VALVERDE, FINALLY
Clad in the yellow of race leader, Alejandro Valverde threw back his head and laughed as Juan-Carlos Escámez, his friend and long-time soigneur, hoisted him into the air in the cool, shaded street outside a sports bar. The media bustled around them while autograph hunters moved in. Valverde came down to a pat on the back from his team boss, Eusebio Unzué. Valverde finished the closing 27km TT nine seconds behind the winner, Primo Roglic, but 14 seconds ahead of Alberto Contador. It contributed to his final winning margin of 17 seconds. They were the perfunctory mechanics of a dramatic TT and, for many, a long-overdue Itzulia GC win for the 36-year-old. If there’s a stage race suited to Valverde’s short-climb, highpower proficiency, this surely is it.
It was the 106th win of his career and it filled a glaring hole in his palmarès. The overall win came in his ninth participation (if you count the 2010 edition in which he finished second but was stripped of the result due to the late justice of Operación Puerto). Valverde’s first win as a pro came at this race, back in 2003.
Ushered to the podium, he was presented with the txapela, the Basque beret, before moving on to the press conference in the town hall. “It’s my first victory in the Basque Country, a race that has always eluded me, that’s why I’m very happy,” he said.
The questions were light and sympathetic, a reflection of the warm relationship he has with his home media. “If I wanted to, I could stop racing this season,” he laughed. It was put to Valverde that making the podium at last year’s Giro d’Italia and 2015’s Tour de France had liberated him and that those results were the reason for his successful spring. “I don’t know” he replied. “I think it’s a bit of everything. Mainly, I’ve done almost everything and I don’t have the pressure to win things like I did before. I used to feel it. If you add that I’m physically equal to or better than before, that’s what explains the victories of this season.”
What realistic goals are there left for him to achieve - the world road race championships? – another journalist asked. “I knew you were going to ask that. To win would be the icing on the cake, but honestly, I don’t care if I don’t.”
When the press conference wound up, applause signalled the room’s appreciation. Some of the media gathered around Valverde for a photo. Ainara Hernando, a journalist for the website ciclismoafondo.es, said Valverde had always been the warmest and most open of Spain’s recent ‘big four’ - Valverde, Contador, Samuel Sánchez and the recently-retired Joaquim Rodríguez. “If you met him 10 years ago when he took his first win here in the Basque Country, he was the same guy, making jokes, laughing. He’s always been close with the fans and journalists.”
By then, Alberto Contador and Jon Izagirre, second and third on GC respectively, had departed. In the end, quite the podium - one the organisers were happy with. It may have been an atypical Itzulia – easier, drier, warmer, sanitised – but the best had still risen to the top.