The 24-year-old Colombian cyclist with a magnificent future achieves his first great international success in Barcelona.
‘The Monster’ of Medellín was hailed with Colombian flags at the Montjuïc finish line. They shouted his name, Sergio Higuita, the winner of the Volta, and exploded with joy when Nairo Quintana, the great idol, turned at the finish line to head towards the Venetian Towers where his team’s bus, the Arkéa, was parked.
The ‘Monster’ is only 24 years old and has already shown the passport as another value of nascent cycling that is buried to any figure of the past. He is already an idol in his country, to the point that just over a year ago, the most famous of the athletes with his last name, with whom he has no family relationship, Rene Higuitathe goalkeeper of the ‘scorpion’, invited him to eat to meet him. higuita, the cyclist, is small, small, only 1.68 meters tall, but he doesn’t shy away from runners who surpass him, not only in stature, but also in track records. Yet another, determined to sportingly bury any ‘old’ runner, on his way to 30.
⏪???? Relive the last mile of the #VoltaCatalunya101 with the victory of@AndreaBagioli a @BCN_esports!
⏪???? Review the last kilometer of #VoltaCatalunya101 with the sprint victory of @AndreaBagioli (@qst_alphavinyl) at @BCN_esports! pic.twitter.com/kgov7Bti9M
– Tour of Catalonia (@VoltaCatalunya) March 27, 2022
higuita He is the one who always wanted to be a cyclist, encouraged by his father, a locksmith by profession, the one who wanted his son to make his way in professional cycling and the one who this season has signed for the German team Bora, without having the slightest knowledge of the Germanic language, and barely with English. And he went to Bora because it was the only team that did not demand, yes or yes, that he play the Tour to the fullest, that he be one more among the 25 that aspire without little success to overthrow Tadej Pogacar as monarch of the Champs-Élysées.
He wanted what happened this Sunday at Montjuïc, to win one-week races, prepare for the classics and show that there are few mountainous ramps that torment him, that he is fast at the finish line and, above all, that he has that gift of intelligence when pedaling. to find out where the race is, where to position yourself and guess that Richard Carapaz, second in the final classification, is in a bad mood when he tries to win the Volta in the penultimate, the wonderful stage between Salou and Cambrils, in a day of cycling to frame.
Carapaz, Almeida, Ayuso and Rodriguez
higuita was the standard bearer among the new cyclists, with Carapaz of bridge, and marking the way for three young runners, a Portuguese, an Alicante and an Andalusian. The first, Joâo Almeida was surprised in the great Tarragona stage and lost the verdiblanco jersey, as happened to him in the 2020 Giro when he was wearing the ‘pink jersey’. The second, Juan Ayuso, exhibited himself at only 19 years old to show that he has a path without a final stretch for now to aspire to the maximum in this sport. And the third, Carlos Rodríguez had in the end to be sacrificed by Ineos to mark the unsuccessful attack that Carapaz made in the penultimate of the six laps in the Barcelona circuit, which as always was more lively than effective in the final classification, which did not move in a final stage won by the Italian Andrea Bagioli.
Related news
higuita He took the victory in a Volta punished by this virus that plagues the runners, the ‘squad flu’, which has caused at least 70 percent of the 71 casualties that have occurred in this Catalan round, the race that began with the monumental scare when Sonny Colbrelli’s heart stopped at the finish line in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. On Saturday he traveled to Italy to continue medical tests in his country after leaving the Josep Trueta hospital and determine whether or not he will be able to continue as a professional runner.
Movistar’s crisis
And it has been the Volta in which the Movistar team, after the abandonment of Alejandro Valverde, also in poor health, has run again in invisibility, as happened in Paris-Nice, because, at least, in the Tirreno- Adriatic Enric Mas he kept fighting for the podium until he crashed in the penultimate stage. But without Valverde and without But victories do not come. Nobody takes the helm. There are no chances of success while other leading teams such as the Emirates, the Ineos, the Jumbo, the Bahrain or the Quick Step fill the basket of triumphs everywhere. They don’t work, the young guys go elsewhere. The situation is very worrying.
Top-10 7a etapa + CG final #VoltaCatalunya101 pic.twitter.com/cvGYHz0k5c
— Javier Gilabert C. (@tourdegila) March 27, 2022