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To warm up the race on social networks, La Vuelta published last week a selection of favorites for the different disputed jerseys. When it was the turn of the mountain, the organization mentioned Luis Ángel Maté . When he saw the tweet, the Marbella-runner responded with humor: "Do you validate my head?" If so, Maté would have started the classification with 50 points , which are the ones he received just three weeks ago after a very hard fall in the first stage of the Tour of Poland, the race in which Bjorg Lambrecht died . Maté lost control of his bicycle because of a hole in the road and crashed headlong into a wall. The helmet, which ended up bursting, most likely saved his life and limited the damage to a spectacular head gap.

His story shudders: “ I remember we were going down very fast to prepare the sprint and in the middle of a curve there was a large gap. I stuck the wheel and shot out . At first, everything happened so fast that I was not aware of the severity of the fall. I tried to incorporate to see that I had nothing on my limbs and there I realized that I did not have the helmet, which had burst. I thought I had nothing until I saw the blood » .

His fetish career

Normally, given the circumstances, it would have been that Maté had ended the season and that he had dedicated himself to giving thanks for being alive. But 12 days after the accident , when the swelling subsided and he was able to put on a helmet again - it didn't fit in his head -, he went back to the road to get ready for La Vuelta , his fetish career, which he never gives up -eight participations in the last nine years-, in which he dreams of being able to raise his arms one day.

Maté's tenacity was already demonstrated in the last edition . The second stage, after the initial time trial, left the door of his house in Marbella, an opportunity that a hunter of leaks like him could not miss. Along the way, the goal of dressing with the mountain jersey was also marked. In the following stages, he insisted on keeping it. And what seemed like a passing challenge, ended up becoming his main ambition in La Vuelta.

Bronchitis in 2018

Everything was going well until he got bronchitis in the second week of the race . The doctors told him to let him be, that it was better to get off the bicycle because he would not be able to recover on it. But Maté, stubborn, insisted on arriving in Madrid and he succeeded . Of course, without the jersey of the mountain - he was third in that classification, behind De Gendt and Mollema -, lost in the 17th stage, four days from the end, in the terrifying day that ended at Mount Oiz.

With that memory, and despite the gap that adorned his head, Maté insisted on returning to La Vuelta this year. Finally, after receiving the approval of the doctors and that of his team, the Cofidis, took the exit , but not before renewing his contract with the French team, with which he will fulfill his tenth season next year. How not to renew a 35-year-old guy who still loves cycling so much as to do what he did after such an accident?

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