REVIVED VALVERDE

Has Ale jan droV al verde’ s troubled past been white washed by his continued success and habit of winning?

Insight, opinion and interviews

Alejandro Valverde has never been one to ease himself back into racing after a long lay-off. In 2012, on the back of his two-year doping ban, he took his first victory after outsprinting Simon Gerrans on Willunga Hill. It was his fifth day of competition and he labelled it his “most beautiful victory.” He said his prodigious training during the suspension had been fuelled in part by anger. His return then was met with plenty of hostility for not having displayed contrition for his wrongdoings.

In terms of wins, he was as quick off the mark this year. After a seven-month rest caused by breaking his kneecap on the opening day of the Tour de France, he won the second stage of the Volta a la Valenciana. This time his success was greeted warmly and sympathetically: Valverde the race animator was back. By the end of the week, Valverde had added another stage and the GC – the third of his career – to his palmarès. It was exceptional for a man bearing down on his 38th birthday, or as he is acerbically described on the Spanish cycling site,

Ciclismo2005, the Murcian Mummy. Valverde’s enthusiasm and application is beyond doubt. In November he told journalists how he had clocked up more than 6,000km since he had restarted riding in August. The Movistar team doctor Jesús Hoyos stressed to

Procycling that in the pre- season power tests Valverde was, for once, putting his back into them and delivering extraordinary power data. “He’s even more motivated now, after his crash,” said Hoyos. “For me, what matters most is his attitude, more than the watts he can produce.”

“This victory [in Valencia] has been very special for many reasons,” Valverde told Spanish newspaper Marca, “And one of them, maybe the main one, is because of how it happened. We had rain, wind, cold, snow... very harsh conditions. It also came after a great job by the whole team and shortly after I returned from injury.”

Before Valverde’s crash, he won 11 races last year including Flèche-Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. This year, in another typically crammed schedule he’ll put in showings at Strade Bianche, Volta a Catalunya, the hilly Classics, the Dauphiné, the Tour de France, San Sebastián, the Vuelta a España, the Worlds and Il Lombardia.

For how much longer will Valverde remain the benchmark in hilly racing? His second stage win in