KING OF PAMPLONA
Miguel Indurain’s still got it. On the morning of stage 2, in the Plaza del Castillo, Big Mig enjoyed a barrage of greetings and selfie requests from numerous local well-wishers. When Indurain, 52, ambled into the start chute to see the riders, he put a warm and friendly paw on the current man-on-fire, Alejandro Valverde. Indurain, the country’s greatest sporting icon, born just outside the city, commanded the moment. The many attendant cameras flickered quickly.
Among the team buses, Team Sky’s newest DS, Xabier Zandio, was also showered in greetings from well-wishers. Like Indurain, the 40-year-old is Pamplonès to the bone. Between bouts of kisses and handshakes, he explained that Indurain had plunged the city into a cycling trance from which it has hardly recovered. “I started cycling a couple of years before he won his first Tour,” said Zandio. “But after he won, it was crazy around here. All the kids rode bikes and that meant the level of racing reached a really high level.” He remembers the huge pool of amateurs that could be drawn from Pamplona all the way up to the Basque coast. The climbers thrived in the north, the all-rounders and sprinters in flatter Navarre.
The city is still Spain’s cycling hotspot. It’s home to the country’s two remaining professional teams, Movistar and Caja Rural. One of the country’s top amateur outfits, Lizarte, which has sent almost 40 riders on to the professional ranks since 1993, is also based here. That team’s gaudy pink and black jersey was a common sight on the roads heading out to the race.
The Basque race last visited the Navarre capital 44 years ago, when Indurain was just nine. It was a long, political absence. Navarre and the Basque Country are conjoined on a long, culturally porous boundary. They have their own federations, history and legends, but the two are intertwined. As one journalist put it: “It depends who you ask but, for many, a cyclist from Navarre is as Basque as a cyclist from San Sebastián.” Markel Irizar, one of Trek Factory Racing’s Basque domestiques, said that once you’d cut through the region’s knotty history and politics, the “real Basques were from Navarre anyway”.
The organisers made a great deal of the tour’s dot-to-dot ramble through the region’s four capitals: Pamplona, Vitoria, San Sebastián and Bilbao. This sweep across a much larger region changed the complexion of the race. By the end of stage 2 in 2016, the race had covered 12 categorised climbs and had a summit finish. This year it was five climbs and two bunch sprints, the second coming in Elciego, an attractive Rioja town just inside the semi-autonomous Basque Country’s border. For many, this softer character was a compromise too far.
Irizar didn’t feel the change detracted from the race, however. “To see a big show you don’t need crazy-hard climbs – this way will keep the competition tight until the time trial. And, anyway, from tomorrow it’s back to normal Basque roads – not one single kilometre of flat.” Rain was forecast too. Truly back to Basque.