PUTTING THE FAN IN FANTASTIC
There isn’t a bigger concentration of more passionate, single-minded fans anywhere else in the world than when there’s a bike race on in the Basque Country. On TV, the shouting and the crouching that gets the fans in the riders’ faces can look borderline hostile. Up close though, in the midst of it, there’s no edge at all. It isn’t partisan like in Belgium where fan clubs and allegiances dominate. Everyone is cheered. It’s pure support – the football fans’ out-of-their-mind fervour but without the hooliganism or bias.
Throughout the week the same themes emerged. First, no matter who you spoke to on the hillside – and it was always a hillside – they knew what type of riders they liked: they must be climbers and they must be attackers.
Second, fans miss ‘their’ Basque-only Euskaltel-Euskadi squad badly. Everyone lamented its final year when its management hired foreign riders for their points. For almost 20 years, the team carried the torch of Basque cycling around the world. Its collapse in 2013 also coincided with an absence of a top Basque climber: no Iban Mayo, Joseba Beloki or Igor Anton. All that’s left now is a couple of races and a very large diaspora. Inego Diez, yet another student watching the race with his parents on the Bibero climb overlooking Bilbao, explained that his favourite team now was Movistar, but it once had been Euskaltel-Euskadi. “We miss that team. I used to love Anton [a former Euskaltel rider] because he did great things in the mountains, but now he’s a bit old. Now I think there are fewer Basque riders around. For a few years there was a Basque climber at the top of the peloton and although that’s changed a bit with riders like Mikel Landa and Jon Izagirre, it’s not quite the same because they aren’t even on Spanish teams.”
Basque fans are, on the whole, a youthful, vibrant bunch and male-dominated. As a student, Mikel Aizpuru hypothesised, half jokingly, that the youthful dominance is probably a result of the effort it takes to get to the race. Racing is so popular among young Basques that in 2005, a fantasy cycling website, tropela.eus, was launched to promote the use of the Basque language, Euskera, online.
As a Continental-level rider with the ambitious Basque Country-Murias squad, 22-year-old Julen Irizar told us that riders are revered here in a way that other athletes are not. “The culture of cyclists is very strong and it’s very special to be a rider here. On the road, you always experience a lot of encouragement and respect. We have great crowds that other countries don’t seem to have.” As he watched with four other friends – more students – he said he hoped one day he’d get to ride the Itzulia. “It’s a dream to ride here – maybe next year.” Samuel Sanchez backed him up. The BMC man is Asturian but rode for EuskaltelEuskadi thanks to his amateur years spent living just outside Bilbao. A one-time GC winner and with eight stages to his name, he confirmed Irizar’s sentiment. “Every year we were always in our best form for this race. It was the Tour de France for us.”