ÁLVARO JOSÉ HODEG
Coldeportes - Zenu
M eet the Colombian sprinter who rocked the Tour de l’Avenir with a stage win and five more top-10 finishes
The Tour de l’Avenir went well, then?
Extremely well. Álvaro’s stage win came right at the end of a string of five top 10s on the fast and grippy opening stages in Brittany and central France. He took backto-back second places on stage 2 and 3 before finally getting his hands in the air on stage 6 when the race arrived in SaintAmand-Montrond. Or rather he didn’t celebrate because he wasn’t sure the early break had been caught. It had; the win was his. After that, the race transferred east to the Alps, where he supported his Colombian team-mate, Team Sky-bound Egan Bernal, who won a pair of mountain stages and the GC.
What did Álvaro say after his win?
That he had no words to express his happiness, but that it was the biggest win of his career. “This motivates me a lot and I will continue training with a lot of sacrifice and discipline,” he told the website of the Colombian Cycling Federation.
Any other results worth noting?
He was the best-placed Colombian in the U23 world road race championships in Qatar last year, finishing 12th in a strong field. He also won three stages of the Vuelta a Chiriquí in Panama in 2015.
So, he’s Colombian and a sprinter. The parallels with star of the Giro Fernando Gaviria are undeniable…
It looks that way. They’re from neighbouring provinces in Colombia (Álvaro is from Monteria, which is flat by the country’s standards) and they were together on Colombia’s top development team, Coldeportes-Claro, in 2015. But Álvaro told French website Directvelo that comparisons between the two were pointless because Gaviria, who is two years older, was “in another dimension”. That could be modesty talking, because there is a strong chance Álvaro will end up on Quick-Step with Gaviria. The 21-year-old went for tests with the squad in January 2017 and has been a stagiaire there since early August. The likelihood is that he’ll join the Belgian outfit in the next couple of years. The best is definitely still to come.