This Week, In Person
I didn’t just watch this year’s Vuelta a Burgos from Australia. I flew back.
I try to get back to Burgos most years, but this time the timing lined up with the race, and honestly, that changed the whole trip. I stood in the start villages, watched the team cars line up with bikes racked six-deep on the roof, and got close enough to read the numbers pinned to jerseys I only ever see on TV — UAE, Movistar, Lidl-Trek, Bora, Tudor.
At one point I parked my own bike next to a row of WorldTour machines. Obviously nobody mistook a titanium gravel bike with “TIZONA” engraved on the down tube for a race bike. But it sat there anyway, next to a Colnago, in the same town where the name on that frame comes from. That’s not something I planned for when we started this brand — it just happened, standing there.
I also ran into Jay Vine at one of the stage starts — small world, even 15,000 kilometres from home. He’d had to abandon that day, which is its own kind of hard, but we talked for a minute like two people from the same side of the planet do when they bump into each other somewhere unexpected.
How It Actually Went
For the record, since I know some of you followed along: Félix Gall took the overall. Giulio Pellizzari won the queen stage up at Lagunas de Neila, which by all accounts was brutal. Enric Mas was right there all week.
Closing The Loop
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about growing up on these streets, long before any of this existed. Watching the race actually come through this year — in person, with my own bike parked a few feet from the ones actually racing — felt like the second half of that story. I don’t know if we’ll get the timing right every year, but I’d like to try.
— Jaime