Thursday, March 28

Barcelona begins the end of the sports “crossing the desert”


A decade without major sporting events, “the crossing through the desert”, as defined yesterday James Collboni at the presentation of the Barcelona start of the Vuelta. The deputy mayor, right hand of the mayor Ada Colau, wants to reopen the Catalan capital for international events. “In the coming months we will announce more candidates to end a 10-year journey in the desert. The high-level events will bear fruit, apart from hosting the Vuelta,” said the Barcelona mayor.

The PSC, hand in hand with David Escude, is the party that takes responsibility for the sports organizations in the Catalan capital in a fairly autonomous way to the point that it is difficult to see the mayor in races and competitions that are held in the city, such as, for example, the marathon, in the award ceremony.

Collboni, this Monday, in order not to distract or take away from the start of the Vuelta, he did not want to give more details about what international events could be organized in Barcelona in the coming years. Although, in the case of the Spanish round and cycling, it was almost an obligation to ask him about the Excursion, the queen event of this sport, which visited Barcelona in 2009 and that it could have returned, nothing less than hosting the great start of the race, in 2014.

Only the signature was missing

The administration of Jordi Hereu left the agreement with the management of the Tour in the absence only of the signature after the commitment made in 2010 when the air of satisfaction was still breathed by the passage of the French test. In 2011 the municipal elections came and there was a political change in the city council. The mayor’s office passed into the hands of the now-defunct CiU with Xavier Trias in front.

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The first agreement established that the Tour would start from Barcelona in 2014, the year he finally made it from Leeds, in England. Everything broke down during a meal, which was organized in a restaurant in Barceloneta, with the presence of Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour, who had traveled from Paris. The representatives of the city council showed up for the meal… an hour late. The gesture made it clear to Prudhomme that the departure of his career from Barcelona would have to wait.

The Tour will depart from Bilbao in 2023

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Now, as this newspaper has learned, ASO, the company that owns the Tour, which is also the owner of the Vuelta, is delighted by the circumstance that next year its two main races will start from Spain. The Tour will do it from Bilbao. The door for the Grande Boucle to leave Barcelona is still open.

“The city aspires to everything but we have to be very professional when making commitments,” he replied Collboni, in a somewhat enigmatic way, when questioned yesterday about a future step in the French round.


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