NOTIt has not been a very positive Tour de France for Enric Mas, for Movistar or for Spanish cycling. This Friday I finished approaching the gray with the sad sick days of the Balearic cyclist.
The Spaniard dropped out of the “Top 10” due to covid after the time loss on stage 18 and finished eleventh. Mas’ objective in the French round anyway was much more ambitious than entering the top ten. After finishing fifth and sixth in this race, I dreamed of a podium which, due to certain circumstances and others, was getting further and further away. The positive for covid is a bitter end to the Tour.
For Movistar it’s a setback, as Mas’s inability to finish the race means they don’t add a very important 150 points in their fight to avoid relegation at the end of the season. In any case, Enric and Valverde are expected at LaVuelta. His return schedule Eusebio Unzue himself confirmed this to MARCA this week.
Go home with a positive
The team withdrew the rider without subjecting him to the PCR, as indicated by the protocol launched by the International Cycling Union (UCI), to determine the degree of contagion. Some runners were able to continue in the race when it was determined that they were not very contagious, but Movistar did not do this second test.
“It was contagious, the lineage (from the antigen test) was quite strong,” Acosta said, according to EFE. The Movistar director added that the rider will try to get back in shape at the next Vuelta a España.
Mas was eleventh overall, just over 24 minutes behind the leader, the Dane Jonas Vingaard, after losing time in the last mountain stages, more than seven minutes in which he finished this Thursday at the Pyrenean summit of Hautacam. The 27-year-old Movistar cyclist, who arrived on the Tour with ambitions of a podium finish for the first time in Paris, revealed after the stage that he has been suffering from descent panic since the crash he suffered. suffered in the last Dolphina problem that works with a specialist.
“He had this fear, this panic, for a few days he had three very bad falls. We are trying with everyone to give him a hand and take this fear away. We hope he can reduce it from here to the Vuelta”, he assured Acosta. To do this, added the director, they try to “give him peace of mind” and “take the iron off”. “The fear of descents is special, not everyone descends the same way, a little technique helps, we talk to him a lot,” he said.
A problem to overcome
“The fear in these cases paralyzes them and makes them negatively anticipate career situations that they don’t even know will come. The thoughts surrounding that context trigger anxiety and that’s something we work with on a daily basis. in my office. This mental circuit is important and for that it is necessary to change the way of interpreting the difficulties and of course to manage all that stops a top athlete as he is. Enrique Mas. Visualization is a very complete technique with which we can expose ourselves to imaginary but real moments and work from there, without this “danger” of looking for answers”, explains the psychologist Lorena Cos at MARK. The broker must work on this issue if he wants to return to what he was.
A frightening number
Abandonment of Mas with three stages to go before the start of the Tour Luis Len Sanchez as the best Spaniard in the general classification, fifteenth, more than 47 minutes behind in the yellow jersey. As ‘El Mundo’ reminds us this Saturday, without the possible presence of Mas, there will be no national in the Top 10 of the Tour, something that had not happened since 1981. It was not a lucky tour for Mas, for Movistar or for Spaniards in general.