The Tour Colombia returned after four years of absence and life seems different.
Climate change will force, with fires accelerating it, to change textbooks, history and clothing. It seems like thermal floors were an invention, so linguistically beautiful, and Humboldt, the German scientist who described Andean nature, a fantasist; the ruana, a decorative fabric, and Los Muiscas, the indigenous people of Boyacá, just the name of a neighborhood in Tunja in which modern skyscrapers, universities and private bilingual schools with magnificent computer classrooms are planted. And it is as if the great cyclists of the past, the Indomable Zipa nor Cochise Rodríguez nor Lucho nor Fabio Parra never existed.
Humboldt’s beautiful concept that in Colombia, the average daily temperature is defined by the altitude will disappear, from the tropical heat of Cartagena at sea level, on the first floor, to the cold of the cold floor, the highlands of Tunja and more Boyacá below. 2,800 meters, where the harsh sun bites when the Tour Colombia arrives again.
Colombia continues to be calm in the chaos, although cultural change steals the soul, the history, the roots, from cycling and the Tour Colombia. In the years from 20 to 24 when there was no race, everything changed. The old glories who gave talk and stories at the start are not invited, and Parlante Agudelo has died, the hoarse voice that told stories of the old Vuelta a Colombia, the cunning, the motorcycle with water at the top of the Line, the wise man who raised juveniles, discovered Chaves, and dreamed.
Now, the third decade of the 21st century, the stories of cycling are written by Andrés López López, a novelist who was a coca cook at the age of 15 and a drug trafficker, Florecita his nom de guerre, middle manager of the Norte del Valle Cartel, before turning himself in to the DEA in the United States in 2001. “Incarcerated for several years, he achieved a reduced sentence for good behavior and collaboration, and in the downtime in prison a new talent was discovered, that of good handling of the pencil. He wrote The frog’s sign, a story based on his adventures and met new success. “I was one of many drug traffickers who found that the best solution was submission,” López López said in an interview in the magazine Change talking about the success of the soap opera based on his story. Later he became a cyclist and triathlete, he met Rigo Urán in Miami, where he lives, and wrote his life story. From the book, published in January 2021, Rigo’s soap opera was born, daily chapters of such success that they have allowed RCN to win the battle of prime time to Caracol Televisión, and while coordinating a reality show that is always being recorded, Rigo finishes reading and correcting the proofs of another book, of another life as a cyclist, that of Nairo Quintana.
Nairo, on his Instagram, already in November 2021, when he went to Miami to speak with the author, announced that Andrés López. “Here I am with my partner Andrés, the crack, the best writer in our country at this moment,” says Nairo in the reelin which he appears on a bicycle hugging the author. “Well, we are making the first story of my life, the story told by myself, through my mouth. This man He’s the one who was putting pencil there. We are in Miami.
Very soon we will release the book so that you can see it and read it.” And the writer asks, “Did you like Miami or not, Nairo?” “I loved Miami, I’m going to live here,” the cyclist responds, and rectifies. “No, lie.”
Rigo lives in Miami.
Although the climate of Miami makes him feel different, Nairo is, in a way, the antiRigo who also seeks to transcend his life as a cyclist before society. She wants to continue building his character, growing with him. “Nairo is a totally different character from Rigo,” agrees Luisa Fernanda Ríos, Nairo’s agent, who expects the book to go on sale in July and talks about a negotiation with Netflix and Amazon for a possible soap opera. “But also with a very interesting life.” Rigo is paisa, he is Medellín, pure nerve, accelerated, urban, modern, traces of violence and poverty. Nairo is slow-paced, a peasant from traditional land, from Boyacá, where gonorrhea and jueputa, so common in the daily talk of the paisas, and sound so much like street, are a sin in the cold lands of sumerced.
Nairo takes the stage to present the third stage of the Tour Colombia, which leaves from his Tunja and also ends there, in Los Muiscas, and he is a lifelong Boyacense, traditional, allergic to vertigo. “The land of sumerced!”, he proclaims, repeats, pride in the use of a word that smacks of colonial times, old and moth-eaten Castilla, your grace, and is still used to address one another, so much respect. And then he allows himself to be swallowed up by a career whose development brings him back to the 21st century, to Mark Cavendish remaining alone, at the tail end of everyone, in the inhospitable ascents to the hills almost at 2,900 meters that surround Tunja, and clapping the fans, and some lend him their iphones to take selfies, and thus fulfills the happy English of so many fans who need so much to absorb cyclist stories. It is the town of Nairo and Rigo attacks at the end. Nairo tries to follow him, but can’t. They win over Boyacá Miami, reggaetón and laughter. With Rigo, others go through the hills of Nairo. They arrive a few seconds ahead of the finish line. Alejandro Osorio wins, tricolor jersey, double width yellow, the Pony they call him, and his cockscomb bangs, which always wins in Tunja. There he himself won the national championship 10 days ago. There came second, and dressed in red, Rodrigo Contreras, the new leader of the race, which ends on Sunday.
The fans cheer. It is the triumph of our own teams against the superb WorldTour teams, who bend their backs, since Pony, paisa of Carmen del Viboral, fired by Bahrain in 2020 due to the pandemic, and Rodrigo Contreras, from Villa Pinzón, in the highlands, cold floor, who raced in Astana, are two returnees of the European adventure. Alejo, as they call him, Osorio, 25 years old, is also a returnee from the cesspool of depression. When he wears the champion’s tricolor, he sticks out his chest, stretches it, so close to his skin, to his thinness, and asks, does it look good on me, eh? Then he puts his hand to his hair and manages it so that the cockscomb that is his bangs remains straight, dominating. They are gestures of those who take care of self-esteem, so damaged when Bahrain fired him for a sum of small indisciplines. “It wasn’t serious enough to destroy a person. “They destroyed my career,” he recalls without anger, now that he feels again that his talent is flourishing.
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