guillen And till Juan Carlos Dominguez It seems like it was yesterday when he donned the Giro’s ‘pink jersey’. maybe, Miguel Angel Iglesias, the eternal cyclist from Valls, is one of the oldest and the one with the most laps on his back. stands out too Santi Blancowho said José Miguel Echávarriwhen he was the director of Miguel Induráin, that the 2000 Tour would be white when it was Lance Armstrong before appearing as a stain in the race without an official winner.
And so many others who were gregarious raising bottles, who participated in escapes and there was even a day when they went up to the Tour podium, as Fernando Escartin, today responsible for the design of the stages. And, among them, a woman, still few in a world too full of men, like Dori Ruano, a myth of women’s cycling. It’s the Vuelta and they are the boys, who become eternal, pure legend and essence of the race.