The Movistar Team, from within. One more year. ‘The least expected day’, the series about the team, I saw the light. A fourth season with three great protagonists: the Dutch Annemiek van Vleuten, Enric Mas and Alejandro Valverde. About the first, about its historic and almost unrepeatable year: Tour, Giro, Vuelta, Mundial… a fabled record for a 40-year-old runner who retires at the end of the year after three seasons with Movistar. But not everything was a bed of roses. In the Tour de France, Van Vleuten arrived as one of the great favourites, but after the first stage she felt an illness that caused her to lose time on the second and third days. The reason: a watermelon. A poisoning that could have ended the dream of the Dutch.
Sebastián Unzué was in the race as team manager: “He called us (after the first stage). Come to my room! We arrived and we found Annemiek dead, but dead.” Sebastian said. At that time, Van Vleuten could not eat or drink on the bike. “It looked like she was pregnant. My stomach was swollen, ”she came to say. In one of those stages in the Tour, with 30 km to go, she had to stop. “I have to poop,” he told on the radio, to the surprise of Sebastián and Jorge Sanz (also from the staff). “Let him do it on himself”, They came to pose from the team. He had to stop. “If Dumoulin could in the Giro…”, and the runner did. From then on, everything got better and then he was able to return to his best level to win the Tour in style, with victories at Le Markstein (after climbing the Grand Ballon) and at La Super Planche des Belles Filles. In the latter, she suffered a breakdown… and the runners from the other team began to lead. “You have to be disgusting. Prick the leader and start shooting without doing it before. There are unwritten rules in cycling that must always be followed”, Unzue opined.
The “exorcism” to Enric Mas
“I had bad luck. Three falls in a row: Tirreno-País Vasco and Dauphiné. This last one, the pain was inside, it hurt to my soul, ”said the Spaniard about his complicated first part of the season, in which the falls had a common factor: they were downhill. Since then, an internal problem arose in the corridor. “Even here there is something more than we think,” said Patxi Vila, an important part of Movistar’s performance. “I was afraid and panicked,” lamented the Spaniard, and Pablo Lastras, also from the staff, empathized with him: “It can be very bad. There are times when you are cold, when you pee on yourself to get warm, that you come to a curve and the bike doesn’t stop… it’s bad”. After the 18th stage of the Tour, when he was out of the top-10, Mas revealed to the press his problems with the descents. Finally, he tested positive for COVID, and although he was asymptomatic, he preferred to give up and reset.
He arrived at La Vuelta, with the team immersed in the fight for permanence. They needed their points. And Enric changed. He received psychological help, confidence and support from his teammates and directors, and he landed in La Vuelta as a different rider: “I knew I would arrive well, but the team doubted”. Everything cleared up on the way down to Laguardia, in the fourth stage of La Vuelta. He finished third behind Roglic and Pedersen after a long descent before the demanding finish. In the team, Chente (he is a “star” again), had a role in the car to say phrases to Enric at the request of the people who treated Enric after the Tour. He didn’t have to read them on the radio. “They have performed an exorcism on him,” Unzué said on the Pico Jano day. It was a complicated descent and in the rain, and he did it like the best. Forgotten problem. He also had a good day in Sierra Nevada, during the visit of José María Álvarez-Pallete, CEO of Telefónica. The Spaniard was second. “You have to come more”Chente said between laughs. “You’re my idol”he came to hear from fans who asked him for photos.
The fight for points and the goodbye of Bala
In summer, Movistar was in a critical situation. He was in 18th place, the last one that gave permanence in the World Tour. “I went home quite touched by the Tour. We cannot go to eat the world and then we have to screw it up,” said Chente. “We ran the risk that a team with 42 years of history would go to hell,” Vila added. They acknowledge that the team’s radical change came between the Tour de l’Ain (Pedrero won) and Limousin (Aranburu), all in mid-August. An alternative calendar with runners like Cortina: “I had my suitcase packed for the Tour and at the last minute they told me no”. Finally, after a spectacular second part of the season, Movistar finished the ranking in 11th place.
For his part, Valverde, in the season that said goodbye to cycling, began by winning the Mallorca Challenge and pointed to beer as one of his recovery throughout his career:Two a day.” A very emotional year for the Murcian, achieving his last two victories in O Gran Camiño (Galicia) to close the record with 133. His last Vuelta (after being run over previously) was done with Enric Mas as a roommate. In Madrid, on the last day of La Vuelta, the Murcian was in tears: “It is the cycle of life.” Alberto Contador hugged him: “You will always have the same affection from the people.” Then came the Giro de Lombardy, his last race, the last Bullet, in which he finished in a creditable sixth position, winning the group sprint and saluting.
“They said that they had let me win… yes, man, they are going to let me,” he said with a laugh. Earlier, Jan Ullrich approached the team bus in Bergamo to say goodbye to Bala: “For me, you have been the greatest.” “He belongs to the chosen ones, he entered through the front door and has not stopped,” stressed Unzué, while Valverde, watching his victory in the 2005 Tour against Armstrong in Courchevel, said one of his famous phrases: “I cleaned the carrycot. That is something very Murcian”. There is no confirmation that there will be a fifth season of ‘The least expected day’: “At the beginning it was going to be a season and there are four. We will see ”, they said from the producer to AS.