The stories pile up at the end of the disastrous week of cycling and, with the fabulous cyclists of Itzulia absent and injured, and without a high finish, before the platoons arrive in the ditches around Éibar, Van der Poel is spoken of as One could talk about Verstappen, another extraordinary Dutchman. And of a chicane between cobblestones in the mystical forest of Arenberg, in Northern France, above the coal mines, where hell froze in the Quaternary and left a memory of lands so fertile that it was impossible to travel between them if the roads were not They were lined with pieces of granite extracted in distant quarries. And cyclists have challenged them year after year, between Paris and Roubaix, since 1896, and they will do so again today. Learned amateurs talk about the tube that in a hospital in Vitoria, sweet sleep of tramadol, they have inserted into the side of the chest of a suffering Jonas Vingegaard, up to the parenchyma, they explain, the lung tissue, to, with negative and regulated pressure, carefully so as not to break the parenchyma, expel the mass of air that has collapsed his lung in a pneumothorax since a rib pierced it during the terrible fall, on Thursday.
When the runners arrive, the fans rub their eyes, erase the sad imagined reality from their gaze and allow themselves to be dazzled by a race they did not remember, as if the forced disappearance of Remco, Vingegaard and Roglic, and their teams that condemned Itzulia to being another stop on his exhibition tour, would have released the hidden forces of great cycling. Also the desire of the young people, the great tactical maneuvers of the UAE so populated by champions, of the generation Z of Spanish cycling, Igor Arrieta, Carlos Rodríguez and Juan Ayuso, txapeldunwho finally expand to their liking, excite, receive from the solemn podium an aurresku in their honor and force the bards to write flattering verses.
Carlos Rodríguez, as friendship and the laws of the peloton want, wins the stage, and, as serious and controlled as he is, he even gets emotional, and shows his feelings, although only for a few seconds, raising his eyes and one hand to the sky, I remember and memory of his father who died a few months ago, as soon as he crossed the finish line in the center of Éibar, so many orange t-shirts and ikurriñas waving, so many fans.
“Juan knew that I was going to help him as much as I could and he was going to give me the stage victory. They were common interests,” says the cyclist from Almuñécar, who thanks to his victory finished second overall, after Ayuso. “Yes, yes, in the end, second step, who was going to tell me? The truth is that it is not the best way either, with the big favorites having left… I wish them the speediest recovery, that they come back strong as they are and from here I send them a lot of love. And a lot of encouragement.”
Five years have passed since the last victories of Spanish cyclists in WorldTour races. Enric Mas did it in a Chinese test; Ion Izagirre, in Itzulia, and his witness is picked up by Juan Ayuso, so young, such a child, receiving, as soon as he crosses the finish line, the hugs and kisses of his mother and his girlfriend, and the insistent kissing of his dog Trufa, so tiny, so loving; and he, at the same time, is so mature as a cyclist to know how to control and lead in a devilishly complicated stage.
Only between them, rivals since juniors. Carlos Rodríguez has already turned 23 years old. Ayuso, already on the podium in the Vuelta at 19, second in Switzerland at 20, and Arrieta are still at 21. The three put the peloton at their feet. Arrieta, the first 110 kilometers of the stage; Ayuso and Rodríguez, the last 30, in which in the successive ascents to Izua and Urkaregi, and in their insidious, ambushed descents, they ended the last resistance of Mattias Skjelmose, the leader in yellow. And together they entered the last stretch. But to achieve this, they first had to isolate Skjelmose, leaving the same Dane without Lidl teammates who defeated Ayuso a year ago, and already appears, in the Tour of Switzerland. Arrieta performed before, who surprises those responsible for the UAE every day, so strong, so much class that he shines in the most cycling valleys.
Arrieta, in his favorite field, that of Balenciaga, the biggest test of the under-23s in Spain, was the star, the key to the UAE's goal on which Ayuso, his boss, pedaled. The son of José Luis Arrieta, road captain for Banesto for so many years, infiltrated the first great escape, 21 runners, he pushed it, accelerated it, and from there he awaited the arrival of his teammate Marc Soler, the second torpedo of the UAE , who had attacked in Krabelin, the wild climb to the Arrate sanctuary, narrow roads, gradients of 18%. He pulled the Catalan and forced Lidl to chase. Skjelmose was left alone, and Ayuso, 30 minutes from the finish line, confirmed that he could handle him. And he didn't stop until the end.
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