Why did Movistar help Roglic win the Vuelta?

• Roglic Win the Tour thanks to the help of Movistar and bonuses

Before the interpretations, the facts.

Richard

, on the penultimate stage of La Vuelta.

The Ecuadorian had already cut half of the 45 seconds he had lost with the Slovenian when Marc Soler, coming from the break, was hit by the group of the leader, his leader, Enric Mas, and the third in the General, Hugh Carthy.

Soler was at the forefront of that group, protecting all its members from the strong wind they were facing and finally Roglic kept 24 seconds of income that allow him to revalidate his victory in La Vuelta.

Now, why did Movistar do that?

"Dan Martin had been left behind and

classification. Nothing more," answered Mas after the arrival, apparently surprised that more explanations than those were sought.

The argument, however, does not finish convincing, since the loss of the Irishman was not so great as to think that Mas (who acknowledged that he was not fresh) would win a place in the general.

In fact, he is going to stay almost a minute from that fourth position that supposedly motivated Movistar's tactical move in La Covatilla.

The most generalized interpretation, in fact, has little to do with the official version presented by Mas.

Because the one who tried to unseat Roglic was the man who a year ago

and who, indirectly, has changed the present and the immediate future of the telephone squad.

"We were going to make our career, it has not been to help one and screw another," the Balearic runner excused himself.

But the word revenge flies over everything that happened.

"Nine years ago, in the first presentation of my Movistar team they only asked us to honor the brand. Today my team has not fulfilled it. Like it or not," was the reaction of former cyclist José Iván Gutiérrez, 13 seasons under the orders of Eusebio Unzué.

Vendetta

To understand the facts that support the theory of the 'vendetta' you have to go back more than a year.

Movistar was preparing for

with a plan in which its new leaders were going to be Mas (whose signing was already agreed), Carapaz and Soler.

The representative of the Ecuadorian, Giuseppe Acquadro, summons Movistar to negotiate its renewal after the Giro that ends up winning by surprise.

Weeks later, Unzué discovers that Carapaz had made his signing for Ineos since before the Italian test began.

"I cannot tolerate being deceived, it is not acceptable. I do not know why they had us waiting, generating false illusions," Unzué said about that episode.

This deception means that Movistar breaks relations with the Italian representative, a difficult decision due to its collateral effects.

Acquadro and its partners control a good part of the Spanish and Colombian markets, the traditional granaries of the telephone set in its later years.

The rupture causes the attempt to sign De la Cruz to decline and the interest in

, all of them represented by Acquadro

, dissipates

.

A historic man like Imanol Erviti is forced to change his agent to renew, just like Sergio Samitier does to complete his signing.

Without access to the most interesting free corridors, Movistar is forced to change its transfer strategy and build a much lower profile squad that, in fact, has only achieved two victories this season (both from Soler), a Pyrrhic balance .

Despite everything, Movistar tried to close the Carapaz stage with a truce and bet on him as the main asset for the 2019 Vuelta, despite the presence of Quintana, Valverde and Soler in the race.

That was how it was going to be until the team found out that Carapaz had suffered a crash in

.

No one at Movistar knew that the Ecuadorian had gone there a few days after the Vuelta began.

"His future does not concern me, he has not shown loyalty and I do not want a disloyal uncle in my team," Pablo Lastras, one of the team's directors, said about him in the documentary 'A day less thought' (Netflix ) that he narrated from within the 2019 Movistar season.

Having said all this, there is also another possibility: that the objective of his strategy was not to penalize Carapaz but to Ineos.

Because after the Ecuadorian chapter,

came last year

, also represented by Acquadro.

Movistar announced during the Tour the renewal of the Costa Rican ... but he ended up signing for Ineos, with whom he has also run this Vuelta, arguing that what was signed was a pre-contract without validity.

The case ended up at the UCI, which ruled that Amador's contract with Movistar was valid.

In February, that contract was terminated after compensation from Ineos.

"Movistar would have their interests. Each one has their interests and that's it," Carapaz commented this Saturday about that help, sought or not, from his old team to Roglic, avoiding the controversy.

Neither have those responsible for Ineos entered the game, at least for now.

The reality is that, even without the help of Movistar, Carapaz would have had practically impossible to overcome the 45 seconds that he had behind with Roglic, 24 more than he was finally able to recover.

But the gesture, if so interpreted by Ineos, is one that is not forgotten and one that is made to pay in the future.

Only Movistar really knows why it helped Roglic, but the rest of the world has already decided why it did it: out of revenge.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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