The Ecuadorian Ministry of Sports has launched an investigation into the performance of its cycling federation (FEC) when setting selection criteria for the Paris Olympic Games that would leave out Richard Carapaz, champion in Tokyo 2020, in favor of Jhonatan Narváez. It also demands that the federation delay the announcement of the chosen rider, initially scheduled for the 26th. All of this occurs as a result of the insistence of Carapaz himself, who, as he explains in a letter he made public on Monday, suspects “a lack of equity in the process and a lack of transparency that only perpetuates doubts about the partiality of the process.” . And he states: “It is evident that the FEC regulations only have criteria that favor my compatriot.”
Richard Carapaz is Ecuadorian, from Carchi, but he has grown up as a cyclist in Colombia and Spain, and he has never held his tongue when expressing his opinion about the lack of support that the sports authorities of his country have given him, not even when he defeated Van Aert and Pogacar, no less, to become Olympic champion in 2021 on the Fuji circuit, next to Tokyo. He then denounced that if it had not been for the material and spiritual contribution of his team, Ineos, not only would he not have been able to win, he would not even have been able to compete.
Ecuador has only three Olympic champions in its entire history, the walker Jefferson Pérez, the weightlifter Neisi Dajomes and Richard Carapaz.
Despite the growth of its cycling, thanks precisely to the emergence of Carapaz as winner of the 2019 Giro, Ecuador is not yet part of the great powers and only has one Olympic place. It doesn’t even have one wild card so that the champion can defend his title, and when the FEC requested it, in April, it was too late for his request to be met. “Apart from being the current Olympic champion, I am, by far, the Ecuadorian cyclist who has contributed the most points to obtain the Olympic quota,” adds Carapaz. “This contribution reinforces my right to a fair and transparent selection process.”
Freedom of expression, when talking about federations and Olympic committees, and in all countries, has a price, and Carapaz, 31, was able to verify this last March, when the Ecuadorian federation published the selection criteria for the Paris Games, which established that they would be based on the ranking of the International Cycling Union (UCI), but with a nuance. If the UCI ranking, on which the promotions and relegations of the teams are also based, is an evolutionary classification that takes into account the results of the last 12 months, the Ecuadorian federation would only count the results of the current year, starting from the January 1, 2024. In the current UCI ranking, which has not yet counted the results of the Giro d’Italia, a race in which Narváez, 27, won a stage and one day wore the jersey pink, Carapaz, who races with EF, is in 54th place, with 1,399 points, ahead of Narváez (57th, 1,351 points). However, if counted only in 2024, Narváez (Ineos) has 870 points, including the 100 that allow him to win the Ecuadorian championship ahead of Carapaz, precisely, compared to the current Olympic champion’s 524.
Carapaz accepts that these criteria could have been fair if they had been published at the beginning of the Olympic cycle or at the end of 2022, “when all cyclists would have been able to plan the season equitably.” “However,” he stresses, “its publication in an improvised manner and without room for maneuver seems to be designed to keep me out of Paris and exempt the president of the FEC from any responsibility.” When they were published, in March, Narváez, who started the season in January, in the Tour Down Under, already had 595 points, while Carapaz, who started in February, in the Tour Colombia, which awards few points, only reached 244 , thanks, above all, to his victory in the national time trial championship.
“Our intervention seeks to prevent a negative precedent from being set for Ecuadorian sports,” the Ministry of Sports concludes, “since it calls into question the transparency of a process that should have reflected justice, equity and integrity.”
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