He leaves without wanting to leave. In reality, Alejandro Valverde (Las Lumbreras, Murcia, 42 years old) is still the same boy who won all the races in which he participated and continues to enjoy every bike ride with his lifelong group like a child. Furthermore, he looks “very competitive” in every test he participates in. Second, fourth and third have been his results in the three races he has played these days on his last tour of Italy, where he has touched the stick in all the finishes and, furthermore, he was of great help for his teammate Enric Mas to win the last Saturday at the Giro dell’Emilia, surprising a champion like Tadej Pogacar. But he leaves because it is what he touches. So are the things. Today he ends everything in Lombardy (Eurosport, starting at 3:00 p.m.). Today, one last Monument for the eternal cyclist, the one they called the Unbeaten when he appeared in the elite with a reputation for not losing a single race.
“Seeing the state of form that I have right now, which is the same as it was ten years ago, and seeing that I am with the best, I have come to consider whether I continue for another year,” Valverde slipped this Tuesday. He doesn’t want to leave because there is nothing in the world he likes more than competing. And, in fact, he has been postponing his withdrawal for two years. In 2020 he postponed it due to the pandemic. And in 2021 he did not want to retire because he felt sorry for “doing it with empty gutters” from the public, due to the restrictions due to the coronavirus health crisis.
Count of career wins
Each space between the spokes corresponds to a win
Count of career wins
Each space between the spokes corresponds to a win
Each space between the spokes
corresponds to a victory
Count of career wins
Count of career wins
Each space between the spokes
corresponds to a victory
In 2022 he has gone from tribute to tribute and in the last Vuelta a España he was the protagonist of one of the images of the season, when the peloton let him go ahead in the last stage and, alone, he received the affection of the public for the most emblematic streets and squares of Madrid. Despite this, Valverde resists. He doesn’t want to, but he lets him. «He is already decided and I will not continue. I think it’s better to finish like this”, settled the Bala before this last appointment in Lombardy, as if wanting to convince himself that the 42 years, the 133 wins achieved and his two long decades of brilliant sports career deserve an end for everything tall. This ends today, on the sidelines of a visit to Japan scheduled for November 6 in which Valverde will participate, as an exhibition, in the Saitama Criterium.
Therefore, the Murcian leaves it here, who has already been assigned a new role at Movistar, a team with which he has a contract until 2024. His representative Antonio Sánchez told EFE last Wednesday that Valverde will work from now on in jobs of representation and advice, although there are already many who assure that sooner rather than later he will become sports director of his current formation (a position that Chente García Acosta has held since 2013) or of another UCI WorldTour team.
“I’m favourite”
At Movistar they highly value Valverde’s image as an exemplary athlete and everything he can teach other runners, starting with the young people who come from below. This is where Valverde will start, who will combine this task with participating in Movistar’s commercial events and commitments. He will continue lending a hand to his brother Juan Francisco in Team Valverde-Ricardo Fuentes, a U23 team based in Murcia.
The Murcian cyclist in the third stage of the Tour of Sicily. /
Valverde has never tired of winning. And the bulge has never slipped. He handles pressure like few others. He is the only rider in history to have finished in the top ten in the majority of races he has entered. And his insatiable appetite knows no bounds. Until the last day he sees himself with a chance of winning, despite his 42 years and the list of entrants in Lombardy: Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Julian Alaphilippe, Mathieu van der Poel, Esteban Chaves, Aleksandr Vlasov, Adam Yates, Miguel Ángel Lopez and Greg Van Avermaet, among others.
“So much Enrique [Mas] like me we are finding ourselves well. If all goes well, I think I’m one of the favorites; then, the race, the state of form, that you feel well… it can vary, but today, I am well enough to fight for the race. If I’m fine, I like the 2022 route more than other years,” explains Bala with that breed of champion that has always characterized a unique cyclist.
Because in Spain we have had seven winners of the Tour de France, Federico Martín Bahamontes (1959), Luis Ocaña (1973), Pedro Delgado (1988), Miguel Indurain (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995), Óscar Pereiro (2006 ), Carlos Sastre (2008) and Alberto Contador (2007 and 2009), and the feeling is that everything that is not part of the Tour is worthless.
But Valverde, who has had a hard time being a prophet in his own land, has been able to make the Spanish fan understand that in cycling there is not only the Tour. “If Valverde were Belgian, and not Spanish, he would be a sports myth,” Luis León Sánchez, a countryman and friend of his, released the other day in Mula. And he is right.
Always in Murcia
Valverde has been unique for everything. Because he is one of the few Spanish professional cyclists who has not moved to Andorra, where most of them establish his residence to escape the high tax burden in Spain. His friend José Joaquín Rojas, ciezano, the retired Purito Rodríguez, Enric Mas, Carlos Verona, Rubén Plaza, Imanol Erviti, Beñat Intxausti, Dani Navarro, David de la Cruz, Iván García Cortina, the aforementioned Luis León Sánchez and Juan José Lobato reside in Andorra, which in recent years has also received stars from the squad such as Dan Martin, Esteban Chaves, Egan Bernal, Simon Yates, Rohan Dennis, Julian Allaphilipe and Robert Gesink.
Alejandro Valverde, in some of the races held in the Region of Murcia. /
Valverde has never wanted to leave Murcia, where he has everything. He lives quietly in his chalet in Montepinar, on the road that goes from Cabezo de Torres to Cobatillas. There he moves away from the spotlight with his wife, Natalia Benito, and their five children (Alejandro, who plays in the lower categories of Levante, and Iván, born from his first marriage to Ángela González, and Pablo, Natalia and Alessandra from his second ). And from there he leaves every morning to train with his usual friends, in the direction of Sierra Espuña, the Mar Menor or the Northwest.
The fall of 2017
He is retiring from professional cycling, but he will continue training and it is very likely that next year he will participate in exhibitions or amateur races. «I leave cycling at my highest level. Even if I don’t do anything [hoy] In Lombardy I am very happy, because my level in these last three races has been incredible, “acknowledges Valverde, who perhaps lacked one more point to finish off and have won one of them. However, the data shows that his speed (14 seconds at 993 watts) in the sprint last Tuesday in the Tres Valles Varesinos classic, where he was overtaken by Pogacar and Higuita, was the same as in the one that gave him victory in Valencia four years ago (14 seconds at 999 watts), in which it was his first victory after the serious crash he suffered in the 2017 Tour in the opening time trial in Düsseldorf.
That fall, by the way, was about to bring forward his retirement from cycling. And he could stay lame for the rest of his life. Valverde crashed violently against the fences, without protection. He suffered deep cuts to his left tibia and patella, and numerous blows to that side. He fractured his left patella, broke his knee in two and shattered the talus in his ankle. Within eight months he was back and he kept winning. In the first month after his comeback, five minor wins. 14 months after that very serious accident in Düsseldorf he was crowned in Innsbruck, in the most special success of his impressive career. Valverde won the 2018 World Cup in a 300-meter sprint for the history of Spanish cycling, in which he put his body at an intensity of 284% and his bike reached a speed of 60.4 km / h. He flew the Bala. And then he cried. As the whole of world cycling cries today for the goodbye of the Murcian legend.
In the first month after his comeback, five minor victories. 14 months after that very serious accident in Düsseldorf he was crowned in Innsbruck, in the most special success of his impressive career. Valverde won the 2018 World Cup in a 300-meter sprint for the history of Spanish cycling, in which he put his body at an intensity of 284% and his bico reached a speed of 60.4 km / h. He flew the Bala. And then he cried.
Valverde, an Innsbruck, a 2018. /
“Have you won other races? The truth is that I have won almost all of them and with a World Cup I was satisfied»
A Vuelta a España, a World Cup gold, four Lièges, podiums and stages in the three greats, five Flechas Walloons… A dazzling list of winners that any cyclist would sign with their eyes closed. However, Alejandro Valverde has been so good that some think he could have retired with an even more incredible record, if he had chosen the calendars better and hadn’t obsessed over the Tour de France, a race he didn’t have in mind. his legs.
This week they asked him, again, in Italy. “My calendar? I would keep it, I would change absolutely nothing. Have you won other races? I couldn’t say, because I’ve won almost all of them (laughs). Making a podium finish in the Tour is like having won. And I was satisfied with winning a World Cup, ”replied the cyclist from Las Lumbreras.
It is already a coincidence (or not) that it is being on Italian roads, the same ones on which the Murcian could not circulate between 2009 and 2011 due to a controversial sanction from the CONI due to his alleged involvement in Operation Puerto, where Valverde has decided to write the last pages of an unrepeatable career.
He missed the Tour, some say. Perhaps he had more than enough, others respond, since he was not a cyclist to win three-week tests. «My chip change occurred on the podium of the Tour, in 2015 [fue tercero]. There I took all the pressure off. I had chased that podium all my life and now I had it. Since then I freed myself, “acknowledges Valverde.
In the Classic of the dead leaves, where today he says goodbye together with another eternal cyclist like Vincenzo Nibali, Valverde sees himself with options. The route, 253 km starting in Bergamo and arriving at Lake Como, in which he includes himself and the mythical climb of Civiglio, he likes. “All we need to do is put the icing on the cake and be able to be with the best,” he says.
