The BH Coloma rider, David Valero, has lost several positions in the world ranking of mountain bikes, he has gone from third to sixth place, after the World Championship, in which he had to climb almost 50 positions after suffering a problem in the first round, with which he believes that he can be "happy" with his performance and assumes that "this sometimes happens in sport".
The Spanish champion, in statements to EFE, has recounted how he experienced this "strange" situation in sport "because you foresee many things, but not that a specific part of the shoe is going to break."
Shortly after the start he suffered a "hook" with the Chilean Martín Vidaurre and the Spaniard saw how a part of his shoe broke, which made it no longer fit the pedal and forced him to go almost a whole lap "pedaling with only one foot," he says.
In addition, he has detailed, "near where it happened was the second technical zone, but there he had not left spare shoes" because "it is something that you do not expect to happen" because "sometimes the closures break, but as there are You can pedal with two, but it's not normal for what happened to me to go wrong" with which "I had to go with only one pedal to the technical area of the finish line, where I was able to change shoes" when I was in 69th place.
Valero was until last week the third cyclist in the world ranking -and he was number one the previous one- because he chose to stop competing to prepare the World Cup in Scotland as well as possible.
That is why the man from Granada assumes that "to think that a race is the most important of the year and that it comes out like this is very angry" although "I think that later I showed that I had the pace to have stayed in the top ten and then we would see how the race could end ", in which he was ranked 24th at the end.
Thus, he is left with that ability to think that "there is a calendar left in the season to try to finish well" especially in the World Cup, whose calendar begins again in ten days in Andorra.
Now Valero is ninth overall in the World Cup and that is why he has set himself the first objective of "staying in the top ten" and "scoring points for the world ranking" not only for him, to stay close to the top positions, but because those scores will help Spain to attend the Olympic Games in Paris with three representatives.
The Andalusian cyclist was one of those who signed a protest statement against the decision of the International Cycling Union that allowed three riders (Vander Poel, Sagan and Pidcock) to start the race later than their due, with the particularity that the third was proclaimed world champion.
"It's something that no one liked," says Valero, referring to the colleagues with whom he regularly competes in his specialty (the other three don't) "and we all have goals to meet and teams that invest in us And that's something you have to respect."
For him it is a "simple" question because "I cannot go to the organization of the Tour de France, say that I want to participate and that I want to be ahead of the rest".
"On Sunday, at the World Cup, it is true that those of us who were in the top thirty were not affected, but, for example, my teammates were and many others, and for many of them finishing in the top twenty is a great objective, enough to put three cyclists ahead of you".
He does not doubt Pidckock's victory, "that he is a great runner" and that "last year he came out of the last places and finished fourth" something that can demonstrate that "starting later facilitates the race situation".
