Valverde practically discarded the round French, and he prefers to run the Giro, a race in which the leadership of the Movistar points to the basque rider
As if it were a game of puzzles, the puzzle of Movistar had to set it up, little by little, tallying up the statements of its three main leaders. Started Alejandro Valverde saying that the Tour you don’t want too, it’s the opposite Rotation. Followed by Mikel Landa claimed that he wants to do the Tour, which will “almost certainly”, and that it is possible to get around with the Rotation. And ended up Nairo Quintana ensuring that it will go to France, “this is what I have indicated Eusebius”, and that also gets the Back, ruling out explicitly the Rotation.
all this Said, the drawing, very possibly, would be as follows: Landa and Valverde to Turn; Landa and Quintana at the Tour; and Valverde and Quintana at the Vuelta. “It is a possibility, but we are yet to know the routes of the Giro and the Vuelta and finish to define it”, merely to point out, careful, the general manager of Movistar team, Eusebio Unzué, the last of the four players that took the floor in the ‘media day’ held for the Spanish squad this Friday in Gorraiz, next to Pamplona.
Unzué, yes, confirmed that the only thing that is completely decided is that the colombian will be the gala round, “because it is a man’s Tour”, despite the fact that in the last two years his performance has been below expectations. And that if Landa is also going to France, as it seems to be, what you will do with the same hierarchy as Quintana. As, in theory, occurred in the last edition, without any (both of which are affected by falls) could sneak on the podium in Paris.
“We have a good friendship,” said the colombian, removing iron to your internal competition with Landa, after spinning two phrases, seemingly contradictory: “to Have two options for earning is always better, although one would like to be there only as a leader with a great team to back him up”.
Nairo makes self-criticism
there was Much talk about that bicefalia (tricefalia, if you were to include Valverde) that the Movistar presented in the Tour. The conclusion is that it did not work as expected, although the team argued that the fall did the test to be null and void. “We weren’t able to put in practice,” lamented Landa, aware that, if finally runs the Tour, you must be sharing of new gallons with Quintana.
A Quintana who assumes that his season was below expectations. “I have not met the targets,” he said, pointing, after much insistence from the journalists, that perhaps an excess of training is criminalized in both the Tour and in the Back. “The Tour is a dream and I’ll keep trying. I have not been finishing the spark, in some tests of this season I pulled out the best numbers of my career,” he added.
In both, Spanish and colombian, is on the route of the Tour which was presented this Thursday, seduces and them favors. “It is a very beautiful run for me, lots of mountains and little time. A priori, it may be favorable,” said Landa, has already recovered from the falls that will have crushed in the second half of the season and that he was left out of the loop, of the World and of Lombardy. The analysis that Quintana is similar, though in his case also points to the altitude (more than five peaks over 2,000 metres) as another factor that plays in their favor.
Until Tokyo 2020… at least
The two riders, at times, were slightly tense, explaining a season unsatisfactory for them for one reason or another. On the contrary Valverde, radiant and joker, until carefree even. “They say that the Tour is hard, but the truth is that I haven’t looked at more than the large letters,” he said, making it clear that you do not have in mind look to the rainbow France.
The ‘Bullet’ you want to come back running the Money, keep adding victories in the Ardennes, try maybe in the Tour of Flanders and Milan-San Remo and, why not, to try to revalidate in Yorkshire the championship of the world. What is clear is that you only think of winning. “The World I have not lost the hunger for victories. That’s what I keep having. And also want to start to look on the jersey that gives taste. This is my life”.
And the question of when, Valverde refuses to put an expiration date. As soon, it will be in the Tokyo Olympics 2020, which wants to hang a medal. “But perhaps the time comes when I’m not well and if there are any better than I do, you will have to go to him,” he said. From there, you will see: “If you get to 2020 and I do a good year, getting victories, fighting for them, well maybe lengthen one more year. But not much more.” In 2021 would be 41 years.
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