Once, the present and future of cycling in the Basque Country were orange. Today, that is still the case, if the blend of colours on the roadside during Saturday’s convoluted 180km stage through this cycling heartland was anything to go by. There were ikurriñas waving aplenty, in all sizes, the green, red and white colours that are always seen when the Tour route merely flirts with this proudly independent-minded region on the other side of the Pyrenees.
On the final two climbs, there were plenty of the orange T-shirts, fishing hats and racing jerseys which used to colour every verge and pavement in the heyday of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team.
When the Tour de France is taken abroad, there are usually reasons – not always though – that go beyond the bottom line and this year’s Grand Départ has a much broader context than just the stiff little hills, narrow, verdant roads, appealing glimpses of the Atlantic and seven local riders in the peloton.
Cast the mind back 22 years, to Roberto Laiseka’s stage win in the 2001 Tour and a victory that meant far more than usual, summed up by the message on the wafer-thin climber’s backside: most teams would put a sponsor logo on the back of their shorts, in this prime spot for television pictures. Not the Euskaltel-Euskadi team: their bony buttocks brandished two words – Pays Basque.
To understand why the Tour is here for this long weekend, it is worth looking back to those days, because the Euskadi team expressed perfectly how much cycling means in this strip of land along the Atlantic seaboard. Founded after a chance conversation in a bar after the Tour’s last Grand Départ here in 1992, the squad was unique, financed initially by crowdfunding – not that the term was in use back then – to the tune of £150,000 in £50 subscriptions from local fans and businesses.
Later, the regional phone company and government stepped in, expanding the team to the point where it was big enough to earn a wild card slot at the Tour.
The team’s key principle was that it would include only cyclists from the Basque Country – on either side of the border with France – along the lines of Athletic Bilbao. It worked, for almost 20 years, from the team’s launch in 1994 to its closure in 2013. That was all part of a broader cycling heritage: arms factories in the town of Eibar that turned to producing bikes after the first world war, resulting in legendary marques such as Orbea, GAC and BH; sponsors from among the region’s light industries that still have resonance such as the soft drinks maker KAS and the Fagor white goods company; a longstanding Classic at San Sebastián, whose main climb, the Jaizkibel features on Sunday’s stage two of the Tour as it did on the second day’s racing during the other Grand Départ here in 1992. The Tour visited the region relatively early, with a stage ending in San Sebastián in 1949.
There are fewer Basques in the race than there were – when Laiseka won his stage in 2001 there were 17 at the start, this year there are seven – but this is still a region where, it is said, there is a cycling team in every one of the 35 towns and villages that were visited by stage one. In that, the Basque Country is comparable with two other legendary bike racing heartlands: Flanders and Brittany, regions where, in the words of the late Geoffrey Nicholson, “a people … have come to use sport as a means of demanding recognition of their worth and separate identity”.
The Basque association with cycling has, inevitably, brushed up against the politics of the region, and the fight for independence that came after the cultural repression of the Franco years. That was always seen when the Tour entered the Basque Country or came close to it in the days of the Euskadi team: along with the ikurriñas, there would be banners proclaiming Euskal Herrera, Euskal Presoak – free Basque Country, return political prisoners – there would be Eta slogans, and sometimes, menacingly, posters with the words PP, Spain’s main political party, and a rifle sight.
At times, Eta targeted cycling directly. Two bombs greeted the Tour’s Grand Départ in 1992, damaging property but not life and limb. Others had hit the race in 1974, on French soil at Saint-Lary‑Soulan, where a number of race vehicles were blown up. In 1978, the separatists stopped the final stage of the Vuelta, which did not return to the Basque Country for 33 years.
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On Saturday, there wasn’t much to cheer for the Basque fans other than the event itself. The only local boy in the front group behind stage winner Adam Yates was Mikel Landa, racing through his home town 12 years after beginning his professional career with Euskaltel, and a few more since his infancy when he was inspired by his fellow Basque Iban Mayo wearing the same orange jersey.
Success may be harder to find these days – it’s almost five years since the last Basque stage winner at the Tour, Omar Fraile – but the roots still run deep.
