Fathers of Colombian Cycling

Words: Marcos Pereda / Images: Biblioteca Pública Piloto de Medellin para America Latina

A tale about bitter poets, Nobel laureates and two legendary champions in the land of magical realism.

A cyclist is made by pedalling. With attacks, sprints, victories. Champions are decided by newspaper headlines, by the prizes they win, by a quick glance at a palmarès. It’s how we create our stars.

But our heroes, they’re different. They ride, yes, they compete, and they win more than the others. But they are transcendent for other reasons. It’s not just the victories, nor even their panache. It’s something else, something more ethereal, not easy to explain or understand. Something tangible, something that makes you shiver inside with boyish excitement. Yes, these are the heroes: the riders that make you feel like a kid again.

This is the story of two heroes. Two cyclists and good ones too. Their country’s best of their respective eras, certainly. Two riders who were born within a few kilometres of each other. Outstanding figures, the fathers of cycling in Colombia. The mirror in which you can see the reflections of Egan Bernal, Nairo Quintana or Miguel Ángel López.

Two myths. As simple as that.

Two myths.

A Man in Marinilla

Everyone called Ramón ‘Don Ramón’. Don Ramón de Marinilla, to be precise. Ramón is Ramón Hoyos Vallejo. One of the pioneers of Colombian cycling. No less than the first ‘beetle’.

The ‘beetle’ business is a curious story because it came about by mistake. It so happened that one day Jorge Enrique Buitrago, a sportswriter who used the pen name ‘Mirón’, said that Hoyos’ style reminded him of an insect. He would climb crouched up against his handlebars, legs akimbo, ungainly, too eager. Seen from a distance, he resembles a grasshopper, thinks Mirón. But he is wrong and mixes his words up. An eternal error. There goes Ramón Hoyos Vallejo, he says, the mountain beetle. And that’s how all Colombian climbers would be known for the rest of time. But he, Ramón, Don Ramón de Marinilla, will always be the first.

Ramón Hoyos was also a great champion. Probably the greatest champion of the early years of Colombian cycling. The Vuelta a Colombia was born in 1951 and by 1958 Hoyos had already won it five times, taking 38 stage wins. His record would only ever be beaten by Cochise Rodríguez.

But we are talking about the very first Vueltas a Colombia. In a word: madness. Monstrous routes which motor vehicles couldn’t cope with but which were conquered, day after day, by the long-suffering riders. Losing hours, gaining minutes, up and down in every stage. Wading through overflowing rivers with their bikes on their shoulders, up to their knees in oceans of mud. Climbs up to an altitude over 3,000 m, where the air is thinner and lighter. And the jungle, the tropical humidity, the high temperatures, the ghosts at the summits. An adventure which takes in an entire country. And there, him.

Him.

Because the figure of Hoyos was perfect. Perfect for that place, for that time. Hoyos was a paisa, born very close to Medellín in the centre of Antioquia. He represented the pride of his region against the champions of Cundinamarca. It was they, from Bogotá, who created the Vuelta a Colombia, but it was we who won it. His duels with Efraín Forero Triviño, the indomitable ‘El Zipa’, who won the first edition of the race, are legendary and went far beyond mere sport. Zipa accused Hoyos of training too much, of having a whole team at his service while he had to fight alone against everyone and everything, especially against those who were supposed to be his teammates.

And he wasn’t far wrong, because the Antioquia teams (at that time the Vuelta a Colombia was contested by teams representing the country’s regions) were better prepared, more disciplined and worked together in the face of the chaos and anarchy that existed elsewhere and from which Forero suffered so much. The credit for this goes to Julio Arrastía, an Argentine immigrant to Colombia who brought with him ideas and a strong grasp of psychology to help him persuade each rider to put himself in the service of the strongest.

And the strongest, almost always, was Ramón Hoyos. So much so that he seemed larger than life, acquiring something of a mythical status. He rode in the jersey of the armed forces (he was doing national service) and they cheered him wherever he went. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of him. He was venerated like a lay saint. In many Antioquia homes there were two pictures on the living room wall. The first was a religious image, usually a Sacred Heart. The second was a photograph of Ramón Hoyos. Legend has it that one paisa household kept as a relic a chicken bone that had been gnawed by the great champion. How heretical, how beautiful. Such was the intensity of public fervour.

For his part, Ramón did little to encourage it. He was taciturn, quiet, sometimes even surly. Of humble origin, he never managed to rid himself of that shyness typical of those who had known hunger as children. So his comments to the press were sullen and very brief, the absolute bare minimum required of him. It didn’t matter. Everything he had to say he could say on the bicycle. And there, ascending those eternal climbs, he was the greatest. With his clumsy style, laboured but effective. Taking metres, minutes, worlds of distance from the other riders with every corner. Daring and decisive. Breaks of 100 or 150 kilometres. What’s the difference? I can do anything, I can do anything. That’s why I’m Don Ramón de Marinilla.

But the public wanted more. We know the champion, but what of the person? The inscrutable furrowed brow is not enough: fans crave smiles and stories. So a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, decided to send a young journalist to write a long biography of Ramón Hoyos, to be serialised over fourteen issues. The name of the little-known reporter was Gabriel García Márquez. Much later he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

And it was at this point that Hoyos definitively transcended his sport. Because it is impossible to tell where his life ends and Márquez’s storytelling begins. In other words, the first beetle moves to Macondo and lives in the words of ‘Gabo’. And his actions start to have symbolic meaning. What surrounds him is telluric. The dirt on his face. The ground he hits in his many crashes. Mud in the tragedy that ends the lives of his mother and sister. And dreams full of premonition. The prose of Gabriel García Márquez merges with the life of Ramón Hoyos and what emerges is a marvellous novel. The greedy author does not hesitate to appropriate reality, to twist it, to turn the tanned and taciturn face of Hoyos into a recognisable icon, a literary symbol. And we all smile, because it’s beautiful.

That’s how it is, that’s how it was, how a cyclist started to become something bigger, much bigger. An illusion shared by everyone.

Oh, Ramón Hoyos was also the subject of a painting by Fernando Botero, the most internationally-renowned Colombian artist of the 20th century. One day the painting was stolen and the artist received a ransom demand for $3,000. Certainly more money than Hoyos ever earned for riding his bike in that amateur age. Botero paid, of course. You don’t let a legend get away.

Cochise vs. The World

The kids leave the cinema. They have been to see ‘Broken Arrow’, a western with cowboys and Indians. One stands out. One of the bad guys. One of those that some call bad guys. But oh, how brave, how noble, how driven. Nothing and no one could stop him. He looked people straight in the eye and always kept his word. How could they call him a savage when he was more human than any of them? Yes, that boy, that dark-skinned boy with the deep hazel eyes, he sees it clearly. That same afternoon he tells his friends, “Don’t call me Martín Emilio any more. I prefer Cochise.”

That’s how Martín Emilio Rodríguez became known to all as Cochise Rodríguez. It was also the first time that his overpowering personality imposed itself on a stubborn reality, in the administrative matter of his name. It would not be the last.

Because Cochise was special. Charismatic, fun. Cochise always had a smile, a kind word, a controversial remark. For a journalist or photographer, Cochise was a dream. So dark, those sideburns so long, those good looks. He had the face of a heartthrob, a star of telenovelas. But there is more to winning a bike race than having a pretty face. You need legs, strength. And Cochise had these in abundance.

He was fascinating. Imperious. He was the precise opposite of what we think a Colombian cyclist is. Especially the Colombians of his era. He was tall and strong with broad shoulders and legs that moved like powerful pistons. A locomotive. Nothing like his team mates – short, thin, crazy climbers who barely knew how to ride on the flat. Cochise knew. As fast as anyone in the sprints and superb against the clock, he moved skilfully around the peloton. He was perfect: photogenic, daring and charismatic. He was a true symbol of the Colombia of the sixties and seventies.

Because Cochise, Cochise Rodríguez, was not a contemporary of Ramón Hoyos. There was barely a decade between them, but in reality the difference was much greater than that. Hoyos was a boy who came from a more rural world, simpler, more direct perhaps. Work and keep your mouth shut, that was Hoyos. Not Cochise. Cochise was a city boy, a character from Dickens in the suburbs of Medellín, someone who saw from a very early age that the bicycle would offer him a route to a better life. Hoyos wore suit trousers, Cochise the most modern of jeans. One fearfully hid his expressions from the lenses of the photographers. The other stretched his smile, pulled faces, let his eyes peek out from behind his sunglasses. Two worlds. So close, yet so far apart. They never got along. Jealous, perhaps: one of the other’s youth, the other of the first’s mystique. They never got along, no.

And what more was there? Cochise dedicated himself to winning, or rather to tyrannising Colombian cycling. He won the Vuelta a Colombia four times (winning 39 stages in the process and thus beating – such exquisite pleasure – Hoyos’ record). One Clásico RCN. And every other race you can think of. On the road and, above all, on the track.

And it was in the velodrome that Martín Emilio – sorry, Cochise – enjoyed his greatest achievements. South American Champion. World Champion in the individual pursuit. Holder of the amateur hour record (in Mexico in 1975). He was a star. It was the high point of his popularity. And the seed of what happened next.

Because in order to take on the Hour, that epic challenge, Cochise called upon the help of an Italian sponsor, Giacinto Benotto. His bicycle was Benotto-branded and ‘Benotto’ appeared on his jersey that day. Nothing unusual about that . . . except in Colombia, where cyclists were, in theory, amateurs and so not allowed to accept sponsorship money. The scandal was uncovered and Cochise saw his great dream evaporate – the Munich Olympics. Since only non-professionals competed at the Olympics in those days and he was no longer an amateur, he was not allowed to participate.

The world was at his feet. What was he to do? In Colombia he had won everything. Latin America itself seemed too small for his legs. Cochise wasted no time in deliberations and the European adventure began. He was not the first Colombian to try it (Giovanni Jiménez had been racing in Belgium for a few years already) but he was the first to be successful. He joined Salvarini and later Bianchi. Always riding as a gregario for Felice Gimondi, the great Italian champion of the time. Always subordinated to his leader. Even so, there were successes – some symbolic (he was the first Colombian to ride the Tour and the Giro) and some real. He won two stages of the Giro, the first stages to be won by a non-European at any of the Grand Tours. A milestone. His name will remain in the history books forever.

When he returned to Colombia, tired of riding for others, it was madness. The veteran champion is always more popular than the arrogant youth and Cochise returned across the Atlantic with that special aura: of a time when we were all young and still idealistic. He began to participate in special tributes arranged for his benefit and appeared in advertisements. He smiled and pressed the flesh. Some say he charged people to visit his house, though he always denied it (it’s not as crazy as it sounds – Rafael Antonio Niño, his successor as the great Colombian champion, sold tickets to his fans to watch him rest in bed). He had transcended sport like no one before him. He even had his share of literary glory, like Hoyos. Only he was interviewed not by Gabo but by Gonzalo Arango, who was a sharp-witted and sarcastic poet, someone who despised athletes merely for being athletes. And the conversation was disrespectful, aggressive with the two almost coming to blows. The result is fantastic, of course. The same can be said for the difference between the two stories, that of García Marquez and that of Arango, which marks the changes in Colombia between the 1950s and the 1970s. Or, while we’re making comparisons, the evolution from Hoyos to Cochise.

Maybe. Only maybe.

They never got on, Cochise and Hoyos. They were civil, never making direct attacks and would never have dreamt of being disrespectful. That’s for others, who have no manners. But there were never compliments or flowers. They avoided fine words and let slip only minor complaints. Of course, Rodriguez said, he got a lot of help from his teammates. And he, responded Hoyos, was never able to gain time in the mountains. They looked at each other. The two of them. Knowing they were legends. Still more, repositories of something transcendental, something inexhaustible.

Both Ramón Hoyos and Cochise Rodríguez were the pride of an entire nation.

This feature first appeared in Conquista 22.
Conquista and Marcos Pereda would like to thank Esteban Duperly for his assistance.