The second resurrection of Nairo Quintana

Egan Bernal He received the Laureus Prize as a revelation athlete last year in Berlin. But Colombian cycling does not end in the winner of the last Tour. Egan just turned 23 and is the big star of coffee cycling. In his first attempt he got what his compatriot Quintana had a life chasing.

Nairo Quintana became the «Yellow dream» even in the motto of the Movistar team when the Tour was his obsession and his only true goal in the season. But it failed again and again after promising beginnings and at the end of last year it dissociated itself from the telephone equipment.

I had to start over, from a lower step. The Arkea Samsic, his new team, belongs to the Continental Professional category, the second of the world cycling and is not guaranteed the presence in the great races of the season. But Nairo, who just turned 30, has been doing well start over. And he has done it big since a small career.

Sunday was the winner of the Tour de Provence, but his great triumph had come on Saturday, when he won at the top of the Mont Ventoux Where Tom Simpson died, Nairo rose again. Because Quintana knows a lot about resurrections. Legend has it that when he was born he had to overcome the tempted of deceased. There is a belief in Boyacá, the region where the cyclist is from, that it is necessary to keep pregnant women away from the dead because they are at risk of losing the baby.

To Nairo the terrible disease was transmitted to a neighbor who had just lost a close relative and when he went to buy at Quintana's parents' store and unintentionally touched his mother when she was pregnant with him. The disease has no known remedy and Nairo spent his first year of life among bleeding, terrible diarrhea and with a dead smell transmitted without a doubt, by the deceased neighbor. Nairo overcame it thanks to the infusion of roots that a neighbor recommended to her mother.

Almost 30 years have passed since that and Nairo has risen again. «When you have confidence and your legs follow you… Inevitably, there is a good chance that the result will be good later, ”he said after his victory at cyclingcolombian.com.

The Colombian cyclist had to give up running the Tour of his country in exchange for participating in Provence. A decision that has given him the first joy of the season. He has recovered his legs and his smile. In Movistar he lived obsessed with the internal competition of Valverde and Landa more than with the rivals. Al Arkea took his brother Dayer and the best of his gregarious, Winner Anacona, who did a spectacular job for Nairo's victory at the Ventoux.

In addition, he has the full confidence of his team. «He is one of the greats of cycling. And it is still around 15 percent below its best form. There is more to come», Says Arkea manager Emmanuel Hubert, in statements to cyclingnews.com.

Nairo is happy again. "I feel alive again," he says happily. He had already given clues in the Colombian championship, where he was second in the time trial. But since 2017, when he won the Tyrrhenian-Adriatic he had not succeeded again in a stage race. "I work to give back to the team the confidence it has given me, and I hope this is the first of a long series of successes," says the Colombian, who has risen.