Far from the Tour de France, Colombia falls hard for cycling

MEDELLIN – The route up Las Palmas starts near the valley floor, but it does not stay there for long. It is 16km up to the summit, an arduous climb of roughly 1,000 vertical metres, a journey of long rises and sharp turns, of straining muscles and heaving lungs.

Some riders stop at the lookout point halfway up for the views of the city and do not continue. A few take extended breaks. The reward comes at the top, where restaurants, bike stores and coffee shops await, and where in July amateur riders gather day after day to watch their countrymen competing a continent away in cycling’s biggest race.

“Not everyone dares come up here,” Anderson Murcia, 37, said in Spanish as he stopped briefly to drink water and snap photographs on a recent morning.

The top of Las Palmas, though, is more than a vantage point, a rest stop high above Medellin and its 2.5 million residents. In some ways, the popular route is also a perfect place to take the measure of a sport that has made Colombia the cycling epicentre of Latin America.

Not only amateur cyclists take on Las Palmas’ challenge, but so have professionals, including some of the Colombians racing in the Tour de France. A pro can do a version of the ascent in 30 minutes. A weekend warrior will need nearly twice as long, or much more.

The pride is in the punishment and the achievement, and in being part of a sport that, among Colombians of all ages, has become an unexpected national pastime.

“Football beats all, but cycling is the second-biggest sport in the country,” said Jorge Mauricio Vargas Carreno, the president of the Colombian Cycling Federation.

“It’s the sport that has the most affection among all Colombians because of the successes we’ve had at the international level.”

The roots of that connection go back decades. Colombians have been riding on cycling’s biggest stages, like the Tour de France, since the 1970s. In 1984, Luis Herrera, known as Lucho, became the first Colombian to win a stage at the race.

Three years later, he became the first to win one of the three so-called European grand tours, prevailing at the Vuelta a Espana.

Herrera passed the baton to riders like Santiago Botero, who won the King of the Mountains title at the Tour de France in 2000, and Nairo Quintana, who finished second overall in the race in 2013 and in 2015. Colombian women have since won Olympic medals in road cycling and BMX.

Their countryman Egan Bernal, however, did them all one better: In 2019, he became the first Latin American to win the Tour de France.

“It’s part of our culture. In Colombia, 90 per cent of the homes have a bike. And a lot of people use them as a mode of transportation, especially the more humble people, and over the years they’ve used it more,” Bernal, 26, said in a recent telephone interview.

“Everyone in Colombia is happy when they’re given their first bike.”

The main reasons cycling blossomed in Colombia, according to cyclists, officials and coaches, are the nation’s socio-economics, history and topography (large swathes of the country are at higher elevations, such as Medellin, at 1,500m, or the capital, Bogota, at 2,600m).

“Cycling has become very important in our country,” said Rigoberto Uran, 36, a Colombian cyclist who has finished second in the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Olympics.

“Colombia is a country with a lot of problems – political problems – and our history is stained by narco-trafficking. So cycling has sort of given us a new image for some time.”

Colombia is the only Latin American country in the top 20 of the rankings by the International Cycling Union, the sport’s global governing body. In a sport dominated by and centred in Europe, Colombia is ranked 10th.

“I feel like that when something starts to take off, everyone gets that craving,” said Sara Cardona, 39, a paediatrician who averages about 60km to 100km a week.

Last week, Cardona left her house at 7.30am to make sure she made it up the mountain in time to catch the end of that day’s Tour de France stage on television.

On the way to the Safetti bike store and coffee shop, she ran into a store employee who was also cycling up Las Palmas. They made a friendly wager on who would win the Tour de France stage.

The prize: a strong cup of Colombian coffee.

NYTIMES