Hoy, cumple años José Luis Abilleira. El corredor que, con una treta de su equipo, impidió que Merckx se llevase todas las clasificaciones de La Vuelta 73:
The day José Luis Abilleira prevented Eddy Merckx from winning all the classifications of the 1973 Vuelta a Espana
CyclingFriday, 27 October 2023 at 13:30
The colleagues of Pedal Vingage have recalled through their Twitter account the story of José Luis Abilleira, the man who prevented Eddy Merckx from taking all the classifications of the 1973 Vuelta a España. The Cannibal, who finished his career with 5 Tour de France and 5 Giro d'Italia, rode his only Vuelta that 1973 in which he would do a double with the Giro.
Merckx won the Vuelta with clarity with almost 4 minutes of advantage over Luis Ocaña and something more with Bernard Thévenet, in a podium that could have been of the Grande Boucle. Thus, the insatiable Belgian dominated that Spanish round with clarity taking 6 stages and almost all the classifications at stake: Points, Metas Volantes and Combined. The only one he failed to win was the Mountain classification, which went to our protagonist, José Luis Abilleira.
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The Madrid-born rider, who turns 76 today, was the one who scored the most points in that classification (97), to Merckx's 83. However, in those days you had to finish the race in the top 15 to win the classification.
Thus, there was a team tactic in the La Casera - Bahamontes. The 15th overall was Juan Santiago Zurano, Abilleira's teammate, who left some time so that his colleague could finish the Vuelta 15th and thus take home the final Mountain jersey. Curious story of a Vuelta in which Merckx wanted to sweep everything and was very close to achieving it.
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- I think this was because there were junior women in the race. If a race has junior women am pretty sure it has to be less than 45 minutes. I believe a rule is coming in for next season that will fine organisers that don't put on a junior women's race a fine equivalent to the prize money. So fingers crossed we should see more longer elite and junior women's races from next season.NorrisHippocampe18-11-2024
- Of course he CAN. Big salary in cycling is not when you win but when they talk about you (and your team / sponsors). For every news about Jonas, MVdP or Wout there are 10 times more(!) news about Pidcock (like everyday for last 2 months?). Since cycling is advertising sport not competitive sport (in terms of from money comes from) Pidcock is winner and GOAT - change my mind. ;-)averagecyclist18-11-2024
- Why do the women CXs keep getting short changed with the length of theor races? They could have easily done another lap to put them at 50 minutes which is their time limit. Yet another CX race where they fail to reach this when they had a chance to. Come on ... the math isn't that hard to figure out lap times and divide into 50 min!frieders318-11-2024
- All pro cyclists are massively underpaid! The amount of riding and physical exertion they put their bodies through is crazy compared to other sports. I can't think of any other sport where you are physically active at a very high level of power output for hours on end each day.Pogboom17-11-2024
- When I was working for Starkist/Heinz my manager quit. So the next week my group was put under another manager. During our first meeting he asked if there was anything we needed to tell him. I said that I would be out the following week on vacation. He said "I don't know if I can let you go on vacation". I replied, "You can't tell if I can go. You can only tell me if I can come back".Sweep17-11-2024
- :-)Sweep17-11-2024
- What a mess there :-)
DareDevil17-11-2024 - So he read the comments here probably :-)DareDevil17-11-2024
- Alpecin is a MVDP and sprinter's team. It is unlikely that he will get a chance there as wellabstractengineer17-11-2024
- There’s no crying in cyclocross…Crashjames17-11-2024