Just twenty years ago, Ángel Casero managed to win the Cycling Tour of Spain, the only one of the three greats under his belt, and he fondly remembers that achievement, that he was convinced that he was going to achieve after finishing second in the previous edition of 2000, although he admitted that in his professional career he had the thorn of having made at least one podium in the Tour de France, where the fifth place of the 1999 was his best record.
“Twenty years have passed now, how old I am!”, Began his interview with EFE, in which he also reviewed the current cycling scene, his work as director of the Vuelta a la Comunidad Valenciana or his aspirations to lead the Spanish Cycling Federation in the future.
After staying with honey on his lips in the 2000 Vuelta, which Roberto Heras finally won, Casero finally confirmed with a great victory a year later, after overcoming Óscar Sevilla in the time trial of the last stage, the expectations generated by that young cyclist who in 1994 won the Tour del Porvenir.
“I have a very nice memory of that day because there were many possibilities of being able to win but you had to run and not have any problems. We managed to regulate very well, there were many nerves especially in the early part because Oscar even got me three or four seconds, but I knew that my possibilities were many, I went out to regulate from the beginning until halfway through I began to take time out of him and that is when more confidence is gained, “he commented on that last and decisive stage.
“It was a total experience, I remember when I left home to my ex-wife, I told her: ‘I’m going to win this Vuelta.’, recalled Casero, who confessed that the young cyclists of his time lived under the barbed wire of Miguel Induráin, who was looking for an heir in Spanish cycling.
“When you are young and you take the leap and you see that you endure the effort more and more for more days your dream is to be able to win a great Vuelta. It is true that you take a load off your shoulders when you achieve it, but when you are very self-demanding, as is my case, you still have the thorn of having made at least one podium in the Tour that I did not do “, he added.
Casero regretted that his “glass knees”, as his traumatologists called them, did not allow him to finish his career “in a natural way” and that even today “I have a badly bruised knee that makes it difficult for me in normal life, but you have to learn to live with it.”
From the cycling of his time to the current one, he highlighted as now younger and younger people take gallons and is capable of winning big laps.
“When I was finishing my career, you could see that young people arrived with stripes and that in my time did not happen, you entered the professional field and what you wanted and what it was about was to learn from the best. Today there are already very young important people who at the age of 22 have won two Tour de France and who have been stepping very hard. People now break up sooner and now we are left wondering how long they will last “, analyzed.
Regarding the scourge of doping that caused so much damage to the cycling world, Casero pointed out that now, in the past bull, it is known that many ran “at a disadvantage” and expressed his desire that “all of us who love this sport want only to talk about sport and not doping. Now it is useless to look back, what we want is a clean and healthy sport “.
Casero, who became the third cyclist in the Valencian Community to conquer the Vuelta a España, after Bernardo Ruiz and Angelino Soler, He regretted the current situation of Valencian cycling and blamed the damage done by doping in his time so that there were fewer children who dedicated themselves to this sport.
“We would like to see Valencian cycling better, otherwise, there were a few years when they only talked about doping and not sports, there were many parents who prevented their children from being cyclists and engaging in other sports. I would like to think that in two or three years some Valencian may no longer be winning a three-week race, that they need a little more time, but they will make us see a little light at the end of the tunnel. To name one, Juan Ayuso, who has been treading very hard and I hope he has the patience and the tranquility of being able to train and grow little by little, that he is not in an excessive hurry, “he advised.
Casero extended this situation to the national scene and stressed that the lack of institutional and federative help has led to the absence of great successes for Spanish cyclists in recent years.
“Both at the institutional or federation level, what should be supported at the level of schools and amateur teams has not been supported and now that is what we are paying for. I speak with people I know, professionals who set up schools years ago and from there, thanks to them, professional runners are emerging, “he said.
In fact, Casero showed EFE his intention to stand in the next elections for the presidency of the Spanish Federation, Although the lack of guarantees meant that in the last elections he could not do so and that José Luis López Cerrón was the only candidate and could begin his third and last term that will end in 2024.
“What I wanted to know was how it worked inside and the only way to get it was to know the real operation because you can’t see it from the outside. I tried to have that knowledge from within and from there, when appropriate, we are going to get going to be able to be at the federative level, trying to contribute new ideas and surrounding ourselves with an important team. I think there are very useful people who are now being forgotten, “he stressed.
Casero was very satisfied with his journey leading the Vuelta de la Comunidad Valenciana “because the day we started the project it seemed like a real madness to start it up again and in six years we have had positive growth, both from the runners and from the sponsors and institutions that support us. I think we can still take one more jump. This year has been very complicated due to the issue of the pandemic, the change of dates and others and I hope that next year everything will be forgotten and we can see an important return “.
To do this, he insisted on the need to have the necessary sponsorship and to be able to function properly “because Right now we have a lot of trouble throughout the year to keep up. When you start negotiating with a third party, if you have money in your pocket, you can push more and so it tells us a lot to be able to move forward but we do not lose patience and enthusiasm and we continue to fight for it “.
The former runner was satisfied with the important commitment made by women’s cycling in the Valencian round and advocated the importance of equating the economic level with men’s cycling.
“It is important that both the important teams and the important races want to have a women’s race but above all matching the economic level. It costs us a lot of effort, but last year we have already managed to transmit it through the Eurosport platform and we have achieved a European audience of a million people and we are gradually trying to make it have the same visibility as the boys. Our main idea is to keep that day and if we can do another day in one or two years, it would be ideal, “he concluded.
