Cyclist Javier Romo persists, resists and wins the third stage in the Tour Down Under

The Toledo-born Movistar rider is the leader of the Australian WorldTour race after achieving the first victory of his career in the hills of Adelaide

Thirteen years later, the future national coach Alejandro Valverde signs autographs at the tourism fair where he has just announced his work as an ambassador for the beauties of his Murcia and can remember how his Australian victory in the Tour Down Under was like the Cape of Good Hope for sailors, an omen of great things to come, a bright turn of events after two years in the shadows, as it had also been for Alberto Contador a few years earlier, still almost a child, a victory in January, in Australia, months after having to stop after suffering a stroke in the middle of the 2004 Vuelta a Asturias, surgery and brain surgery, and as it will perhaps be for the Movistar rider Javier Romo, winner on Thursday morning in the hills of Adelaide, where the eucalyptus is massive and old because it was born there thousands of years ago, in the third stage of the Down Under.

This is the first professional victory for Romo, who turned 26 on the day of the Three Kings and was born in Villafranca de los Caballeros, La Mancha, like Minister Bolaños. The victory, achieved after a magnificent counter-attack on the five-kilometre slides leading to the finish in Uraidla, also allows him to lead the race, which ends on Sunday, with an 8-second advantage over the UAE Ecuadorian Jhonatan Narváez. “I have worked very hard all winter preparing for this race,” says Romo, who the day before had already revealed his good pedal stroke by scoring points on a climb. “We had studied it very well and we knew that we had to be in front on the last climb.”

When the best of the bunch stop to take a deep breath after reaching the top of the wicked Knotts Hill, Romo attacks hard, explosively, and quickly builds up a lead of no more than 100 metres. The ex-cyclist, crazy sprinter, Robbie McEwen, who comments on the race for Australian television, gets excited and plays with words. “They chase; he persists, he resists,” he exclaims, and Romo pedals, and never looks back, persists and resists, of course, as he has done throughout his cycling life, so short, a sigh, like those five kilometres, so fast.

It all began in the months of the pandemic when the lockdown eased. Romo, then a triathlete with a great future, one of the best juniors in the world, went out to train on the roads of Albacete with two local professionals, the old Óscar Sevilla, from Ossa de Montiel, and the younger Héctor Carretero, from Las Madrigueras, where the Arcos knives are. Both of them put the spirited kid, a 21-year-old novice, to the test, but he resisted them, and he amazed them so much that they told him, man, you are made to be a cyclist, leave triathlon. Weeks later, he surprised the entire Spanish amateur peloton by winning the national championship in Jaén after a long solo breakaway, like Remco, like Pogacar, the sign of the new times, of cyclists too who have never raced in large pelotons and are overwhelmed by the game of elbows and handlebars. Instantly, he was showered with offers from the WorldTour. He chose Astana. He spent three years with Vinokurov’s team, promising great things but also marked by numerous crashes. In 2024 he discovered the Tour with Movistar. His consistency in the mountains, his teamwork and his punch on the Troyes gravel stage, his audacity, shine through.

The Tour Down Under, which opens the WorldTour calendar, will be decided on Saturday on the traditional climb up the Willunga hill, where Contador and Valverde were reborn. No one doubts that Romo will be there, fighting persistently, driven by good hope, as always.