Women’s cycling entered definitively this Sunday in the epic world thanks to an ascent to the Covadonga Lakes that gathered all the incentives that a great mountain stage can have: women who suffered the indescribable to win the first Vuelta for female runners, in the case of Annemiek van Vleuten (see the data from Strava in his feat on Saturday), and cyclists like demi volleringwho put the red jersey against the ropes to win in one of the best stages in women’s rounds that are remembered.
The television could not show better images from some Lagos wrapped in the Asturian fog. TO Vollering she was seen crying, between rage and desolation, because the victory at the finish line did not help her to win the Vuelta, which she lost by only 9 measly seconds, which became a small handful of gold-sealed time for Van Vleuten, who She would throw herself to the ground, full length, to recover from a titanic effort, suffer to the limit, tell herself that the feat was possible while they cheered her on from the Movistar car.
The runners were arriving one by one, as the men had done, tattooed as heroes, since cycling was created and when nobody believed that one day women, with justice and on their own merits, would be capable of emulating them, in the same territories and in the most cycling mountain that the Vuelta has, those Lakes that were climbed for the first time 40 years ago when they told Marino Lejarreta to act “like a man” to defeat bernard hinault in an ascent that has been saved in the best cycling pages of the 20th century.
Well, to win, to resist, to suffer, to be a hero in Covadonga, one could already act “like a woman” full of strength, marveling with a memorable ascent, so that Van Vleuten would give in to his compatriot, surely not a friend, Vollering with 5.4 kilometers to go to the summit. And from then on sweat India ink, despite the cold and fog, so as not to get slapped by a Vollering that seemed runaway towards victory and not only at the top, but in the first Tour of Spain made in the image and likeness of the best women cyclists in a climb to the Lakes to remember. And, on top of that, with the passion that the Asturian public always puts in, turning its mountains into the Maracana of cycling regardless of the sex that pedals on a bike. Thumbs up.