Colombia Oro y Paz: Gaviria wins stage 3 sprint in Buga

Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) must sometimes stop and wonder how crazy this all is. More than 50 reporters clambered over each other in Buga to hear his reaction to his victory at the Colombia Oro y Paz on Thursday – his third in as many days.

More than 15 policemen and security guards were then required to escort him from the mixed zone to the anti-doping truck, through the sea of local fans and their cries of ‘Ga-vi-ria, Ga-vi-ria’. It would be foolish to try and count the attempted selfies.

It was a similar scene to the previous two days in Palmira, Colombia’s so-called ‘city of cycling’. In fact, these opening three days have been almost identical: flat stages, Quick-Step domination, Gaviria triumph, Colombian adulation. Some details have changed – after two second-places Juan Molano (Manzana Postobon) was third on stage three behind Matteo Malucelli (Androni) – but it has very much been the Gaviria show.

It feels like a significant step in the 22-year-old's irresistible rise to the top of the sport. Colombians are a fiercely proud people and they’ll go crazy for any of their own, but a special level of reverence is reserved for Nairo Quintana and Rigoberto Urán – as anyone who’s been at the buses at the Tour de France could attest. All others seem to exist at various degrees below that plane, but Gaviria is the one closing the gap.

And he’s had to come from quite far back.

“Fernando has always had, let’s say, a winning mentality, and every time he had a problem and wasn’t able to win it bothered him a lot. That meant he had a very temperamental character. He was a bit detached, and he wasn’t very open,” says the Colombian Cycling Federation's Éder Garcés, who has known Gaviria since his junior days.

“The 2014 Tour de l’Avenir was when he really started to become a star, and then in 2015 he won his first Omnium world title. That’s when people knew he was a star, but he wasn’t so open. He wasn’t used to people taking photos, journalists asking for interviews all the time. He would say very little. He was very laconic in his replies because he wasn’t used to opening up.

“But with the passing of time things have changed. When he beat Cavendish twice at the 2015 Tour de San Luis, we started to see a different Fernando. He had more of a network around him, people invested more in him, and he realised he needed to open up for this new phase of his life, which is being one of the stars of world cycling.”

In that regard, while the Oro y Paz might be one of the smaller races on his 2018 programme, it’s also one of the most important. If he starts winning stages at the Tour de France in July he will indeed be immortalised, but this week allows for direct engagement with his people and for that relationship to develop on a human level.

And Gaviria has been making the most of it. He took his phone onto the podium on the first day and played the cheerleader, filming himself as he waved his arm and whipped up the crowd in the background.

“Fernando is never going to be like Rigo, who’s very warm and joking around all the time, but he is becoming more and more charismatic and I think that will only continue,” says Garcés.

“When you look at Nairo and Rigoberto, Fernando is a little bit below in terms of popularity, but he’s redressing the balance. We were known for climbing, but now we’re known for sprinting, too. He’s changing the history of Colombian cycling.”

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