Movistar is not a newly minted team, one of those who come one year and leave the next. It is the essence of the last 40 years of cycling español, the squad that saw Miguel Induráin grow up in a time so brilliant that it will never be seen again. And also the group that gave the first opportunity to peter slim to arrive in yellow to Paris.
They started out as Reynoldsfollowed as banestowere renamed Savings Bank and finally became Movistar. And always, always, it had been the group that was at the head of the bed of all Spanish cycling fans. The list of figures with greater or lesser weight that have passed through its ranks could almost be said to be infinite: Ángel Arroyo, José Luis Laguía, Julián Gorospe, Melcior Mauri, the cried Chava JimenezAbraham Olano and of course Alejandro Valverde.
the complicated past
Oscar Pereiroanother of the stars who ran on the team, gave them a Tower in 2006 which took more than a year to achieve due to the doping mess of Floyd Landis. They overcame the darkest seasons of this sport. There were years in which journalists did not know if at the end of the day they had to change their chronicles because the notification of a positive arrived with the closure in sight. In fact, in big rounds like the Vuelta that now occupies the leading role, it was only easy to breathe the weekend because the official laboratories of Madrid or Paris They worked from Monday to Friday.
They also leveled up in that phase. There were scares in the team, but they went ahead and even dared to make a documentary divided into series and seasons where stripped the interiors of the teamsometimes with a selection of facts that could be debatable and even with the question of whether it was good for the image of the team and the riders that certain rags were hung with open windows.
current circumstances
And, suddenly, the Movistar team has ceased to be the voracious team and the one at the head of the pack. And even those of us who live the day-to-day life of this team and this sport have realized the seriousness involved in going down to the Second Division of cycling and we have begun to add and subtract some points that are absurd, that contribute little and that In addition, in many races they have been placed without rhyme or reason. It is not serious that it scores more to win one of the tests of the Challenge a Mallorcawith full respect to the organizers, that a stage of the Tour, the Vuelta or the Giro or that by achieving two classics that are not ‘monuments’, the same score is achieved as arriving in yellow in Paris, in red in Madrid or in pink in Milan.
Suddenly, in Movistar’s worst season in terms of sporting results, the Spanish team found there lostin a place that surely does not correspond to him, but with the danger that next year he will have to negotiate, if he descends, an invitation to the Tour as if it were manna or almost a bank loan to save a business.
Tour reviews
In the Tour they received a lot of criticism, but coldly in the French round the main problem that Movistar had is that their leader failed for whatever the circumstances. Surely if he were fighting for the general classification, the number of points added or even the risk of losing the category would have mattered little.
Now the Vuelta arrives and Movistar finds its leader Enric Mas coming out of the crisis and his media reference too tired of being the one who always saves the ballot. What can they do? Well, surely the best thing would be for them to forget about the damn points, that they shout something like ‘fuck them’ and be or try to be the team fragrance that they have always been. Surely so, But would remove this pressure that tortures him and even Valverde he would feel freer to have fun on his last Vuelta where unfortunately he will not be able to count on his friend and road captain Imanol Erviti who was surprisingly left out of the team at the last minute.
