Beat Intxausti, great in health and disease

After four seasons of hellish fight against a cytomegaovirus, Beat Intxausti announced his retirement from cycling two months after his 34th birthday.

“Beat Intxausti is a good project for a complete runner: a good climber and decent time trial – his victory in the chrono of the last Tour of Asturias attests to it – but he still needs to confirm his excellent prospects with victories. In a team like Unzue find a good accommodation to grow as a professional “, published El Mundo in September 2010, when it was officially known that it will go from Euskaltel to the new name of the Eusebio Unzu team in 2011, the Movistar Team.

In 2007 he had promoted to professional in the modest Nicols Mateos Group. A year later I recalled at the Saunier Duval and in 2010 I went to Euskaltel-Euskadi. In 2011 stability came with the Movistar Team, five seasons that ended the offer of the powerful Team Sky. Three signed campaigns, very few races. A devastating cytomegalovirus took her with her body shortly after debuting with the British in the Tour of the Valencian Community that won her partner Wout Poels and ended up in the third step of the podium.

Maybe the disease was not treated correctly, always looking back in these cases is harmful and nothing constructive. He recognized him a year ago, when he began his last professional season with Euskadi-Murias. “Sometimes I have sinned from over-exertion, I did more than I should and it was counterproductive,” he told us in Benidorm.

This Monday, in Bilbao, he officially takes off from professional cycling to journalists and in the company of friends with whom he has been and has suffered all these years, people of the profession. A simple act in a hotel, without excessive sentimentality, as they tell us. They passed through his speech the lost illusion, his bravery, the successes (with special mention to his day with the pink maglia in the Tour of Italy 2013, “the only vizcano in dressing her”, and the “pride” for everything he got in 13 years of exclusive dedication to the bicycle. Hollow will have in other areas of the sport.