A cyclist’s mood is something as sensitive as a delicate eyelid, as delicate and as fickle, and can go from despair to joy in just three minutes and a few seconds, which lasts, for example, the bizarre time trial of the prologue of the Tour de Romandie, French-speaking Switzerland, in the town of Payerne, near Lake Neuchâtel: 2,280 meters of impossible walking, comings and goings, 10 90-degree curves, ones where you stop and accelerate when exiting, and one of 180 degrees that forces us to measure the effectiveness of the disc brakes and makes stupid the decision of some to dispute it with the goat and the triathlete handlebars. The best, except the Portuguese pistard Ivo Oliveira, used the normal bicycle, single chainring and aero. Flat, flat, except for a small hill of stones, and even then, slow, with so many stops and starts. And an average of 46 kilometers per hour for the best.
An ideal folly for pistards or thoroughbred sprinters, like the winner, Maikel Zijlaard, a 25-year-old Dutchman, 1.89m and 73 kilos, member of the Tudor train, the team of the master, master in prologues, Fabian Cancellara, grandson of a Six Days specialist, and nephew of Leontien van Moorsel, the queen mother of women’s cycling in the Netherlands, precursor of Marianne Vos, Annemiek van Vleuten, Anna van der Breggen or Demi Vollering. The territory perhaps most foreign to Enric Mas, a cautious climber, who, however, there, gets overexcited and stands out, lets the lactic acid overwhelm him and then buffers him, drowns him, and starts again, like this 10 times, one a sign of good preparation, and receives an optimistic boost for the remainder of the course.
The Mallorcan was the best of the Spaniards who embarked on the intermediate phase of preparation for the Tour de France in the Tour de Romandie. He gave up 5s to the winner (one more than the best Spaniard, his fast partner Alex Aranburu), while Juan Ayuso, perhaps better equipped for the course, gave up 6s and Carlos Rodríguez, 10s. In 10s are all the favorites from Romandie, a race that after Lake Neuchâtel will jump to the surroundings of Lake Léman, and which will probably be decided between the time trial on Friday (15.5 kilometers in Oron, false ascending plain, false descending plain) and the queen stage on Saturday, ending in Leysin, at the top of a first. They are all there – Jan Christen, Lenny Martínez, Ayuso, Carapaz, Rodríguez, the Yates brothers, Egan, Hindley… -, and there is Mas, who three minutes, 2.3 kilometers transform, and the people on his team, the Movistar gives them reason to think that perhaps in the Swiss spring they can begin to turn around a season that is not going well.
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