Once upon a time in 1991 a cyclist refused to get on the aircraft chartered by the Tour that took runners from French Brittany to the city of Pau. She was terrified of flying. He was Swiss and his name was Urs Zimmerman. The direction of the French round, at that time Jean Marie LeBlanc was at the forefront of the test, decided to disqualify him. “Well, it’s going to be no,” said all the riders, including the final winner of the race, Miguel Induráin, who was then determined to open the box of thunder in the Pyrenees to win the first of five consecutive Tours.
The runners were planted at the exit of Pau. EITHER Zimmermann, who had traveled by car, joined the peloton or did not start. The pressure forced the Tour bosses to reinstate him in the competition. Zimmermann arrived in Paris in 116th position in the general classification, 2 hours, 13 minutes and 58 seconds behind Induranbut he fulfilled the objective of finishing the race that could have knocked down the panic on the plane.
A good track record
Zimmermannnow 63 years old, was not just any rider as he finished third in the 1986 Tour and held the same position in the 1988 Giro, aside from winning, among other races, the Tour of Switzerland and the Dauphiné Critérium, which in his era was called the Dauphiné Libéré.
But surely Zimmermann he would not have gotten on the planes that on Sunday afternoon, in the middle of a storm over a good part of Spain, transferred the cyclists, the organization and direction of the race from the Murcia airport to the Valladolid airport, a neutralized race, a good part of it of the fans making the transfer by car, Monday in the sun (or rather in the rain), and a key time trial this Tuesday in the streets of the capital of Valladolid.
the air situation
In the first flight, all the teams traveled except five and the stars of the Vuelta, the Evenepoel, Vingegaard, Roglic, But, Ayuso, Almeida, Thomas; all except five squads, because there was no room for so many runners. The first flight took off and landed without incident, with enough time for all the participants to reach the hotels, have dinner and rest without apparent difficulties.
But oh boy the second flight! To never get on a plane again. The pilot was flying above the stormy clouds, apparently calm until he entered a gruesome airspace like when Dani Rovira -by the way, a good cyclist- took his bus through the tunnel with which he entered the Basque Country in ‘Ocho apellidos vascos’.
vision of lightning
The plane did not move, but the following. Passengers looked out the windows at the lightning strikes in the distancewhich illuminated the skies of Valladolid like spotlights, where the pilot began the approach maneuvers to the runway to land, until it was so dark, almost like running a time trial through the streets of Barcelona, that he changed the direction of the flight and gave up to landing.
The maneuver put the creeps to a large part of the passengers, from the members of the five teams that traveled on the flight (DSM, Caja Rural, Burgos BH, Lidl and Lotto), to the director of the Vuelta, Javier Guillen, part of his management entourage and some employees of the race. The white faces, the heartbeat at a thousand per hour and the runners as if they were going up a mountain pass.
The pilot, to calm the passengers, announced that I gave up landing in Valladolid due to the terrible visibility conditions, while it was pouring, and that he was heading to the Barajas airport. In Madrid, where the alarms of all mobile phones rang in the morning, there was a truce at dawn, enough for the cyclist flight to land without major setbacks to those previously experienced. The buses were already prepared. The runners left the first and the rest of the passage shortly after. They arrived in Valladolid at 4 in the morning. Let no one tell Urs Zimmerman.
2023-09-05 05:17:59
#devilish #plane #Vuelta
