In La Rioja and Bizkaia to remember Arturo Grávalos and Agustín Sagasti
Cycling is a sport where the finish line is in front of you and the key is to get there faster than your rivals. Always moving forward. The inertial power of the wheel. The authority of two legs pushing hard and briskly on the pedals and applying liveliness to the drivetrain. The certainty that tomorrow there will be a new opportunity, either immediately with a new stage or imminently with a new race. Cycling is a sport that looks ahead. And perhaps all this is the reason why, at the same time, whenever it can, it looks to the past, drinks in its tradition, recovers its pioneers. So much ambition for tomorrow and nostalgia for yesterday. Two sides of the same coin. A coin that is usually circular, like the wheel.
This coming weekend, in parallel to the last two stages of the Giro Next Gen, the U23 structure of the Contador Foundation will face a double competitive challenge with a double nostalgic aftertaste as memories and recollections are recovered. Some of them are very recent. Others are more distant in time. But the important thing, at the end of the day, is never to forget. That is the real key to posterity.
On Saturday, the second edition of the Clásica La Rioja will be held, a race that will serve to pay tribute to the memory of the recently deceased, and still very much mourned, Arturo Grávalos. A race that with this consecration emerged as an unmissable event in our calendar. It will be 126 kilometres between Logroño and Villamediana de Iregua. On Sunday, in memory of the late Agustín Sagasti, the twenty-first edition of the memorial in his name in Mungia, organised by the Sociedad Ciclista Valentín Uriona and held over a 34.2 kilometre circuit with four laps to complete. It will also be a day of more memories given the recent loss of Txomin Perurena.
For this block of races the direction of the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team maintains to the same block that comes to compete days ago in the Volta a Castellò, with an added one. To Edoardo Alleva, Luca Bagnara, Gabriele Bessega, Álex García, Raúl López and Sebastiano Minoia are added, in his return to the competition after his serious accident during the last Santikutz Klasika.
“We are going with a team in good shape, we all worked very well in Castellón and we are looking forward to prolonging this moment. Moreover, in a very special race in which we remember a friend like Arturo. We have trained many times, and even when he returned to cycling after the first operation. I remember the jokes and the confidences. It has been a shame everything that has happened to him in the last few years, he was a wonderful person”, says Raúl López.
Antonio: “It’s wonderful to be competing again. I was impatient, with a tingling in my stomach watching the progress of my teammates in these last races. I’m very happy to be able to compete again 47 days after the fall. And I’m really looking forward to it. I was really out of action for less than three weeks, but for me personally it has been very, very long. It’s all just a bad memory and fortunately nothing more happened. These last few days I have been training normally, without any discomfort. Right now I’m with the same desire that you have when you are at the beginning of the season after the winter break and I’m back in competition with two very nice races, especially a race that will be more special because of the tribute that will be made to Arturo. He was also a great friend, and in addition to the good companion he was, he had an enormous personal greatness”.
17th June: Clasica La Rioja – Memorial Arturo Grávalos: Logroño – Villamediana de Iregua (126 km).
18 June | Memorial Agustín Sagasti: Mungia – Mungia (136.8 km).
[? Melisa Gómiz]
