Nairo Quintana is just about everywhere you turn this week at the Tour Colombia, which has spent its first three days in the heart of his native Boyacá, amid the pastures and peaks of the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes.
His face adorns billboards for Movistar in Duitama and Tunja. At stage finishes, a stall bearing Quintana’s stylised “N” branding does a steady trade hawking his wares, including his own brand of coffee. The packaging depicts Quintana in the maglia rosa with the slogan: “When your legs get tired, you pedal with your heart.”
‘Pobre Antonio,’ a café on the outskirts of Paipa favoured by local cyclists, doubles as a shrine in Quintana’s honour. A collage of images of the local favourite in the window is tagged with the proud boast that the establishment bears his seal of approval: “We prepare our dishes with products from the fields of Boyacá, like Nairo Quintana says.”
In other words, Quintana could scarcely have asked for a more amenable place to start his second act as a Movistar rider after sitting out last season. His career looked to be over when he was deemed persona non grata among WorldTour teams following his positive tests for Tramadol on the 2022 Tour de France, but his old squad threw him an unexpected lifeline last Autumn.
Quintana surely hoped his return to Movistar marked a new chapter, but the loose ends from his time at Arkéa-Samsic haven’t yet been tied up. On Tuesday, it was reported that Quintana’s doctor Fredy Alexander Gonzales Torres would go on trial in Marseille for possible doping practices on the 2020 Tour de France.
Torres is accused of “possessing a substance or method that is prohibited for a sporting use without medical justification” and the Colombian faces a five-year prison sentence if convicted. The charges stem from a raid after stage 17 to the Col de la Loze, when French police searched Arkéa-Samsic team vehicles and the room shared by Quintana and his brother Dayer.
Racing at home offered Quintana a cocoon of sorts as the news broke. When he made his way through the mixed zone before the start in Paipa on Wednesday morning, local television and radio stations limited themselves to questions about the stage ahead, some addressing him with the honorific title of “campeón.”
Quintana eventually broke his silence on the matter when Spanish newspaper AS secured an audience at his hotel that evening. “I am really tired. What my head wants to think about now is enjoying…
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