Nairo Quintana is the feel-good story needed by a sport beset by doping controversies, accusations of race fixing, and idiots who think trains will stop for them.
Quintana grew up in Combita, a town situated around 2700 metres above sea level in the mountains of Colombia. His school was 15 kilometres away in the town of Arcabuco, and at the age of 15 his parents bought him a second-hand bike on which to travel to school.
Eight years later, in 2013, he was riding on to the Champs-Elysees as the most successful Tour de France debutant since Jan Ullrich in 1996.
It’s a story that shows how beautiful cycling is at its most pure. A kid who grew up in poor, rural Colombia who was able to lift himself and his family up simply by doing what he loves – riding his bike.
During the off-season, Quintana returns home to Colombia, where he lives in the city of Tunja, not 20 kilometres from Combita. And now he is using his profile to promote social issues in his home country, such as equality for women, and is a UNICEF ambassador.
Amazing.
But what may be more amazing than his story is his talent.
I missed Marco Pantani in his prime, but I’d imagine watching the Italian maestro in the mountains would be something akin to seeing Quintana at his best.
The tiny Colombian fears no mountain and certainly no man, and he has the best poker face in the peloton. Seriously, he’s got two facial expressions – a wall of granite when he’s on the bike, and a huge breakout smile when he wins.
And he’s making a habit of winning.
In his breakthrough Tour of 2013, the then-23-year-old was the only man who came close to challenging winner Chris Froome. Quintana won Stage 20, and finished the race second overall, in possession of the white jersey as best young rider and the polka dot jersey as King of the Mountains.
Somewhat bizarrely, his Movistar team decided he was ‘too young’ to be given the chance to go one better in the 2014 Tour, instead giving him the target of the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana.
Sour grapes? Not Nairo. He blitzed the field at the Giro, winning by almost three minutes ahead of compatriot Rigoberto Uran. Then at the Vuelta he suffered a terrifying crash on the Stage 10 time trial. He had been wearing the race leader’s red jersey at the time, ahead of Froome and Alberto Contador, with the biggest mountain stages yet to come.
Now he gets to see how he fares against the big guns on cycling’s grandest stage.
Why Quintana won’t win
While it is tempting to write him off due to his perceived lack of ability as a time trialist, Quintana is actually pretty handy against the clock.
Though he simply doesn’t have the size to be as effective as Chris Froome or Alberto Contador, he won’t be blown away by them either.
Regardless, with the 13.8-kilometre prologue the only individual time trial of the race, Quintana will know at Stage 1’s completion exactly how much time he needs to gain in the mountains to win.
Rather, the biggest obstacle to Quintana’s victory is his teammate, Alejandro Valverde.
The 35-year-old Spaniard has an impressive palmares that includes overall victory at the 2009 Vuelta a Espana, as well as a number of victories in the Classics – including victory at this year’s Fleche Wallone and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, both for the third time.
Yet in seven attempts he has yet to do better than fourth at the Tour – this best result coming last year, when Movistar sent Quintana to Italy and backed Valverde as their leader in France.
But while the rest of the team would surely know Quintana is their best hope at not just a podium place but overall victory, Valverde still has ambitions.
And where every other contender has a team of loyal domestiques and at least one lieutenant they can rely on in the mountains, Quintana will be looking over his shoulder at Valverde, wondering whether he will toe the line, or break in a (surely vain) attempt at glory.
Stress saps energy, and this is a source of stress Qintana’s rivals won’t have. It would be a shame if it cost the Colombian his chance at victory, and it’s a real possibility.
Why Quintana will win
Obviously if he’s going to win, it will be on the back of his climbing. While Contador, Froome and Nibali are all brilliant in the mountains, Quintana is the only pure climber of the lot.
He needs to beat the others in the Pyrenees and Alps to win this Tour.
And I suspect he will, because he’s got the hunger.
As the only member of the four contenders without a Tour de France title to his name, no one wants this race more than the Colombian.
Quintana also carries a nation’s hopes on his slender shoulders, and while this can be a curse as much as a blessing, he seems prepared, perhaps even eager, to replace cocaine as his country’s great white hope.
Finally, if you’ll indulge me a little sentimentality, I just want him to win. That’s not to say I have some kind of cosmic power that will see him to victory (although don’t we all like to think our watching a sporting event on TV has a certain butterflies-and-hurricanes affect on the outcome), but his victory would be the best outcome for the sport of cycling.
The humble scrapper from a town no one had heard of in a poor country, still suffering the effects of a decades-long civil conflict, winning the biggest race on the planet? It would be the best sports story of the year. Hell, it’d be up there as the best of the decade.
If you’re on the fence about watching the Tour, Quintana is the reason to commit. When the peloton take on the Col du Tourmalet (Stage 11), La Toussuire (Stage 19) and Alpe d’Huez (Stage 20), make sure you’ve got the telly locked on SBS and prepare to be stunned as the pint-sized Colombian rips the race apart without so much as a grimace on his face.
Screw objectivity. Quintana to win.
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