On a rainy night in Belfast on the eve of the 2014 Giro d’Italia, Eusebio Unzué presented an unexpected reaction to the request to compare Nairo Quintana to a driving force from a generation past. Instead of focusing on his pilot’s technical attributes, he emphasized his personality. “I’ve never known a driving force with so much character,” Unzué said. “In that sense, he’s like Bernard Hinault.”
At first glance, the comparison seemed unlikely. Quintana, a soft-spoken, largely undemonstrative young man from the Boyac countryside, seemed years away from a forceful and hectoral force of nature like Hinault, who came from the very epicentre of European cycling.
Unzué’s analogy took a little more sense just over two weeks later, when the Giro arrived in Sarnonico for the exit of level 17. Quintana had taken the pink maglia the day before at Val Martello, after clearing on the snowy descent of the StelvioArray. however, some of those who returned felt that the scene had been temporarily neutralized.
There were even calls from the AIGCP to tie Quintana for the time she had earned on the Stelvio descent, and Unzué himself held heated conversations with his fellow leaders in the village of Sarnonico.
Quintana, meanwhile, seemed utterly insensitive to the debatable atmosphere swirled outdoors from the Movistar bus. When he went out to sign for the special of the day, he dressed in pink shorts, pink helmets, pink-rimmed glasses, pink gloves and, of course, the pink T-shirt. The clear defiant note. If they were looking for their pink T-shirt, they had to come and take it off. The Blaireau would certainly have approved it.
Six years later, when Quintana sought to revive her career after finishing her tenure at Movistar, a coincidence, or the rolodex of agent Giuseppe Acquadro, took him to local Brittany hinault.
The move to the Pro Continental Arkéa-Samsic team caught the eye when it was first reported last summer, however, while a rejuvenated Quintana illuminated the French calendar in the first weeks of the 2020 season, he suddenly had the appearance of the most productive move since Philippe Gilbert’s signing. For QuickStep. He also posed the question: where did it all happen in Movistar?
At the start of a 2015 season focused on Quintana’s inclination in the Tour de France, Movistar’s long career was intended to be built around the Colombian. The sponsor’s interests in South America meant Quintana’s sports price seemed to fit its marketing potential. At the Tour de San Luis in January in Argentina, the top kid who probably gave Latin America his first Tour de France victory was awarded the top spot in all local coverage. His appearance in an evening sports research program, broadcast from a makeshift studio on the corner of a street, was enough to avoid traffic in a country where football is king.
However, even here, there seemed to be a tension between the authoritarian habit of Quintana’s team and the pilot’s more casual dating with fame. Movistar was the only St. Louis team to isolate their cars from the crowd every day at the start, but Quintana surpassed the purpose of training by narrowing down her window to greet the enthusiasts who gathered.
Quintana’s challenge at the 2015 Tour although it all suffered a decisive setback when he was defeated by Chris Froome at the first summit at La Pierre Saint Martin, was able to take advantage of the challenge tanks to give Team Sky a vansing in the Alps. His attack volley at La Toussuire and Alpe d’Huez reduced his final deficit to 1:12 in Paris and warned that a yellow jersey was in his future. Movistar’s marketing arm has duly promoted a hashtag that spreads Quintana’s yellow dream.
Instead, 2015 proved the highwater mark for Quintana as a Tour contender and, arguably, for his status at Movistar. He again raced early and very often in 2016, but while victories at the Volta a Catalunya and Tour of the Basque Country cemented the team’s position atop the WorldTour standings, they were of questionable benefit to the rider’s preparation for the Tour.
A tired Quintana was a shadow of himself in July, when his old pace on the mountain abandoned him and worked in a remote 3rd position in Paris. It was a testament to Quintana’s resistance, or perhaps of the overall fatigue of the platoon in an Olympic year, which won the overall classification of the Vuelta a España two months later, but this triumph may not triumph over the looming cracks. on your dates with your team.
The ebook recently published through Matt Rendell, Colombia Is Passion! He painted desirable portraits of the current generation of Colombian cyclists, as well as of his nation’s society, culture and fashion history. It also provides abundant main points in the stages of Quintana’s adventure, from small actives in the hills above C-mita to the top of professional cycling. Rendell had a brief stint on the team as a Quintana press officer in early 2016 but, more importantly, he has been largely observing the arc of the Colombian race for the past decade.
He warned that one of the first primary discrepancies between Quintana and Movistar involved the remedy through the team of his younger brother, Dayer, who was sent to races that did not fit his talents. His ebook describes how Quintana thought about leaving the team at the end of 2015, only to be convinced to remain through Movistar Colombia.
“They promised to sort out the list of things he was looking to fix, but they never were,” Rendell told Cyclingnews. “I think there has been this clash of interests between a Spanish team where there was a wealth of sponsorship cash from Latin America but no representation in control of the team. Movistar Chile, Movistar Ecuador and Movistar Colombia contributed a lot to the team. , however, the team was Spanish.
Quintana’s presence helped loosen the bags of the South American branch of Movistar in the short term, but control of the Pamplona-based team led the team to a succession of Spanish (and French) sponsors for 4 decades. Possibly they would have been aware that they might wish to locate some other Spaniard at some point in the future, so they did not want to stray too far from the team’s long-standing Navarrese identity.
“There was a feeling in which Abarca Sports [the team’s holding company] began to feel that Nairo was their rival, that Nairo would become bigger than the team and that it was vital for the team to remain bigger than Nairo, which I think was a completely incorrect way to pursue that relationship,” says Rendell.
Quintana and Movistar’s marriage seemed increasingly dissatisfied in their last 3 years on the team, although a great victory may have served to bring the two groups closer together. Instead, Quintana suffered a near-accident at the 2017 Giro and it was surprising that on the eve of the final time trial, while her driver was still wearing the race leader’s pink jersey, Unzué was already resigning he was resigning himself to defeat.
“I think Nairo lacked that percentage point of brilliance he had in the past,” he said after Quintana failed to beat long-running winner Tom Dumoulin in Asiago.
A more keen comment followed when Quintana, exhausted, struggled to finish 12th on the Tour that summer, when Unzué told El País that his driving force – then at just 27 years old – had “started to grow old very young.” Rendell believes That Unzué’s comments were designed to inspire Movistar’s owner, Telefanica, to block The arrival of Mikel Landa of Team Sky, but this probably wouldn’t have helped relations with Quintana. It was the prelude to a long divorce that rarely resembled a prolonged edition of the breakup of communication between Miguel Indurain and Banesto in 1996, rebuilt in the biography of Alasdair Fotheringham, Relentless.
In 2018 and 2019, Quintana, Landa and Alejandro Valverde formed a disjointed Movistar triumvirate in the Tour, and while the Colombian gained one mountain level at a time, he could only finish 10th and eighth in Paris. Her last unfortunate tour in combination was narrated in the Netflix documentary series The Least Expected Day, and the montage turns out to paint Quintana as a sullen figure whose silences dictate the atmosphere on the bus.
The rating, according to Rendell, is unfair. In Colombia It’s Passion! Quintana’s obvious self-control is the result of her rural upbringing in C-mita: “The young people of Quintana have slightly noticed a television. As a result, the film language of gesture and expression, the nature of the moment for those who were previously socialized the small screen, oblivious to them.
Fortunately, Quintana appears in a softer image at the end of the series, when shown giving a tearful farewell speech at the post-Back team dinner. “Sometimes I look cold,” he says. “But I know you’re at my center and I’m proud to have been part of the Movistar family.”
A second-division team operating from Rennes looked like a landing spot for Quintana and the news of her time in Arkéa-Samsic soon evoked other unforeseen and unfortunate French transfers, such as the short-lived Joseba Beloki period in Brioches La Boulangére. in 2004 or Evgeni Berzin’s brief cameo in La Francoise des Jeux in 1998.
The Quintana Nature Reserve meant that some of his new companions first considered him a remote figure, the first impression was not lasting.
“To be honest, it would probably seem pretty unscrutinized at first, however, when you got to know it a little bit, you learned temporarily that it’s not very, very easy in all areas, whether it’s nutrition, equipment, training,” he said. Kevin Ledanois. Bike 101. ‘But you can also see that he’s someone who wants to feel’ at home ‘to get along’.
It helped, of course, that Quintana was surrounded by familiar faces at Arkéa. Ledanois’ father Yvon, a directeur sportif at the team, was part of Movistar’s management in Quintana’s debut professional season in 2012. Quintana’s fellow new arrivals included his brother Dayer, who had been jettisoned by Movistar in 2018, his most trusted domestique Winner Anacona, and Diego Rosa, who is also a client of his agent Giuseppe Acquadro.
Indeed, the tensions between Acquadro and Movistar were the ambient noise of Quintana’s last season in the team. Acquadro’s consumers were, in spite of everything, decreed personae non gratae through Unzué late last year after the spleric departures of Richard Carapaz and Andrey Amador.
“It’s for him to have around his brother and others he trusts like Anacona,” Yvon Ledanois told El Tiempo in March.
“It makes Nairo think he can score his goals.” Anacona, a teammate of Quintana, boyac’s local, echoed this sentiment: “There is no doubt that moving to a team where he feels supported as an absolute leader gives him much more motivation.”
Although Arkéa-Samsic was concerned to point out that Breton favorite Warren Barguil would be given some angelic attitude on the Tour, the team is built around Quintana in a way that Movistar doesn’t. During early-season races in the south of France, for example, the team’s briefing was given first in Spanish and then translated into French. And if Arkéa has adapted to Quintana, he has also agreed to adapt his racing program to his needs, in particular by giving up tour Colombia and making sure he was already in victory form when the Tour de los Angeles Provence boarded Mont Ventoux in February.
“Nairo gave a press convention in Bogota in December last year and someone said, “What do you want to be the driving force that you won the Grand Tours?” And he said, “I must be happy, ” said Rendell. “I think it says a lot, but at the same time, there is a well-defined strategy with Arkéa: they sought to provide their new firm of great money to the French public with a victory at Mont Ventoux.
New victories in the Vuelta a alpes-maritimes and the Var and at La Colmiane in Paris-Nice seemed to show that Quintana did not age as fast as Unzué had suggested. Until the cycling season was interrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic in March, Quintana had been the most productive player in the peloton and the yellow sueo seemed less hazy than at any time since 2015.
However, with 3 days to pass before the Tour de France Grand Départ in Nice, the situation is less clear.
While Quintana’s measured demonstration at the Tour de l’Ain pointed to a bubbly guy before the Tour, his abandonment due to injury on the last day of the Dauphiné was worrying. He injured his knee when he was hit by a car while studying in Colombia in early July and Arkéa-Samsic’s Guyager, Emguyuel Hubert, insisted on Monday that he was not concerned about Quintana’s fitness for La Grande Boucle, doubts will at least persist. until the climbs of La Colmiane and The Turini on Sunday.
Quintana, of course, has beaten her luck last summer, when Egan Bernal entered Paris under the yellow jersey of the Tour de France winner. It would have been understandable that Quintana had felt a trail of envy at the feat of her young countryman, but did not give away any symptoms of jealousy.
“I think the children of the peasantry should be informed early in life to settle for things that cannot change,” says Rendell, who points out that Quintana is still better known and popular than Bernal in his home country, due to his own longevity and the brevity of the amateur career of the Ineos driver in Colombia.
Quintana is aware of this platform and, a rarity for a platoon giant, uses it very actively for social causes. In 2013, for example, he condemned the violence of the government opposed to the protest of the peasants in Catatumbo. He then introduced a social media crusade opposed to violence against women and has become an advocate for smallholder farmers.
Simply put, verdicted verdicto La Concepción is the ultimate activist-athlete in professional cycling.
“I think if Nairo had been French, British or Italian and acted with the social guilt that he does, it would be much more celebrated in Europe,” Rendell says.
His activism has to do with Colombian cycling policy, where he campaigned unsuccessfully for a substitute candidate in the 2017 presidential election. By that time, Quintana had been fighting the corner of Colombian cyclists on the road for a decade.
After the 2010 Tour de l’Avenir, for example, Quintana told Solo Ciclismo about her reaction to the umpteenth incident of prejudice in the peloton. “One day, a French driving force grabbed Jarlinson Swamp’s motorcycle by the handlebars and threw it off his motorcycle. So in retaliation, I went and drove this French pilot to a ditch,” he said.
Quintana created even more space for Colombian cycling by winning the overall name in this Tour de l’Avenir, just weeks after the Tour de France defeated a Colombian player for the first time in 27 years.
“It was victory that introduced a thousand ships,” Rendell says. In fact, he replaced the course of Colombian cycling. In the years that followed, the yellow sueo flourished.
Quintana is not the first man to climb this particular mountain, but the attack on the Tour de France would not have happened without him, and he keeps climbing anyway.
Subscribe to the Cyclingnews newsletter. You can choose to leave at any time. For more information on how to do this and how we purchase your data, please see our privacy policy.
Thank you for signing up to Cycling News. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There’s a problem. Refresh the page and re-consult.
Cyclingnews is from Future plc, a foreign media organization and a leading virtual publisher. Visit our corporate website.