Everyone wanted to say goodbye to him. Among them, placed in the front row, afflicted and in recognition of his hard and devastating pedal stroke, were his former teammate Luis Ocaña, whom he helped win the Vuelta in 1973 wearing the Bic jersey, and his rival and universal cycling icon Eddy Merckx. Although he rubbed shoulders with everyone, with the best, including Hinault and Poulidor. Thus, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mario Soares, and the President of the Republic, General Antonio Ramalho Eanes, were not missing from the funeral chapel in the Basilica of the Star of Lisbon; nor were there thousands of people who came to cause two kilometres of queues in order to be able to say goodbye to him, since the burial, a more reserved ceremony, was in Brejenjas, his hometown. Joaquim Agostinho (Torre Vedras, Portugal; 1943-1984) had earned it on a bicycle despite his tragic end. A fado on wheels that will now be taking part in the Vuelta, which in the second stage will pass through the town of the best Portuguese cyclist in history. “It is no coincidence that we pass through there. It is a nod to the cyclist,” says Javier Guillén, director of the event.
“There were no professional cyclists in Portugal and he was the benchmark of the time, and he also prolonged his career for a long time, perhaps because he wanted to end up racing in his country as he had always done so abroad,” says former cyclist Pedro Delgado. Thus, Agostinho was 41 years old and had already retired, but his competitiveness remained intact, as he got back into cycling in Portugal and even planned to sign with Skil to ride the Tour de France for the fourteenth time to equal Joop Zoetemelk’s record. It was not to be. In April 1984, in the time trial of the Vuelta al Algarve, the fifth stage in which he was defending his lead, a dog crossed his path when he had barely 300 metres to the finish line. He hit the ground and that caused him a head injury, the third of his career – the first time was at the debut of the Vuelta, on the way to Tarragona (1972); The second in 1979 was the final one. Although he got up and finished the stage with the help of two companions, a series of fatalities ended his life. He was not wearing a helmet; he spent two hours in the hotel to rest, but the pain did not subside and he went to the hospital, which did not have a neurosurgery service; he had to travel 300 kilometres to Lisbon by ambulance; and, at the last moment, the Sporting management decided not to entrust its champion to a public hospital. The operation was late and nine others followed. But nothing could be done, because on May 10, Agostinho got off his bike to go to heaven.
Raised in a humble family of peasants, a field worker – “the bicycle is my plow,” he would say over the years – Agostinho did his military service in Mozambique, destined for the front in the war of independence of the African colony. He suffered from malaria, saw many of his comrades perish and was saved from the explosion of a mine. But he also ran his first races among the military and, when he returned, he competed for the first time on the bike of a friend of his sister, and he won in the end. Short but strong, his aerobic capacity and power were unparalleled, to the point that over time the international press dubbed him Hulk. The scouts invited him to participate in the Portuguese Championship – he won six times in a row, both the time trial and the road race – and from there to the Vuelta de São Paulo, where he also won the laurel. At 25, he signed for a professional team – Sporting – and began a successful career, second in the 1974 Vuelta, third in the 1978 and 1979 Tour. “I met him on my first tour. He spoke broken Spanish, but he was not very talkative, and even less so with someone who was just starting out. He was a character because of his past, but as a rider he was an all-rounder who worked on the flat, in the mountains, a great gregarious person who looked out for others. I also remember that he was very robust and that you always found protection in him for the fans,” explains Delgado.
Although perhaps his most memorable triumph was in the Tour, 12 days after his second head injury, a day in which he covered the Madeleine, the Galibier and the Alpe d’Huez, the queen stage in which he won by more than three minutes over Joop and Bernard. That is why on the fourteenth bend of the Alpe d’Huez [de las 21 que hay] A three-metre bronze bust has been erected in his honour. One of the many posthumous tokens of affection he received, since the Torres Vedras GP became the Joaquim Agostinho Trophy – one of the most important races in Portugal -, several streets in the country are named after him, a museum in his town about cycling… “He marked the history of cycling in our country and is a source of pride for the Portuguese, he is a heavyweight, the most important, the best,” explains Rui Costa, an EF rider, from the Sana Metropolitan hotel in Lisbon. “Since I started cycling, I have always heard stories about him and the results he achieved,” adds the rider, one of the 12 Portuguese cyclists with stage victories in the grand tours, three in the Tour and one in the Vuelta in his case. None, in any case, more than Acacio da Silva, eight at the end of the 80s. But nobody disputes the award of best Portuguese cyclist to Joaquim, the only one on a great podium. Hence the fado of Agostinho de la Vuelta.
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