The return of the Tour of Barcelona, and also with the two initial stages, it was a magnificent opportunity to show the city and continue demonstrating its ability to organize and attract sporting events of international interest, such as those that are already committed and those that it wants to achieve in the future. The extremely complex road system was solved efficiently and the scenes of the peak moments of the competition –such as the start of the time trial on the beach and the climb to Montjuïc– left nothing to be desired. However, the party was marred by a downpour and a cloudy sky at a time that should have had daylight (but also by how they reacted to this relative unforeseen event).
That a cycling competition must take place under adverse weather conditions is something that can and does happen almost at any time on the cycling calendar. And in these cases the inclemencies are usually borne, or forced to modify the duration, shorten the route or neutralize parts of it for the purposes of the competition. This is what was done on Sunday in the final 9 kilometers of Montjuïc on Sunday.
It had been known for days that it could rain on Saturday, although it may have taken longer to become evident that the city could become dark up to this point. The organization of the Vuelta has assumed that things like these can happen, that the responsibility for choosing a schedule that in these circumstances was problematic but that is difficult to modify was shared (by television interests, by the logistical device…) and has shown its understanding of what happened. However, it seems clear that there was a lack of reflexes from the organizers of the race and the City Council when it comes to getting out of the way of eventuality. This Monday we explained that from the race the City Council was requested at 6:45 p.m. to advance the lighting, only 10 minutes before the start and when there were a couple of hours to go before the end of the race in the dark. With that margin it was impossible to locate the responsible company and send the operators to manually reprogram up to 35 light boxes. But the fact that the next day they could light up shows that only with a few more hours of forecast could have reacted and mitigated that image (which was not solved because, as the director of the Vuelta admitted, special lighting worthy of a night stage and impossible to improvise would have been necessary).
Another second eventuality has weighed on the Catalan section of the Vuelta 2023. And with it the inappropriateness of politicizing sporting events has been demonstrated. Of course, use forms of boycott that endanger the safety of the participants it is intolerable and, objectively, a prosecutable crime. The fact that some group takes advantage of the visibility that it is given to present a point of view is as inevitable as it is difficult to question from the point of view of freedom of expression. But what parties and institutions want to politicize sport is a mistake. It is as much as when Jaume Collboni He did it to show that the independence movement would no longer be an audible force in the streets as when from together there has been talk of repression of protests or when Isabel Diaz Ayuso He has linked the attitude of residual small groups such as those who threw sharp objects at the path of cyclists with the negotiations of Pedro Sánchez to form a government.