When Santiago Buitrago (Bogotá, 1999) was handed the Bahrain McLaren kit at the team's training camp in Hvar (Croatia) last December, he experienced an overflowing sensation. A 'high'. He realized where he had gone: from the most modest amateur team in Italy to one of the most technological in the world. A kind of huge jeweler hid the brightly colored clothes that will premiere on January 19 at the Australian Tour Down Under. " So many uniforms that I couldn't even count . Before they gave me four for the whole year." In Australia, where his season begins today, he will realize even more about what is being done in the first division of cycling, the WorldTour circuit. He is the second youngest runner in the cast, second only to the local Tyler Lindorff, enrolled in an Australian group full of Sub23.

There were doubts in the Bahrain McLaren. At first, his coaches thought of him for the debut in Oceania, but they momentarily recalled: it was a baptism too hard for a boy they barely knew. They told him that it would be better to premiere on the Tour of the Valencian Community . Santiago Buitrago was not in a position to demand anything, any career was worth it, although he did want to enter competition when before and in a WorldTour race. His attitude and the situation of the rest of the staff relocated him on the trip to Adelaide. " The Tour Down Under I've seen it a lot on television and I liked the idea of ​​running it, " he tells us. He got away with it.

Santiago Buitrago inherited his older sister's bicycle at age six and began pedaling in his neighborhood of Bogotá, where he had a closed road to traffic to, playing, imagine "that he was a climber or a packer." The little Bogota then started an adventure that these days, 14 years later, reaches the greatest world competition with the shirt of one of the great teams.

"Train me and take care of me"

" At the age of 11 I was able to go out with my dad to give us a little bit of an hour or an hour and a half on Saturdays and Sundays," the 20-year-old runner tells this journalist, who remembers that he took part in his first "Mountaineering competition, in a town called Ventaquemada without uniform or anything". It was sixth. "And from that moment on, I wanted to train and take care of myself to be a cyclist, as I told my dad." With the money of the "awards" he bought a uniform and a pair of shoes with which he already felt like a cyclist of the future .

The Esteban Chaves Foundation recruited him only five years ago, at 15 in Buitrago. The youth was making a name for himself in local cycling. " The presence of Esteban Chaves motivated us a lot. He trained with us when he was in Colombia and was pending. He told us about his experiences in Europe and taught us. He was super motivating, he helped us a lot, " acknowledges the Colombian neoprofessional.

Already in sub 23, Santiago Buitrago went to the subsidiary of Manzana Postobón, AV Villas, the perfect showcase . And very hard, as he reminds us. "In Colombia there are no specific races, so I went from competing with children to doing it with the elites, which is very hard. You have to train much more. That year 2018 my most beautiful experience was to be in the Tour of Colombia and to finish it after 15 difficult days. "

SON OF MASTER AND CARPENTER

"And from there, to Europe," he smiles. In 2019, still amateur at Team Cinelli, by the hand of his agent, Paolo Alberati, the same one who took Egan Bernal to Androni Giocattoli in 2016 . He was sought by a family in Rapallo , near Genoa, which is where he settled and will continue until the European spring comes his parents. " Between July and August it came to me that Bahrain was interested in signing me. Paolo called me and when everything was finalized I was super-excited . It was what I wanted, but I did not imagine that it would happen so quickly," says Buitrago.

His mother, a teacher in the nursery school, who suffered so much from the boy's falls, and his father, a carpenter who had inoculated the bug of cycling, "were super proud" of him.

He is aware that he must take the pulse of this new dimension of cycling. Climber and he walked not considered wrong in the specialty of trial, but has learned: "You know that in Colombia can win the time trials, but get to Europe and is altogether different from me like my mountain, the best long and. several ports the same day. With these corridors of the Bahrain McLaren I will learn great things. " He dreams of reaching the height of the winner of the Tour de France, Egan Bernal , "and of the Colombians who succeed in the WorldTour, but the road is difficult and you have to prepare very well."

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