It seemed like the sun would never set, but a new dawn is finally here; life without Alejandro Valverde has just begun for Movistar.
For the best part of two decades, 'El Bala' carried the torch for the Spanish team. For the best part of a decade, he defied his advancing years and continued to win at an extraordinary rate and level. Even in the past couple of years, as Valverde entered his 40s and his hit rate started to dry up, he still stood above the rest of the squad.
Despite a slump in the pandemic year of 2020, he was the team's top scorer of rankings points in the past two seasons - particularly useful since Movistar were staring down the barrel of relegation this summer.
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But Valverde, despite appearing in scintillating form at the back end of 2022, is finally done with professional cycling. He's not done with the team, taking up a fluid role in which he's supposedly spending time with the riders, and by all accounts still giving them a run for their money in training. But he's definitely done with racing and that's something Movistar need to come to terms with.
Step forward, Enric Mas.
It's not like the Mallorcan is stepping out of the shadows - he has in fact been plugging gaps in the Movistar ship since he arrived in 2020, just as Nairo Quintana, Mikel Landa, and Richard Carapaz were heading for the exit. But the retirement of the evergreen Valverde leaves him more exposed than ever. With no real star quality coming in - apart from a Fernando Gaviria with question marks hanging over him - Mas heads into 2023 shouldering a huge amount of responsibility.
There is, however, reason to suggest he can handle it, even if he appeared to struggle with the pressure in his first couple of seasons at Movistar. Considering the little impact he had on major races in those first two years, Mas' results were surprisingly strong. In 2020 he was fifth in both the Tour de France and Vuelta a España, and even ended his first year as Movistar's top points scorer.
In 2021 he was back on a Grand Tour podium for the first time since his 2018 breakthrough, finishing runner-up at the Vuelta a España, and just behind Valverde in the points-scoring charts.
In 2022, though, something seemed to click properly into place, but not before it looked like it might fall apart. A string of crashes in the spring and early summer led to a nightmare Tour de France in which Mas developed a mental block and effectively lost the ability to descend. In an interview with Cyclingnews earlier this off-season, he described the Tour as a "disaster" and went on to book in with both a descending coach and a psychologist.
At the Vuelta, he was re-born, again finishing runner-up as the only rider to get anywhere near a rampaging Remco Evenepoel - in fact, take out the mid-race time trial and he nearly broke even on the climbs. Mas then kicked on into the Italian Classics and dispatched none other than Tadej Pogačar at Giro dell'Emilia. He might have lost out to the two-time Tour champ at Il Lombardia, but he was still runner-up in a Monument for the first time, and actually ran it close in a sprint he was never expected to win.
Evenepoel and Pogačar are two of the riders who appear to be operating in different stratospheres in the past couple of years, but Mas has now shown he can stand on the cusp of that realm. Whether or not he can step into it in 2023 will be one of the narratives of the season, and will be pivotal to Movistar's fortunes.
His success in Italy will raise hopes for the hilly Classics, in particular Valverde's old stomping ground of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, while he now has three Grand Tour podiums to his name and will be well in the conversation for the Tour de France. Turning 28 in January, Mas is surely entering his prime, his physical peak combining with that psychological progress to make him one of the most exciting prospects for 2023.
"Enric has reached the highest level," Valverde told us recently as he was asked whether his shoes could really be filled. "After the Tour he had a big low but in the Vuelta he gained incredible confidence. He has now gained that point of maturity and is capable of leading the team 100% in any race."
With Valverde gone, that is needed now more than ever.
Other storylines to follow
Can Fernando Gaviria rediscover himself?
When we asked Mas about the responsibility that now looks to sit squarely on his shoulders, he reached for the name of Fernando Gaviria, who arrives from UAE Team Emirates. A few ago, he might have been right, but the Colombian sprinter has had a disastrous run of form in the past three years, only partly explained by his repeat run-ins with COVID-19. When he burst onto the scene several years ago, Gaviria looked like a future world-beater. That natural talent can't have disappeared entirely, but can Movistar unlock it again? If so, there'll be huge rewards to reap, but this is a team with no real pedigree in bunch sprints, and a one-year contract hardly screams confidence.
A new relegation battle starts now
Movistar ended up well clear of the WorldTour relegation zone but for a while last summer things looked very precarious indeed. The tweaks to the points allocations will help, but losing Valverde and his 2000 points per season will not, and there really isn't much top-level depth to Movistar's roster, beyond Mas. Ruben Guerreiro is a strong signing from EF, while it'll be hoped Ivan Garcia Cortina can finally deliver on expectations after finally landing his first win for the team late last year. Relegation will be out of the headlines given 2025 represents the next round of licences but teams will have learned the lesson that the first year of a three-year cycle is just as important as the last.
A big transfer window ahead
Movistar currently have just seven riders under contract for 2024. That makes 23 spaces to be filled by the end of next season. Despite Mas' growth, Movistar still feel like a team in search of their identity, especially now Valverde is gone. Efforts have been made to rejuvenate and internationalise the squad in recent years but to no great effect, and now there's something of a blank canvas to shape the roster in next year's market, which will soon be firing up. Having missed out on former employee Richard Carapaz to EF, a second top-level Grand Tour contender is likely to be a priority.
A new Netflix series
However results pan out, there'll always be the Netflix money. In fact, you sense that the more calamitous the performances, the better the publicity - such is the way in the modern world of sport as entertainment. Miguel Angel Lopez was fired in disgrace in 2021 but served up as the selling point for series 3 of 'The Least Expected Day'. UCI points are important, but the drama must keep flowing.
