First a fist. Then, the hand open, fingers extended. The thumb disappears, a second later the little finger and the ring finger, while the thumb reappears. Another second passes and the big toe shrinks again. Only the heart remains upright throughout the synchronized maneuver. Finally, in the fifth second of the countdown, the hand opens again, which with an imperative gesture orders the cyclist to leave. Perhaps the only moment of a time trial in which the human factor appears. Apart from the runners, of course. The rest is a clock, tick, tock. It’s 2:30 p.m. sharp. Twenty minutes have passed since the first from Itzulia, Damien Howson, left, and at that time, which is usually lunch time in Irún, or an aperitif on a holiday Monday, Primoz Roglic takes off. 12 minutes and 34 seconds later, the race already has a winner. In his first duel of the season with Vingegaard, in his second career with Bora, he emerged triumphant. “This is a long process, a lot of work, you have to adapt to the team and it will improve.”
Everything is technology, Star Wars helmets, cutting-edge bicycles and weather reports as complete as those managed by an airline or a sailboat in the America’s Cup. Those from Itzulia determined that good weather would appear first thing in the morning, and that perhaps rain would arrive in the final minutes, so the favorites, as is beginning to be a trend, challenge the unwritten rules of cycling, which used to group them into the last places, and even granted them the privilege of extending the time margin between them to improve the spectacle. It happened in Itzulia. The last twenty in the starting order left every two minutes. At that time, after five in the afternoon, the favorites, except Roglic, were taking a nap in their accommodation.
Because the premature winner has penance in sin. Things also about modern cycling. So that issues such as having to go to the hotel to pick up the winner of a time trial that he never thought he would win would not be repeated, the cycling brains came up with that hot seat, which is like going to Seville, and you can get lost, and in the one where the provisional leader sits, in this case Roglic, who did not lose, so he was there for almost three and a half hours, without anyone remembering to bring him the silk robe, the plush slippers and something to read. “Only in Bilbao did I have to wait so long once.”
He had to content himself with changing his clothes and watching television, which showed cycles, and he repeated over and over again what was not seen live, because when he came out it was so early that there were still no images. He laughed at himself when he observed his mistake at the finish line, with which he lost at least eight seconds, by going where he shouldn’t have in the last corner and heading into the car turnoff instead of the finish line. “I had done the route several times and always wrong,” he confessed.
But he gave it to win; to distance Vine in seven seconds, Skjelmose in ten, Evenepoel, who slid in the second corner and went to the ground, in eleven, and Vingegaard, in his first head-to-head duel, in 15. With Tom Pidcock neither there was not even a challenge. He fell during the examination and had to go to the hospital. “If it is possible, I will go and make more time at any opportunity that presents itself,” he later said, “because in this race, with these rivals, any second counts.”
Roglic changed his position, in his chair, more uncomfortable than in the saddle, he took off and put on his tracksuit. Some even doubted that the goatee he had at the end, he had at the beginning, and awaited the outcome, which was already known three hours earlier. He put on the old cyclist’s hat, after removing, at the end of his work on the bicycle, the helmet with a balaclava that will be illegal from Tuesday, and went for the bouquet of flowers with his modern cyclist’s skills, and knowing that the meteorologists had been right. On the way to the podium, the ground was wet. At the time when he would have theoretically left, it was hailing in Irún.
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