For Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France, Basque cycling is inseparable from the orange tide of Euskaltel-Euskadi supporters, who flock to the roadsides of the Pyrenees to cheer on their champions. The local team, now in the Pro team – the equivalent of the second division -, has not been invited to this Grande Boucle 2023 (since 1um to July 23). But on Thursday 29 May, in Bilbao (Spain), when the 176 runners registered for this edition bowed to the traditional parade that precedes the big start, a fervor similar to that described by the boss of the event was also present in everyone.
At the end of the afternoon, at the foot of the Guggenheim museum, the architectural jewel of the American Frank Gehry dedicated to modern and contemporary art, yellow scarves with the effigy of the Tour de France, the ikurriña (the Basque flag) and orange hats with the logo Euskaltel were numerous. They contrasted with the gray skies of the capital of Biscay, one of the three provinces of Spain’s Basque Country. In front of them appeared, one by one, the twenty-two teams involved, most of which had also worn a cap for the occasion, another local symbol, very useful when the rain was invited to the party.
Not enough to flood the good mood of the public, louder as the regionals pass by, such as Pello Bilbao and Mikel Landa, of Bahrain-Victorious, or even Ion Izagirre, a member of the Cofidis team. Or when Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, two-time winner of the race (2020, 2021), launched a Gora Euskadi (“Long live the Basque Country”) to the crowd.
Can we really be surprised? At the top of the site’s home pageEl Correo, the main newspaper of the Basque Country, had already been displaying a countdown for several days showing the time remaining before the big start. More than two years earlier, when the Amaury sports organization (ASO), the manager of the Tour, confirmed that the caravan would set up shop in the region in 2023, the headline was already jubilant to host the third global sporting event, after the Olympics [d’été] and the World Cup [masculine] of football”. “Bilbao will grab the global spotlight with an event whose images will be broadcast in 190 countries, with a potential audience of 3.5 billion viewers. »
Political instability
The newspaper mainly recounted the long-term work carried out behind the scenes by the city hall, the Provincial Council of Biscay and the government of the Basque Country to convince the Grande Boucle to return to a region where it had already passed three times: in 1949 in San Sebastian, in 1977 with arrival and departure in Vitoria, and finally in 1992. That year San Sebastian was the host city of the great start and, icing on the cake, a native of the country, the Navarrese Miguel Indurain won the prologue before finishing in yellow on the Champs-Elysées.
Since then… no Grand Tour. Because, during this 1992 edition, two explosions had occurred the day before the start in a public car park in the city centre, near the hotel of the event management. Symbol of a region over which the shadow of ETA hovered, the pro-independence organization Euskadi ta Askatasuna (“Basque Country and Freedom”), now dissolved.
Born in 1959, she had already hindered the smooth running of the Vuelta on several occasions. In 1968 a bomb exploded just before the group’s arrival during a stage between Vitoria and Pamplona, without causing any casualties. Ten years later, tree trunks and studded boards were placed along the route of the 19thAnd stage, between Amurrio and San Sebastián, to prevent the passage of accompanying cars.
However, cycling had returned to the Basque Country in 1997 for the world championships which, once again, had not escaped the political instability of the region: a car bomb had injured three civil guards. Only in 2011 will the region be back on the map of the Tour of Spain, another event managed by ASO. What hope that the barnum of the Grande Boucle will settle there again. After thirty one years of absence, now it’s done.
