A decade ago when the whippet-like Nairo Quintana burst onto the scene with stunning mountain escapes, Colombian cyclists looked poised to take over the world, but now the nation is in shock as three of its biggest stars flounder for very different reasons.
At 32, Quintana is still Colombia’s most popular “beetle” — as its cyclists are known collectively — but he cannot even find a team.
Egan Bernal, the only Colombian to win the Tour de France, is struggling to rediscover his former level after a near-fatal training crash, while Miguel Angel Lopez, nicknamed “Superman,” was kicked out of his team for his “probable connection” to a doping-tainted doctor.
Photo: Reuters
It has been a remarkable fall from grace for a nation that was sparkling on the UCI World Tour just a few years ago.
Quintana, a winner of both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana and three-time podium finisher at the Tour, was widely expected to announce his retirement earlier this week when he called a news conference in Bogota.
Instead he expressed his determination to carry on, despite failing to find a team for this season after leaving Arkea-Samsic last year.
Quintana tested positive during last year’s Tour for a pain killer that while not on the World Anti-Doping Agency list of doping substances, has been banned by cycling authorities on medical grounds.
Tour organizers stripped him of his sixth-placed finish and Arkea-Samsic dropped him.
“An inexplicable wall has risen between me and my desire to race, and the possibility of doing so,” Quintana, approaching 33, said this week.
His name seems to be tarnished and his star appears to have waned.
“I’m an honest rider and I shall continue to look for a team,” he said defiantly.
Bernal looked set to be the greatest of the highly talented bunch of Colombian cyclists when in 2019 he became the youngest Tour de France winner in more than 100 years.
Two years later he also won the Giro at a canter, but his momentum was dramatically stopped a year ago when he crashed into the back of a bus at 62kph while out training.
He fractured 20 bones and suffered a punctured lung — doctors said that he had been lucky to survive, let alone escape paralysis.
After several operations he returned to racing seven months later, but was soon forced to take a break for another knee surgery.
“It’s been months and months of work,” Bernal said this week of his struggle back.
“We saw him at the end of last season and he was way off pace,” Colombian cycling specialist Sebastian Heredia said.
Bernal is due to ride the Tour for British team Ineos Grenadiers later this year, but the 26-year-old said it was too early to talk about that.
After his crash he said he had to “learn to brush my teeth, eat, these little steps that I had to take and that were very painful.”
Lopez was a leader with the Astana team until he was abruptly sacked last month due to alleged connections to a doctor being investigated in Spain over a doping network.
“They turned their backs on me, they kicked me out,” Lopez said of Astana this week.
He was briefly detained by Spanish police last year, but they subsequently denied he was being investigated.
Astana initially suspended him before later sacking the 28-year-old.
After winning the prestigious Tour de Suisse in 2016, Lopez went on to claim podium finishes at the Giro and Vuelta in 2018, also winning the young rider competition at both.
Just four months ago he finished fourth at the Vuelta, but now finds himself squeezed out of the World Tour and has signed for the second-tier Continental Tour Team Medellin in his homeland.
Taiwan’s double world champion Lin Yu-ting lost her bronze medal at the International Boxing Association (IBA) Women’s World Boxing Championships after she failed to meet eligibility criteria, the governing body of amateur boxing said yesterday. The IBA did not elaborate on Lin’s disqualification. Bulgarian Svetlana Kamenova Staneva, who lost to Lin in the under-57kg quarter-finals, was awarded the bronze medal. Algeria’s Imane Khelif was also disqualified hours before her gold medal bout. The 23-year-old was scheduled to meet Yang Liu in the 66kg division final, but Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng, who lost to Khelif in the semi-finals, would fight the Chinese instead. “A boxer from Algeria
Retired Formula One champion Nelson Piquet has been ordered by a Brazilian court to pay more than US$950,000 in “moral damages” for making racist and homophobic comments about Lewis Hamilton. The 70-year-old Brazilian had referred to seven-time champion Hamilton as “neguinho,” a racially offensive term that means “little black guy,” in 2021. In another interview, Piquet used racist and homophobic language. The court in Brasilia on Friday ordered Piquet to pay 5 million (US$952,998) reals “in collective moral damages, to be allocated to funds for the promotion of racial equality and against discrimination of the LGBTQIA+ community.” The charges were filed by several
Japanese two-way star Shohei Ohtani is to make a one-season MLB record US$65 million this year in salary and endorsements, Forbes magazine reported on Tuesday. Ohtani, set to be the starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels in their MLB season opener today against Oakland, helped spark Japan to the World Baseball Classic title a week ago with a victory over the US in the final. The 28-year-old who serves as an outfielder and designated hitter when not on the mound, signed a one-year contract extension worth US$30 million last year and will make US$35 million in endorsements this year, Forbes reported. That
ISRAEL PROTESTS: Disappointed soccer fans said that the loss of the under-20 event would affect young players and lamented the blind mixing of political issues Indonesian fans reacted with anger and dismay yesterday after the nation on Wednesday was stripped of hosting rights for the FIFA Under-20 World Cup only eight weeks before the start of the tournament amid political turmoil regarding Israel’s participation. FIFA said that Indonesia was removed from staging the 24-team tournament scheduled to start on May 20 “due to the current circumstances,” without specifying details. The decision followed a meeting in Doha between Indonesian soccer federation president Erick Thohir and FIFA president Gianni Infantino. Israel qualified in June last year for their first Under-20 World Cup, but the country’s participation in the official draw
RSS