The odd thing was that the scenery, the architecture and the weather were not right. All three could have been somewhere in deepest Cheshire. These cyclists might be doing a Spanish cycle race but they certainly weren’t in Spain. What was going on? It turned out that they were in fact in Belgium. The Vuelta has had a few stages in the Low Countries, prompting this carton in the local free paper.
One oldie worldie Spanish cyclist asks the other, “So, you say we still have an empire? We never lost Flanders?” His mate replies, “How else do you explain the Vuelta a España going through Belgium and Holland?” Now, Spain lost its possessions in the Low Countries centuries ago but maybe there’s enough of a connection to merit transporting all the cyclists over there for a few days. Then again, maybe it’s just part of the “internationalisation” of cycling events. After all, the teams are internationally sponsored and made up of cyclists from all over the world. The Tour de France regularly has stages in neighbouring countries, although I wouldn’t really call Belgium and Holland Spain’s “neighbours”.
The weather in Belgium was so bad that riders were falling off all over the place, including one Ezequiel Mosquera of the Xacobeo Galicia. Patched up by the first-aiders and helped back into the peleton with the help of his team mates, Ezequiel benefited from the rest day that followed to overcome his injuries as best he could and is back in the race with a rather sore knee and hip.
In keeping with the “Galicia is the centre of the universe” project which I follow with interest (Miss España is from La Coruña, Miss Universe comes from a family of Gallego emigrants, originally from Nigran and so on) the rider’s progress has prompted a letter to the free paper, encouraging him to keep up the struggle, or should I say a loita:
“¡Ánimo, Ezequiel Mosquera! Ogallá o ciclista teense poida seguir na Vuelta tras a caída en Liexa. Ánimo, Xacobeo Galicia.”
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