The transformation of Movistar or how to react to the abyss of relegation: "The whole team is more aggressive"

The abyss was the spring.

There, in front of the precipice, the Movistar Team, the historic Spanish squad, the only one currently in the elite World Tour, rang out.

It was in August of last year, after a disastrous Tour de France that culminated in the abandonment of its leader,

, when he was fighting for the crumbs of, at least, finishing in the top 10.

After the

, the situation was critical and the scythe of relegation threatened at the top: then, the team led by

was in 18th position out of 21 and maintaining the category for the next three years began to get seriously complicated.

And then, the mental click.

The timorous team, so criticized for it, took off their corsets.

Suddenly, Movistar was in all the breaks and fighting for all the victories, with more or less success.

Suffering turned into relief in a season that already, with

's farewell to professionalism, was turning out to be the most complicated in the history of the Navarrese team.

The Vuelta, with the second place of an Enric Mas never seen before, was the confirmation, and the triumph of

, one of the most questioned signings then, in the last race of the year, the Tour of Langkawi in Malaysia was the culmination: Movistar finished comfortably in 11th place in the UCI ranking and scared away any ghost of having to depend on invitations to be in the best races in the world.

"We were flirting with the possibility of relegation, we lived through really tense moments and that brought out the team's commitment," the Movistar director admitted at the beginning of the course.

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• Writing: PABLO DE LA CALLE

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The good news is that that hunger is still intact at the beginning of 2023. Few signings but effective and triumphs that are achieved or touched.

role in any case.

«Last year we already saw a change of mentality at the end of the season.

The whole team was more aggressive.

The process for this year has been the same and things are going quite well and soon, both in the women's and men's teams.

It is the way to go.

tells EL MUNDO

.

The man from Madrid was one of the winners of that frantic outcome of the summer, when the team decided, out of sheer necessity, to split in two.

Serrano opened with a victory in a stage tour of the Tour of Britain in September, ahead overall of none other than local

, whom he beat on the fourth stage at Duncombe Park.

That 'team B' that ventured out in search of points in a parallel calendar, in less level races, was decisive in maintaining the category.

In August,

was the best in the Tour de Limousin, ahead of

.

Before, the national championships had brought a good handful of victories and points:

in the time trial in Denmark and

in the routes of Puerto Rico and Brazil respectively.

prevailed in Gran Piemonte and, as the best symptom of the general catharsis, Enric Mas crowned his strange season in which, thanks to the help of a psychologist, he overcame his fear of descents with one of his few partial victories of his career, in the Giro de Emilia, making none other than

bite the dust , whom he was going to escort later in Lombardy.

The contagion"

That running without complexes that everyone applauded has had continuity.

«It ends up contagious.

When victories come to a team, it spreads between them.

We have a lot of people who are fine.

It's the team mentality.

Talk between us.

And it is something that comes out on its own”, admits Gonzalo Serrano about a 2023 in which those in blue, after a productive winter stage in Mojácar, have already raised their arms at the finish line several times.

It was

, one of the three new faces of the Unzué team, the first to justify his bet.

A sprinter, a rarity in Movistar, who won the fourth stage of the Vuelta a San Juan.

The Colombian has also hit the post twice more: in the second stage of the Argentine round and in the fifth stage of the UAE Tour.

Everything seems to indicate that he has recovered the level that launched him to stardom in 2018, when he won two stages in the Tour (he has another five in the Giro).

It was precisely in Arabia that the last victory of the team sponsored by Telefónica came, which is facing its 44th consecutive season of activity, no one like it in the international peloton.

On his 25th birthday,

debuted his professional record by conquering the queen stage, at the top of Jebel Jais, ahead of none other than

.

The small Colombian will be the leader in the Giro d'Italia.

A successful Asian tour:

also made his debut with a stage and the overall Tour of Oman and

, another of the new faces, did the same on the Saudi Tour.

"We started in the best way," said the Portuguese, who finished third yesterday overall in O Gran Camiño.

In addition to Gaviria and Guerreiro, the other addition to Movistar is the promising

.

There were also new developments in the technical area, with the signings of three sports directors,

.

Although, the paradigm of change is, without a doubt, Enric Mas.

The resurrection of the Spaniard, who hit rock bottom on the Tour, is part of the contagion Serrano is talking about.

That Tour, his final duels in Italy with Pogacar, are already glimpses of what is to come.

In his debut in 2023, he attacked again in the Tour of Andalusia where he once again tried the unthinkable, to challenge the intractable Slovenian.

With the Tour and the Vuelta again as objectives, the Spaniard will now try to remove the thorn of 2022 in the Tirreno-Adriatico, the Tour of the Basque Country, the Wallonne Arrow and the Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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