• Evenepoel: the triumph of precocity
  • Opinion: The classic and the classic
  • Classical of San Sebastián.Historic exhibition of Remco Evenepoel
  • Egan Bernal. Begging for a World Cup to win the Tour

In the course of a week, cycling has taken a turn that can only be described as revolutionary. Upset On July 28, the Colombian Egan Bernal , 22, was crowned in Paris, breaking records of precocity in the Tour. On August 3, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel , 19, dominated the San Sebastian Classics in such an unusual way in its development and outcome, that the brain was reluctant to accept as admissible what the retina transmitted to it. A few hours later, he still resists,

Suddenly, all the great last names thirty ( Froome, Nibali, Thomas, Valverde, Kruijswijk, Porte, Uran, Mollema, Fuglsang ) seem irremissibly old, devastated by this youthful cyclone that, without denying them the possibilities in an extensive and always open calendar, He anticipates wrinkles.

Even those who have not yet turned 30 or meet them in the remainder of 2019 ( Quintana, Kwiatkowski, Sagan, Bardet, Pinot, Barguil, the Yachts, Dumoulin, Roglic, Aru, Landa ) are psychologically anticipated. Under the comparative scales with Bernal and Evenepoel, people like Alaphilippe (27) and Wellens (28) do not know now whether the best of their fertile careers is yet to come or if it has already happened.

Bernal and Evenepoel produce an alteration in the space-time equation that suddenly installs maturity at, for example, Miguel Ángel López (25), Marc Soler (25) and Enric Mas (24). Until this flashing appearance of the Colombian and the Belgian, we had reserved our best astonishment towards sudden stars like Mathieu van der Poel (24), Wout van Aert (24) and, above all, Richard Carapaz , who celebrated his 26th anniversary in the course of a Giro in which Nibali, Roglic and Landa were imposed.

These men, who seemed to announce the consecration of rampant youth, are now the complement of those who are even more novel than they are. In Bernal, winner this year, in addition to the Tour, from Paris-Nice and the Tour of Switzerland, we have a gifted for long and very long stages. He has only run two great rounds in his life: the 2018 Tour, in which he was fifteenth, was sacrificed for Geraint Thomas. And this one of 2019. Without further comments.

Evenepoel justifies the phrase pronounced today by people related in one way or another with cycling: "I had not seen anything like it." It has not been. And it raises another kind of maximum admiration. When, in 2017, a Bernal of only 20 years signed up for the Tour del Porvenir, he, an Anderlecht footballer and Belgian international U-15 and U-16, began to ride a bicycle. Last season, with 18 years he won 22 wins, including the Junior World Road and Time Trial. The adolescence was too small. In this 2019, after three victories, came the fourth in that San Sebastian Classic, belonging to the World Tour. No one had won such a one-day race of that level since 1925.

Bernal, three years older, let's not forget, is a precocious curdled reality. Evenepoel, despite everything, a novice who is tempting to consider a new Merckx for all kinds of challenges, from one-day to three-week ones. If Bernal and Evenepoel are the new chronological unit of measurement of cycling, are we facing a prophetic and widespread phenomenon? Or, on the contrary, before the emergence of a pair of individualities not necessarily premonitory?

Nobody knows. And much less they, who are the first surprised and are discovering themselves while others try to explain them to us. To be continue...

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