His last friend had died. “How sad it is to be left alone,” he lamented, the condemnation of the last survivor. With Jesús Loroño, more than a friend, he was a circumstantial ally against a common rival, Vuelta del 57. With Bernardo as the locomotive, Loroño destroys Bahamontes, who at night at the hotel wants to hit him and they come to blows. Bahamontes never won the Vuelta.
Memory in Orihuela is a basket of cherries, and on Wednesday, in the celebration of Bernardo, who turns 100, and they remember him in his town, Larrabetzu, and in the top of Sollube, next to his monument, like a prop in the great Basque cycling tradition, a strong, quiet, verbal climber, king of the Tour mountain in ’53, a getaway at the Laruns level crossing, at the foot of the Aubisque, a fall of Koblet amphetamine, victory in Cauterets and escape in the Alps, Vars towards Izoard alongside Louison Bobet, and if we talk about Loroño, hard-working, industrious, pure will, a man of his word, a single word, we talk about Bahamontes, of course, who was the complete opposite, talkative, voluble and atrabiliary, and brilliant, above all.
All the roads, all the ports, that make up the Tour were traveled by them before. There is no Loroño without Bahamontes and there would not have been Loroño if before, in his Bizkaia, there had not been a Vicente Blanco, The Lame, metal worker and rower in the Nervión estuary who went to Paris by bicycle to run the 1910 Tour, and did not get very far, but he encouraged other Biscayans to imitate him, such as Francisco Cepeda, who broke his head descending the Galibier the Lautaret 90 years ago because of some duralumin rims that overheated and the tubulars came off, and to surpass him, like Federico Ezkerra, great figure of Spanish cycling during the Republic along with Trueba, Berrendero and Cañardo, what a golden age broken by the war, and Ezkerra won the stage in Cannes in ’36, just when Franco and his henchmen carried out the coup d’état. The war ended them, and out of the war came another generation guided by Dalmacio Langarica, winner of the Vuelta of ’46 and protector, gregarious, and advisor like an older brother, from Loroño, and finally a hated enemy, and they came to blows, and they had loved each other so much, because when the national coach decided that the leader of the team in the ’59 Tour should be Bahamontes, and that if Loroño wanted to go he must swear loyalty to the Águila de Toledo and leave him his wheel. if it clicks.
Loroño refuses. Bahamontes wins the Tour. Langarica leaves the national team and triumphs by making Kas great, which was not only Basque, it was the team of Fuente and López Carril, but it was the team of all the Basques, of Gabika, San Miguel, Perurena, Lasa and Paco Galdos, the best team of the 60s and early 70s. Luis Otaño, no, Otaño, 90 years old, the dean of Basque cycling, was from Ferrys and then from Fagor, the rival, as He errs.
The 80s were the Lejarreta years, perhaps the heir most similar to Loroño, also from Biscay, Junco de Berriz, for character and temperance, and few words, and the 80s were also the Julián Gorospe years, and the 90s Abraham Olano and Miguel Indurain, and all of them got together to talk about their Loroño in the UPV auditorium, in Bilbao, and Deusto on the other side, and to celebrate their memory that, like cherries, carries the memory of many more.
