Freire's stage win soon forgotten in Spain

Oscar Freire, winner of the Tour de France second stage in Saarbruecken on Monday, is as much a rarity in Spain as a bullfighter would be in England.

The 1999 and 2001 road world champion is one of the few sprinters in a country which has been home to some of the best climbers in the history of cycling.

More than a matter of morphology -- not all Spaniards are small, light and dry like a mountain specialist should be -- the lack of good sprinters in Spain is above all an economic and cultural matter.

Ibanesto.com manager Jose-Miguel Echavarri, himself a fine sprinter in his racing days, gives a simple explanation.

"Take Oscar's win yesterday. Two seconds before he wins, nobody knows he's going to win. Two seconds after he's won, it's over," he said.

"On television, you see the name of the sponsor for just two seconds. If you have a climber leading the race in the mountains, it gives the sponsor two hours of television play."

For that reason Spanish teams and sponsors have long decided to invest in climbers more than sprinters or time trial specialists.

"The mountain goes more with the Spanish philosophy of cycling," added Echavarri, the man who discovered Pedro Delgado, Miguel Indurain and Abraham Olano.

"We are not interested in sprinters or time trial specialists even though we had fine ones like Miguel (Indurain) or Luis Ocana," he said.

FATAL BLOW

Not that Echavarri was not impressed by Freire's victory.

"It's true that Oscar's sprint yesterday was superb, it was like the fatal blow dealt by the matador in a bullfight," he said.

"But in a bullfight, what Spaniards like most is not the final blow. It's all the gestures and moves that come before."

Spain has had good sprinters in the past such as Miguel Poblet, winner of two Milan-San Remo classics and three Tour stages in the late fifties.

But in the Spanish mind, the real cycling stars were mountaineers like 1998 Tour winner Delgado or Federico Bahamontes, the first Spaniard to win the Tour in 1959.

"It's sad to say, but when I spot good sprinters in the amateur ranks, I don't offer them contracts," said Echavarri, one of the best talent scouts in the sport.

"If you have a good sprinter and you want him to win lots of races, you need to build a team around him," he added.

Cycling rules force big Spanish teams to take part in the world cup one-day classics which suit sprinters best and the Ibanesto.com manager said most teams now needed two squads, one for the classics and one for the big stage races.

"When you go to a world cup race or a big one-day classic and it's not shown on Spanish television, the sponsors ask themselves what's the use," he said.

As a result, Freire was forced to sign for an Italian team, Mapei-Quickstep, because of the lack of interest for sprinters in his country.

"It's another sort of cycling," Echavarri said.

"Look at Oscar, he's a great rider, he won a stage but let's face it, he will not make it to Paris..."