Nearly 4 months after a deeply troubling matchup with COVID-19, Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) says he is back and has compatibility and able to compete in the Vuelta en Burgos.
With Mark Cavendish (Bahrain-Merida), Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Gaviria is expected to be one of the biggest names in the sprints in Burgos, with a war imaginable among fast men at level 2 and some on level 4.
“I’m fine,” Gaviria told a small journalists’ organization the weekend before the race, which begins Tuesday. “The last few months have been simple because educating without knowing what careers you would have found complicated and a little unmotivating.
“But fortunately, I did well and I went through this time in a wonderful way.”
That is perhaps easier said that done, given Gaviria himself contracted the COVID-19 virus at the UAE Tour, and had to go into a prolongued period of quarantine. After receiving the initial all-clear on March 26, he flew home to Colombia on April 8 with 55 other compatriots on a humanitarian flight alongside tons of medical supplies being brought to the South American country courtesy of the UAE to help with their COVID-19 effort.
While the war against coronavirus is over and Gaviria does not know if the virus has left it long-term effects, it is quite certain that it is not.
“It would be a mistake to rule it all out, but so far I’ve felt general on the motorcycle and it’s a relief,” he said. “I had no idea how I would feel in those cases when I train. But now I’m taking it easy and I just hope things go well because I definitely needed to start running again.”
Gaviria acknowledges that she was lucky, at least, because she had to go to the hospital in the United Arab Emirates because of the fever, the effects of the coronavirus she contracted were relatively minimal.
“The fever went away after two days and after that I didn’t feel anything special: no coughing, no pain in the lungs, nothing. I had to wait a long time to get a negative result to appear in the tests, but in retrospect, the vital thing was that I felt general in this process. As the team also comes from there, I can count on your help in your home country, which was a wonderful help. They were there for everything.”
After returning to Colombia, Gaviria faced a new era of isolation in a friend’s space in Bogota to be 100 percent sure it would not jeopardize her circle of relatives.
“It’s the least I can do for them, ” he said. “It’s still difficult, but at that point I’m in the last component of the process.”
On an emotional level, Gaviria recognises that having had COVID-19 and seeing how his sport ground to a halt, putting on a race number on Tuesday morning in Burgos will feel, individually, massively significant.
“There was a time when cycling wasn’t that important, because we all know that coronavirus has affected a lot of sufferers and that’s incredibly unfortunate.”
“But on a non-public level, for me now, I think wearing a bib is incredibly satisfying. I feel the same adrenaline that when I turned pro. We don’t know what situations we’re in.” I’ll participate or what the race will be like. But what we do know is that we all have to go back to the race. “
In the case of Gaviria, it will do its functionality in Burgos with rehearsals in Milan-San Remo and the Giro d’Italia, this last time in which it has combined memories.
In 2019, he won a first tier of the Giro in tense cases after the relegation of his compatriot Elia Viviani, but then had to surrender for a knee injury, however, in 2017, it was in the Giro where he achieved his breakthrough on the Grand Tour in flavor without less. 4 level wins.
Although we made the decision to win in Burgos, Gaviria says it is moderate to expect surprises; No one is 100 percent sure of its form or the kind of effects you can get, especially when races like Sanremo are about to take position at another time of year and potentially in other racing situations as well. “Everything can change,” he warns.
But as a cyclist, in any case, and whatever the results, Gaviria says that she feels that the time has come to give the public the possibility to disconnect from his life, even briefly.
“Cycling has never stopped being cycling, and the least we can do is show that we are lucky to be motorcyclists and, if only for a while, check that other people avoid talking and thinking about the virus, and start talking. about sport. again, ” he says.
“This way, other people can have those difficult times, even if it’s only for a few hours.”
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