NED BOULTING!
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Is Valverde still a corner-cutter? Perhaps we’ll never know
Well, the World Championships were spiffing, weren’t they? Obviously, I was extremely glad not to have to commentate on them, leaving that in the very capable hands of my friends and colleagues from Eurosport and the BBC. There’s nothing quite like a time trial without split times, distance to go, or indeed any salient information to make the pulse race and the thrill of the event soar. It was good of the UCI’s host broadcasters (and please, this was not the shortcomings of the aforementioned ones) to bother with giving us an actual time at the end of the time trial. At least they did that bit, even though Rohan Dennis could have won riding backwards with no hands. In fact, all the riders should just have got together behind closed doors and bartered their finishing positions, sparing us all the onerous duty of having to watch them.
The elite women’s time trial was a bit more competitive, but only if you had secreted the word “van” in your name and could claim Dutch ancestry. The women’s road race was duly won by the outstanding rider of 2018, the imperious Anna van der Breggen. On balance, absolutely the right winner. We’ll come to the winner of the men’s race in good time.
Watching the world championship road races is fascinating. I like to see riders who normally fight tooth and nail against each other, teaming up, and sacrificing their own chances of success for the benefit of their erstwhile rival. Take for example the Dutch elite men’s team. Tom Dumoulin, Bauke Mollema, Wilco Kelderman and Steven Kruijswijk have traded blows repeatedly for their various trade teams over recent seasons, so it was great to see them riding for one another, even if, ultimately, they could do nothing about the outcome.
The kits are weird and wonderful, too. It’s a good job the races are a standard UCI minimum 16 hours long, over a 950km parcours, because it would take me that long, were I commentating, to pick out the difference between Ukraine, Rwanda, Belize, Sweden and India. Here’s the other underappreciated fact about rider recognition, learned the hard way over the last few years when I made the switch to commentating, riders change body shape when they change kits. When, for example, Tony Gallopin rode for Lotto Soudal, he was somewhat more square-cut and stocky than he is now he’s riding for AG2R La Mondiale. David Millar and I despair when we know that Gallopin is in a race. He has become impossible to identify, like those spy planes that Donald Trump thinks are actually invisible. Except Tony Gallopin really is...
Anyway, I’ve dodged the Alejandro Valverde question long enough. When that final selection was forced, with Valverde in it, up against Romain Bardet and Michael Woods, with Dumoulin valiantly, ridiculously, able to chase on, I was caught in a flux of emotion. I could make a clear and obvious emotional choice to support either Bardet, Woods or Dumoulin. That wasn’t hard, particularly in Bardet’s case. In defeat, the Frenchman wore the expression that haunted him at the Tour de France in 2017: as if he knows that the biggest of prizes will forever elude him. I hope I’m wrong.
But Valverde won, and that was okay. I promise I do not have the faintest idea of his propriety any longer. My suspicions, for what they are worth, is that all is in order, but unfounded suspicions are not worth much. I suspect the same to be true of the other three riders in the top four.
Much time has passed since Valverde’s quantifiably murky past; not just in his life, but in the life of the sport. Okay, it’s cycling, so, just like in any other human activity, people will cut corners. Is Valverde still a corner-cutter? Perhaps we’ll never know. But the way he races, his craft and fearlessness (he doesn’t fear failure, unlike so many others), his sense of show, which reduces down to a love of his sport and the way it makes him feel, are qualities that seep through his racing.
One year in the rainbow bands, then, and I hope it ends well. I think it will, but I don’t know for sure. I recommend we enjoy him while he’s still among us. Ex-doper or not, his type is a rare find in modern cycling.