The rain dance has some very simple steps. There is nothing to go around or jump over. There are no magic words to say either. There is little secret. It was only necessary to put eight cyclists on the platform that entered the Somorrostro beach, the first eight, those of the Caja Rural team, for the box of thunder to open. It had not rained in Barcelona for a long time and the long-awaited drops of water made an appearance just as the stage that opened the Tour of Spain began. What a downpour. The team time trial was held under a deluge, which marred the spectacle.
It was already known in advance that the completely urban route was technical, with 17 right-angle curves -and some even more closed ones-, but the rain, after so much drought, made the time trial dangerous and a bundle of nerves before slippery asphalt. One only had to see the dozen workers, mop in hand, who rushed to dry the platform between equipment and equipment so that the wheels would not slip on the cyclists in the first pedal strokes and they would get an unwanted scare.
"So can not be. You can't see anything”, Remco Evenepoel, last year's winner, complained as soon as he crossed the finish line, whose team, Soudal, was the last to start and had to complete the stage in horrifying conditions and with poor visibility. And that the Belgian set a good time, third at the end, and barely lost 6 seconds, with DSM, the surprise winner, and Movistar, the great winner of the first day.
It happens in these cases in which the favorites have a lot to lose and prefer not to risk that the stage victory ends up being for an unexpected guest. Ask Martínez Oliver about his victory in the last time trial of the Tour in 1988. The television made him repeat the last meters because it had no images of his arrival. The prince for a day in Barcelona was the DSM team, which only had 9 victories in 2023 and placed Lorenzo Milesi as the first red jersey. He was the second to start and took advantage of the fact that the route was still quite good then and not as impassable as it was at the end.
But under the heavy rain the Movistar danced. The telephone team traced the curves well and dreamed of scoring the victory, as in their day in the team time trial in Pamplona. It missed him by split seconds.
However, at the finish line it was all hugs between the five cyclists who arrived together. Enric Mas, who in the Tour knew the bitter face of falling and having to retire in the first stage in Bilbao, took extraordinary loot. The Spaniard took 20 seconds from Geraint Thomas (Ineos) and more than half a minute from Vingegaard and Roglic, the fantastic Jumbo duo, and Juan Ayuso. “The plan was not to risk. Had to spend the day. In addition, we have had uncertainty because Almeida had very low pressure and we did not know whether to stop or continue ”, revealed Ayuso, who started with the wrong foot.
Barcelona had been planning this start for months. In December, the route of the first stage was presented, in which the race was to be taken through all the neighborhoods of the city. The objective was for the tourist attractions to shine, for the world to remember and remember the success of the 1992 Games. But what nobody could foresee is that the rain would steal all the prominence. Trying to escape the hottest hours, the day turned black for the Vuelta.
There was barely time to repair in the Ciutadella, the Arc de Triomf, the 22@, the Barcelona tower, the Sagrada Familia, the Pedrera and the Miró park. There was only a desire to see the Venetian towers and reach the goal. You couldn't take your eyes off the road. And it is that the last teams also had to run almost at night. The darkness was such in some areas that luck of the light from streetlights and traffic lights.
The sky woke up covered but the sun was finding its holes to peek out. The cyclists recognized the circuit with the dry ground. At 4:30 p.m., Evenepoel covered almost 14.8 km in front of his teammates to have a good view. The problem is that there were almost four hours left for the 2022 winner's team to take the start. And everything was darkened by the rain.
There were falls at the beginning and at the end. They had not been in the race for even a minute when Alpecin lost two cyclists after crossing the Mapfre tower and the Arts hotel. Almost half of the Arkéa fell to the ground at the entrance to Plaza Espanya, just in front of the Arenas. Hofstetter slipped and ended up sliding on the ground and behind him Vauquelin and Ries kissed the asphalt. Water is democratic. Not even the big teams are spared. Ineos ran out of De Plus at the height of Ciutadella, something that put fear in the body of Geraint Thomas, Ganna, Bernal and company, which was noticed in the final time. And cyclists who will fight the general were not spared either, like the Irishman Dunbar (Jayco), who went against the fences when he was almost in sight of the finish line, in the last roundabout. Shocked, all the cyclists had a rougher start than they wanted. This Sunday more rain awaits them in Montjuïc.
