The Tour in which Spain hit rock bottom

• Laporte's Jumbo Victory at Cahors

Spanish cycling sits on the couch, tries to hold on to the little positive left by its current panorama, looks to the future with anxiety, but does not stop receiving bad news after another, like a kind of curse, like a bad hangover from its recent past, which was a party.

The Tour de France that closes in Paris on Sunday, which was already unusual at dawn with only nine nationals in Copenhagen, will end with sadness like never before.

Since 1981, prehistory, there was not an edition without a Spaniard among the top 10.

Not even those crumbs were accessed by the nine brave men, who will be just six on the Champs Elysées (in 2003, times of abundance, 43 started it) if there is no other setback.

On the way to Cahors, after his disappointing deployment in those mountains in which

built his well-deserved fame as a climber in recent years, the Balearic got off the bike for an urgent reason, his contagion of coronavirus, the same one that had separated his partner

a day before.

The Movistar leader, barring unforeseen events, was going to finish eleventh, his worst performance in the last three years (fifth and sixth).

Now, the best national, the most deserving as well, will be

: he could finish 14th in Paris if today in the Rocamadour time trial he leads

by 54 seconds.

It will be, yes or yes, his second best overall position in the Grande Boucle -he was 10th in 2010-, where he won up to four stages, the last one no less than 10 years ago.

Because Luisle, huge, who toyed with victory in Megeve (third) and in Mende, turns 39 in November.

"We came for a stage," the Bahrain lamented yesterday at the finish line.

Verona and Castroviejo

In 1982,

finished 10th, 17 minutes and 19 seconds

.

He was going to start a streak that had only been broken by circumstances.

In 1998, when the Festina case broke out, all the Spanish and Italian teams packed their bags.

finished seven consecutive times in the Top 10, then came the

era and in the four Tours from 2000 to 2003, the amazing thing: there were always at least four Spaniards in the top 10.

The zenith came in 2007;

when

won that Tour,

was fourth,

tenth.

A year later Sastre won the Tour;

Counter the Giro, the Vuelta and the Itzulia;

Valverde la Liège, the Dauphiné and the Clásica de San Sebastián;

the Olympic gold;

la Ghent-Wevelgem... Times as insurmountable as longed for.

in Mende in 2018 remains in distant memory

, four years already.

Yesterday France broke its streak with

and Italy could do it today in the time trial with

.

In addition to Luisle, several were not far away this 2022. Marc Soler precisely in Mende -one of the few days that he did not have to work for his leader Pogacar-, before he had to leave due to illness.

And

in Portes du Soleil, with which only Jungels could.

"I woke up with a chest infection, I've had a fever for three days, I've tried to survive," the Ineos man told this newspaper days later, still enraged by that missed opportunity: "Now I'm angrier, because I had good feelings.

I saw that I was the strongest, a pity ».

The Izagirre brothers

were the other Spaniards in a Tour without pain or glory, where, without a doubt, the most notable is Enric Mas.

He could not be close to the partial victory nor did he show off his regularity in the general.

He failed from the first challenge, the day of the Granon.

And he was dragging bad feelings to the Pyrenees.

Lacking self-confidence, he even slipped down when he was running after the Aubisque.

«Since the fall of Dauphiné I have an internal fear that is difficult for me to overcome, and I have dragged it throughout the Tour.

I have had three falls in a row this year, and my situation is due to that.

Muscularly you stiffen with situations like this but they are cycles », he confessed.

With his withdrawal, Movistar stops adding 150 UCI points, vital in the race he maintains for not losing the highest category.

Chente García Acosta

, one of its directors, cleared up any doubts about his presence in La Vuelta yesterday.

And that is where Spain will try to escape its nightmares.

With the farewell with honors from Valverde, the presence of

and, above all, with the possible debut of two proper names that sustain the illusions:

.

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