Josean Fernández (Basauri, 51 years old) is known as ‘Matxín’ in cycling because of a cousin of his who was a professional. After thirty years in his office, the sporting director of the United Arab Emirates-sponsored team has become one of the elders of the squad. An influential guy who has won the Tour twice with the prodigy Tadej Pogacar and who manages the future of the Spanish cycling successor, Juan Ayuso. In this interview with ABC, Matxín confesses that he is going to leave the sports management of the UAE to perform the duties of ‘team manager’, manager of the team. -You are a specialist in lower categories. Why are younger dominant cyclists coming out? -Young people have replaced the experience on the road with the information provided by technology and data. They have all the information long before the old cyclists, but then you have to develop the watts. If you add information to talent and character, you get people like Pogacar, Egan Bernal, Evenepoel, Van Aert and others. -There is a global explosion. -Everyone has the information, but to be a champion you need character and strength. Cycling is a sport that expresses itself with the legs, not with what you think or what you know. And we can never ignore that. -What do you think Evenepoel has learned in this Vuelta? -He has matured. He has understood that bad times have to be passed, you don’t have to surrender. -What is different about his pupil Juan Ayuso? -He doesn’t look like anyone. Juan is as he is, authentic. He is a climber who moves well against the clock and who knows how to win the sprint. He is a very complete cyclist, very ambitious and has a winning mentality. We are in the making of a great runner: he not only has the ability to recover, but he does great numbers. Other than head, he is a great person. -Can it be a burden for him to have become the heir to Spanish cycling? -Not at all, he has a lot of confidence. We try to transform that pressure into confidence. He lives for the day, spend the day and don’t think about the next week. He is strong and as a team we are supporting him to grow. Now we discover Ayuso or Carlos Rodríguez, but anyone who follows the cadet races already knew how good they were and that they have been protagonists. -A powerful team, with budget and Pogacar. -And another boy comes from behind, write down the name, Jan Christen. He is 17 years old, he has won the cyclocross world championship, almost mountain bike world champion, Swiss road champion. We have signed him for five years. It’s nice to feel part of that growth of the team with Pogacar, obviously. We have given confidence to cyclists who were not known, but we did know them. -Now he manages a giant team, but he has also eaten mud… -Let’s see, this is my 30th season as sports director. And the Vuelta is going to be my last race as a director. I always said I would leave him when he was 30 years old. I’m away from home for 236 days, I’m team manager, I communicate with the riders, I do the Giro, Tour and Vuelta and I don’t have time to do everything perfectly, the way I like it. We plan long distance, I already know who is going to ride the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta next year. We have to delegate to the directors we have, who are fantastic.
