We had to live with the Indurain era and we survived it
Manolo Saiz, in the year 2000
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–Ask what you want –Manolo Saiz (63) tells me.
We have come to Sportmed, in Sant Fruitós, to talk about cycling, what else?
(Xavi Llobet, one-man cycling band, has set up the appointment for DMT).
And we evoke the wonderful times of the ONCE team, a group made great between the 80s and 90s: Laurent Jalabert, Abraham Olano, Alex Zülle or Melcior Mauri went there, magnificent on any route, especially in the Tour of Spain.
Four Vueltas were won by Saiz’s men, between 91 and 97: one for Mauri, one for Jalabert, two for Zülle.
And something nostalgic and undoubtedly hurt is declared, because those times evaporated and the bitterness of a dark epilogue remains, his arrest by Operation Puerto and his final acquittal.
(The arrest remains in the popular imagination; the acquittal fades into a corner of memory).
–Because things happen and we should tend to forget the bad to stay with the good. But the scar remains there,” Manolo Saiz tells me.
And then he stares at me, crosses his arms, and is silent.
And it lasts a while, an eternity of five seconds, and finally adds:
Because no one has apologized to me.
But should they ask?
–I feel the scar every day when I get up. And also at night, when recovering the sound of the second gate of the dungeon. I remember the night they locked me up just like they locked up the ETA members. And the consequence of that is that I have been left out of the world of cycling. And it hurts me, because I would have liked to say goodbye as I think I would have deserved to.
What would that ideal goodbye have been like?
–I often say that I would like to go back and repeat what we did with ONCE: we were born as a small team that was growing day by day, and that made all the riders want to come. When I have tried, I have seen that there are instructions so that it does not return.
–Operation Port…
(And he is not talking about Liberty Seguros, the team he led in 2006, when Operation Puerto shook up sports in our country. The Civil Guard concluded that Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes had led a doping network that involved coaches, technicians, athletes , cyclists, soccer players or tennis players; at the time there were five detainees, including Manolo Saiz; the sentences were light and Saiz was exonerated).
–ONCE was the cleanest team in the peloton. I see the cowardice of other directors and of the Tour. But I try not to keep it in mind. I prefer to live with my three grandchildren and have a porrón with friends on Mondays.
– But, don’t you see cycling anymore?
-Maneeeee, of course.
And he tells me about Pogacar, Vingegaard, Van der Poel and Van Aert.
–When ONCE was dissolved, cycling stopped being aggressive. Except for Alberto Contador, everything was very calculated. For years, there were runners who accepted that situation. But Pogacar, Vingegaard or Van Aert have decided to attack with 80 kilometers to go. And I love that.
And he declares himself a very close friend of Indurain (“although he was the rival of my cyclists, in the end I enjoyed his victories”) and very much against the current race format, starting with the Tour of Spain.
–Seven stages with slopes that cannot be climbed and require 32 sprockets. It’s always the same! They believe that a race is not a race if there are no 32-pinion ports, or pavés, or sterrato. That’s what gravel racing is for! I can’t suffer watching the stages on television and hoping that no one has a flat tire. Because, if you click on any of those roads, the assistance car will take three minutes to arrive. And that’s how a year’s work goes.
“We had Perico, Indurain, Beloki, Contador…” I tell him. Today Juan Ayuso and Carlos Rodríguez arrive, but the feeling of decoupling also spreads. In our country there are no real protagonists, people like that.
–In Spain, children want to be influencers, starting with my seven-year-old granddaughter: I have to scold her for what is posted on the networks.
–And who does he stay with? Ayuso or Carlos Rodríguez?
–I prefer Carlos Rodríguez’s way of being, but I think that Ayuso will end up being a better runner.
