The two big ones planned for Pogačar enter into David de la Cruz's plan.
David de la Cruz is one of those cyclists whose story we can be sure has been written from the constancy and conviction of wanting to be a cyclist. A story that started late, as he was an athlete, an athlete jaded by injuries.
That's why one day he tried cycling and learned the trade from the beginning, earning his place in the pros through a job for which the sun never set. Today David de la Cruz is one of the most highly rated Spanish cyclists. and most appreciated by the public and a key player in the UAE Team Emirates.
In his life there have been moments of all kinds, great joys, but notorious disappointments, however, his value lies in knowing his place at all times.
He has been able to win a stage at El Naranco, no less. and to be leader of the Vuelta a España and over the years, to come back in a very complicated Tour de France, the last one, with a hard fall at the beginning, to recover and to be a friendly wheel so that Tadej Pogačar to come out of the Alps alive and with options before the time trial that would end up sentencing the race.
Mixed objectives
With the best he gave last year, David de la Cruz faces his second season in UAE Team EmiratesWith a more or less clear picture in terms of objectives, although with the normal uncertainty of the pandemic and how it will affect the start of the calendar.
Tadej Pogacar will race in the two major races in which he competes, both Tour and Vuelta, and he will add the possibility of the Olympic Games. A podium in a three-week tour is the ultimate goal, an option that you can imagine is not easy, but for a rider who never gives up will always be there.
In the spring - as he tells the ambassador of Gobik, Juan Antonio Flecha- he wants to make a comeback at Paris-Nice, a race he has won twice in the final stage, on the Boulevard des Anglais, and try his luck in the Volta a Catalunya of the centenary.
Dodging "Filomena".
For the time being he savors the days before the start of his campaign, delayed by the postponement of Valencia and Andalusia, with the memory of training at a dream temperature in the Emirates, in the UAE Team Emirates training camp in the Emirates.avoiding the rigors and snows of Philomena.
They were in fact the only team to meet in full outside Europe.
In those days he was already able to test the entire collection of Gobik The team was already able to test the entire collection of winter bikes for the summer, but now it remains the option to open the winter box and ride in the ditches of Andorra, ditches that surely some of them are snowed in.
"I got to know the proposal of Gobik on the final day of the Vuelta a España," David de la Cruz told Juan Antonio Flecha-. They did the first tests for us. Since then, they have felt the result as a second skin on the training camp outings, appreciating details such as the rider's name on the inside of the sleeve.
"If we win, you can see our name," he says, phone in hand, with a smile on his face. Flecha on the other side. A statement full of illusion and brightness in his eyes, raising his arms, that liberating sensation that rarely happens, but when it comes, it cures everything.
One thing, however, is clear to us, David de la Cruz will not be left behind.
