Belgium has waited 44 years, surely the country where cyclists are most admired and respected. Where grandparents tell their grandchildren about Eddy Merckx’s great victories. And the children know who they are talking about, of course. The country of three languages united by the passion for the classic one-day races and for the magnificent cyclists who have tried to win the big ones year after year.
The one who ended the drought was the proud Evenepoel, the young man who until the age of 17 was determined to be a footballer and who became captain in the lower categories of the club of his life, Anderlecht. A bad experience in Dutch PSV grassroots football led him to leave football when he was ready to do pre-season with a First Division team, Mechelen. He decided to give it up and get on a bike to race just like his father, Patrick, who had raced the Vuelta a España in 1993 and finished 113th. His son won it the first time he participated.
Evenepoel, who until today had never managed to finish a three-week race, enters through the big door in the record of the great races. Since he made his name on the professional circuit in 2019 with his aggressive style in one-day races, the Belgian has made his way with the label of being the “new Merckx” hanging around his neck. A serious fall left him without competing for half a year, but this 2022 he has returned through the big door with the triumph he will obtain by entering Madrid as the winner in a final stage of the procedure.
The last trial by fire was the beautiful stage that the organizers of the Vuelta had planned just before the end through the Madrid mountain range, between Moralzarzal and the port of Navacerrada, 181 km long. A stage where the hundreds of Ecuadorians resident in the capital of Spain who have gone up to see their idol, Richard Carapaz, have taken joy, as the Ineos cyclist has added his third stage triumph and the classification of the mountain has been taken away. The excitement, however, was to see if Mallorcan Enric Mas (Movistar) could hurt Evenepoel. The runner from Artà tried at the port of La Morcuera, but the Belgian did not give in for even a second, he managed well the two minutes of cushion he had and ended Mas’s dream of finally being able to get out of the ‘label of supporting actor. At the age of 27, the Mallorcan will climb to the second step of the Vuelta podium for the third time in his career. The youngest podium in the entire history of the race, precisely, with the 19-year-old Barcelona-born Juan Ayuso third. The cyclist from the EAU team withstood the attacks of the Colombian Miquel Àngel López to defend this third position which reinforces him as one of the young people with the most future.
This Sunday the Vuelta ends with the dispute of the twenty-first stage, between Las Rozas and Madrid, with a route of 96.7 km to pay tribute to the protagonists of an edition where the current champion, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic , failed to win for the fourth time and had to retire due to a serious fall when he was second behind an Evenepoel who will have to see how, again, he is compared to Eddy Merckx. Belgium had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
