The Movistar Team’s season remains invisible

2023-10-20 00:02:20

The Movistar Team’s season is invisible

This article is complemented by what we commented a couple of days ago about Matteo Jorgenson with his departure from the Movistar Team.

If at the time, I said that leaving the team did not seem like the smartest thing to me, knowing how this world is, it is also true that things the American said fit like a glove in the situation of the team he is leaving.

Jorgenson talks about the mental structure of the team and the age of the management to affirm that the Movistar Team is not in the modernity that cycling is experiencing.

A reality resulting from a brutal change in mentality and method in the last ten years like never before seen and that has been confirmed to us by cyclists like Luisle Sánchez, Andrey Amador or Ion Izagirre, runners who, one day, competed for this structure.

In fact, it confirmed until Patxi Vila left the team four years after realizing that the changes he wanted to make were not going to happen, that, as Julito said, in the Movistar Team, “life stays the same.”

In all of this, the American is absolutely right and anyone who follows this sport has seen it.

Remember those happy years, not so long ago, when the team was nominated the best in the world, partly due to the seasons of Valverde and Nairo, then right here, in this badly ringed notebook, we said that not everything that glittered was gold.

The succession of events has proven us right and this is not a post against the team, it is not, it is an honest criticism that I understand is necessary and that, I know, has been appreciated at some point in the team.

With this first preamble done, I think this balance says it all.

16 wins for Movistar 2023:

Lazcano 4
Mühlberger 3
Gaviria, Guerreiro, Jorgenson and Rubio 2
Serrano 1

Few runners score and few important victories, there is no great “adder” and the supposed leaders only raise their arms to apply deodorant. Poor balance.

— Miguel González (@gzlz11) October 18, 2023

The Movistar Team started the campaign with the inertia of the previous onewhen the specter of relegation pushed the team into a short but brilliant era, with varied triumphs, distribution of roles and choral results that took them out of that well.

This inertia lasted until spring, a period that, this time, the team has been able to resolve well.

The big ones have been something else, with the only victory for Einer Rubio, the day Pinot lost his temper in the Giro.

In fact, the Colombian has been one of the important joys of the team, in contrast to the unprecedented Iván Sosa, along with Oier Lazkano, who is not by chance the cyclist with the most wins on the team.

Lazkano could well be the cyclist who will turn around all the renewal that the team needshas motor, desire and finishing, and the latter is priced dearly in a team to which Alex Aranburu and Iván García Cortina came to add to a record that remains stagnant.

The balance in the Tour and Vuelta has been more than poor, almost non-existent, and we are talking about a team that has always measured itself by the grand tours, or that has put them as its first standard.

The fall of Enric Mas in the first stage of the Tour has undermined his objectives in France and conditioned, it seems, the performance of the Spaniard in the Vuelta.

That is what is perceived and what has happened.

There was no plan B in the Tour, and they were wearing the gala team.

Being left without a leader on the first day is something that does not happen for the first time and the change of chip that should have been imposed did not arrive.

In the Return, Enric, at the height of his “something always happens to me”, sent the message about whether they were a regular team and stuff, when it was never on par with the best, it didn’t even bother them.

The Vuelta that we expected for Oier Lazkano, we didn’t even see it, and that is the mirror of everything we say and the headline of this article, that life remains the same in the blue team, that cycling changes, but not the structure and their mentality and so, it doesn’t matter what resources are invested or achieved, you are invisible in a platoon that evolves at a thousand per hour.

Imagen: UNIPUBLIC / SPRINT CYCLING AGENCY