Raúl García Pierna, so pale-skinned, was told by Arkea to prepare himself, that he was going to debut in the Tour, a week before the start of the race, and a day before it ended, Yvon Ledanois, its director, declared enthusiastically: “I would like to be 30 years old.” Rauls “He is finishing very strongly,” adds the Arkea manager. “I told him to take it easy on Saturday, to save his strength, and to go all out in the time trial on Sunday, because he could finish in the top 15.” An unwritten law requires that a rider cannot call himself a cyclist until he reaches the Champs-Élysées, and although this year, because of the Paris Olympic Games, the Tour will not finish in the capital for the first time in its 111 years, and the rule will have to be adapted, García Pierna, 23, will be one of three Spaniards to receive their cyclist’s license on Sunday on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. And the son of the historic Festina climber Félix García Casas will be no less happy than Javier Romo, the Toledo native from Villafranca de los Caballeros who has shown off his broad shoulders as a triathlete in breakaways and attacks, and Oier Lazkano, the Vitoria native who has dazzled with his strength and desire.
The fourth debutant, Juan Ayuso, the one on whom all the complacency has been placed, had to abandon due to Covid before the Pyrenees after an atomic start on the Galibier leading the first attack of his boss Tadej Pogacar and a threat of controversy and jealousy with his Portuguese teammate João Almeida, fourth in the classification.
They are the future of Spanish cycling, which in the 2024 Tour has shown itself to be somewhere between fighting and wanting. They are the X-ray of Spanish cycling, which is leaving the Tour of the change of era without any stage wins, after the three victories of 2023, Bilbao, Izagirre and Rodríguez.
The most popular rider was Mikel Landa, fifth in the general classification, who played the role in the peloton that best suits his years of experience, acting as the older brother and advisor to Remco Evenepoel. In addition to peace of mind, the Murgia rider has found, alongside Evenepoel, his Dutch coach, Koen Pelgrim, who has got him hooked on the bandwagon of modern preparation.
The most solid of those expected, Carlos Rodríguez, weakened last week, has proven that his distance with the cracks that occupy the podium has not decreased compared to a 2023 in which, in addition, an ambitious debutant, found a crack in the replace Pogacar-Vingegaard to win the big stage of the Joux Plane.
And the team that is the beacon, Movistar, also moves in complicated terrain in a World Tour of highly concentrated wealth and in which the great economic powers barely leave any valuable riders or spaces for expression for the others. “Money makes everything decide,” underlines Eusebio Unzue, head of Movistar. “It is as important to sign good riders to strengthen themselves as it is to weaken other teams and money allows them to do it. Visma does it, Ineos does it, UAE does it. Look, Ineos, the atrocities they have had to do to hold on to Carlos Rodríguez and stop him from coming with us… And they don’t have much more despite their huge budget… And they haven’t had a better Tour.”
Unzue, 42nd consecutive Tour, none as many as he among the directors, accepts with a certain fatalism a global cycling reality in which his group, Perico’s 36 years ago, Miguel Indurain’s, who has just turned 60, between 1991 and 1995, no longer has much weight. He is not even capable of attracting the best Spanish cyclists of the moment, a label that was his trademark. Nor are he capable of attracting projects that are growing, such as Oier Lazkano, perhaps the revelation of the Tour, or Alex Aranburu, who will not continue in the team in 2025. “Oier, at 24 years old, and the progress he has made, is great, but he is leaving. What are we going to do? Well, fight every day…”, laments Unzue with a certain irony. “The boys go off and don’t look after what’s at home. They’ve all had the opportunity. We’ve tried to hire Ayuso, Rodríguez. Ayuso, it seems, is not happy at the UAE now, but he could have thought better of it before going there. It’s not that we haven’t fought to have him. We haven’t gone as far as wanting to break the bank, no, because we’ve never been willing to do that, but simply to help them grow with space as well. That’s also important. What makes the UAE more attractive than other teams? They have 30 great riders and can go to every race to win. They can afford the luxury of having superstructures.”
It’s not just that the UAE hires all the valuable teenagers, and it’s not just the salaries that make the best teams attractive to the most talented juniors; the revolution in training and nutrition, the end of the cyclist as an athlete who trains around his house alone, replaced by long periods of joint concentration at altitude, and team life all year round, the arms race to have the best technology… The best teams have moved around the Tour with fleets of up to 20 vehicles, including the team van. Control Room of Visma. The bulk of a team’s budget is no longer the salaries of the champions. The gap is ever-widening.
The fight for the breakaway and in the breakaway, the learning of a guerrilla cycling in which he was never involved, since from his second Vuelta, in 2018, at the age of 23, he was already a figure, has given Enric Mas back the joy and freshness of his first years in the peloton, a certain spark that was extinguished so many Vueltas and Tours by the constant search for a place in the general classification. “I have really enjoyed this week of the race. It has been a very different Tour for me, very difficult, but I am very happy with these last few days and I hope to see the end of the race again.” begin “This is La Vuelta,” promises the Mallorcan. “There is no time to switch off; we are going for it, to give our best in La Vuelta. The team expects the best from me and that is how we have to perform.”
Unzue crosses his fingers and hopes. “Let’s hope that by chance Enric… we hope that in the Vuelta he is at the level of last year (fighting in a second step with Landa and Ayuso after the three from Jumbo, Kuss, Vingegaard and Roglic, who dominated),” says Unzue. “It is a little of what we can aspire to at this moment.”
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