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Don’t cry for Federer what you didn’t cry for Valverde

Probably you, reader, have also not heard that during the past week the cycling world championships have been held in Wollongong, a small coastal city in southeastern Australia. He must have been busy, like everyone else, crying with the images of Federer y Nadal firing the Swiss in a minor tournament in London, the Laver Cup, which takes its name from the legendary Australian tennis player Rod Laver.

Roger Federer, during his farewell from professional tennis.

Reuters

In the cycling world championships, despite the fact that in the queen event (the men’s road race) the brand-new winner of La Vuelta, the Belgian Remco Evenepoelthe spotlights and memes have pointed to the Dutch, who starred in all kinds of adventures and misadventures.

Some adventures and mischief in the symmetrical antipodes of the novel the invisible milein which David Coventry chronicles the odyssey of the first English-speaking team to participate in the Tour de France, made up of four Australians and one New Zealander.

For so many who this week have been without news from Holland, to say that in the mixed relay time trial, the Movistar runner, Annemiek van Vleutenhad a spectacular fall as soon as he left and ended up in the hospital with a quite damaged elbow.

His male pair in the time trial, Bauke Mollema, in addition to suffering a mechanical problem during the race, crashed into a seagull (or vice versa). And that already a hurricane (which attacked him days before during training) warned him that the Australian birds were in cahoots against him.

[Las lágrimas de Rafa Nadal en la despedida de su amigo Federer: “Se va una parte de mi vida”]

Van der Poelthe grandson of Poulidor, one of the favorites to wear the rainbow jersey in Sunday’s road test, had to retire after 35 kilometers. The reason? A sleepless night in the barracks because some teenage girls wouldn’t let him rest by playing jokes on him, like repeated knocks on the door of his hotel room.

He decided to cut to the chase by allegedly assaulting one of them. Now, with his passport confiscated, he will have to stay five weeks by force in that corner of Oceania. A Djokovic vice versa, go One was not allowed to enter and the other cannot leave.

In these that, three days after the spectacular fall, the veteran Van Vleuten reappeared (with tennis elbow) and was proclaimed world champion in the online women’s event. This Dutch alien, redeemer of the Movistar Team, has won Giro, Tour, Vuelta and World Championships in the same season.

To finish off the anecdote of the Dutch expedition, a tall 40-year-old Dutchman competed (more for charity than for quality), Nothing Schurhuis, but defending Vatican interests. He got off the bike shortly after Van der Poel did.

Don’t ask me about the performance of the Spaniards, because since he dressed as a rainbow Alexander Valverde in 2018, ours do not paint anything in the cycling world championships. The Movistar rider is the professional cyclist with the most World Cup medals in history.

In fact, ‘El Balica’ was injured after winning the World Championship in Innsbruck when he fell on his back doing what he calls “a Van der Poel” (in other words, a wheelie: the sequence is in the documentary The less thought day Netflix), before competing in the classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège, one of the five cycling monuments that the Murcian has won four times, only behind the cannibal Eddy Merckx (5).

If Alejandro were Belgian and his name was Alexander Van der Verde, another rooster would crow. Perhaps he would even depose the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha bloodline from the throne. There, in the country of pavés, they have another sports culture.

[Evenepoel sella su primera Vuelta por delante de Enric Mas y Ayuso en el gran homenaje a Valverde]

And here I wanted to arrive. Alejandro Valverde, the best cyclist in the history of Spain with permission from Miguel Indurain, and one of the largest in the world, retires in two weeks, and here nobody remembers him (outside the cycling environment). On the other hand, we could solve the drought that our country suffers only with the tears that have been shed with the goodbye of the Helvetian Roger Federer.

Here all quisqui (people who don’t even know what a tie break) vibrates on Twitter with Rafael Nadal Parera, Carlitos Alcaraz break audience records the anthill and stars in editorials of morning radio programs, but not even the mother who gave birth to him remembers cycling.

Let’s see, Carlitos Alcaraz is 19 years old and hasn’t won anything yet (compared to Valverde, I mean) and he has already been invited a couple of times to Paul Motorcycles. Alejandro, who is a very nice guy, has never been taken out in prime time past the time they took him to The resistance (By the way, Broncano’s idol is Federer) and due to sponsorship contract requirements. In addition, they took him out together with his squire, Imanol Ervitias if by itself it had no guest entity.

What has happened to cycling, which since Induráin has been considered a marginal sport in the Spanish media? Why do women’s tennis or soccer, for example, come to the fore to the detriment of the sport of two wheels, which if the ballast of doping left it touched, media marginalization is sinking it?

there is more cool, of course, fire Sir Roger Federer, king of Wimbledon, with that English gentleman’s demeanor, all dressed in white. Negroni, vintage racket, Silbon polo, article of wild boars, drive y Match Point.

‘El Balica’ is the son of a truck driver, from a district of Murcia (here he does coincide with Alcaraz), misshapen and half bald (and here, with Nadal), he does not train at Flushing Meadows or at Philippe Chatrier, but at Alcantarilla and Jabalí Viejo , is a great Spaniard, prototype of the series The Serranos and spends the joke of the ham holder.

So the glory of the worldthink.

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