• LaVuelta.The spine of Castilla crowns Roglic and puts Pogacar on the podium

There has been much talk about the hatching of young people in this cycling season that, after the Tour, faces its final stretch. The performances of the Belgian Remco Evenepoel (19 years old), of the Colombian Egan Bernal , winner of the Tour with 22, and of the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar have triggered the enthusiastic comments in that direction to the point of making acne cycling and nursery the brand image of this campaign 2019.

Also the 24 years of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert (this Sunday turns 25) were credited with praise. Both runners, less young than the previous ones, stand out as classicists and sprinters . They are expected to live up to the best tradition of the Netherlands and Belgium in those leaders.

In this Tour of Spain that this Sunday will see the triumph of another Slovenian, Primoz Roglic , have powerfully highlighted the 20 years of Tadej Pogacar (21 next Saturday), winner of three stages and third in the general after his impressive attack this Saturday in the high, rainy, windy and cold roads of Gredos . We are, in his first year as a professional, facing an imminent superclass project. A runner, in addition, enormously attractive to the amateur, who loves the brave and those who give spectacle freeing themselves from the tactical ties of the current cycling.

But let's be cautious . Precocity is not at all rare in sport, an area reserved for youth in its different chronological ranges. Longevity is almost more striking than, in its extreme cases, such as that of that miraculous Valverde , threatens the laws of biology and mechanics. Elastic, yes, but not unbreakable. Sport is not a country for old people.

On the other hand, youth does not ensure the conquest of the future. Angelino Soler took the Tour of 1961 with 21 years (still the record). The moon was prophesied. But it did not progress. He ran two more laps. He was ninth in 1966 and eleventh in 1967. His three Tours resulted in an abandonment (1962), a sixth place (1963) and a twenty-second (1965). He participated only in two turns . And, although he won three stages and the Mountain in 1962, he finished in twelfth position. And in seventeenth in 1964. He won only 14 victories and retired at age 28 .

Just as, in physics, the intensity of a function or an act is detrimental to the duration, in sport, precocity often plays against persistence. Youth, divine unknown .

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  • sports
  • cycling
  • Back to Spain
  • Egan Bernal
  • Primoz Roglic

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