You see him at the interviews after the arrival and strikes you for that somewhat rude and light -hearted air of those who know they have made it big …: “I believed and now I’m happy …” he says Ben Healy That today in Vire in Normandy won, with one of his improbable escapes, the sixth stage of the tour greeting the companions with whom he had left in advance 41 kilometers from the finish. “I had been looking for her because it seemed to me- explained- we had decided from the beginning of trying to win here. And this is one of those days you dream of as a child even if in truth as a child I did not really hope”.
And perhaps his escape companions did not even think so when they saw him leave More worried perhaps to understand what he decided to do Mathieu van der Poel than to go to him. So I took it a little comfortable. Maybe too much. So kilometer after kilometer the detachment went up: twenty seconds, thirty, fifty, one minute, one minute and a half, goodbye … Ben Healy on bike does not seem one who is strong. You see it pedal and don’t give him two lire. Indeed two Irish pounds since Ben Healy, born 24 years ago in Kingswinford in the English Western Midlands 5 miles from Dudley, is actually Irish because Irish are his and he preferred his family passport thinking that in Ireland he would have had more chances to pedal and get noticed than in England.
Ruffled hair, beard letting go, earrings, smart smile Of those who do not understand if you are more shy or already know it long, one like this as you expect it in a donegal pub or a concert by the Pogues or Waterboys. Instead you find it on the tour and recognize it from afar because by bike it is not an example of style. Indeed I pedal badly, just badly. It is all wrong, it stands with wide feet, rises, resides, takes, agitated with your shoulders, starts again. Today on the penultimate Cote of Vaudry went up to Zigzgag, it seemed almost about to stop and instead went strong, quite strong so much so that from behind after chasing him they also tried to have raised the white flag. In the cycling to which Pogacar and phenomena are accustomed today, forty -one kilometer escape are not a record. But you have to make them, you have to have the courage or unconsciousness to try, you have to be clear in the head that will be struggling to do it, that there are several possibilities of not succeeding, which may go wrong, that it will be just a waste of energy …
But Ben Healy is one of those runners who has the allergy to be in a group And these things always put them into account. But as soon as he can he leave alone. It seems that you start because a few hundred meters ahead has an appointment with the relatives to be greeting, and then you don’t take it anymore. It looks like one who is on a bike by chance so much so that, when he had begun to run the Irish technicians of his team at the time by Mountainbike, they had made him understand that it was not a thing and had discarded him. But the end is often a new beginning and so the Irish young man had thought (well) to try on the street encouraged by Martin O’loughlin the man who reconstructed the cycling of the Irish national team. He had taken it in question by winning the Ronde de l’Isard in France, considered one of the best under 23 races in the world, and a stage at the Tour de l’Avenir. Then Zappi arrived, the contract with Trinity and, three years ago, the professional one with Education First. Last year he won a stop at the Giro, today he won another at the Tour. And for one who pedals badly, it’s not bad, beyond the word games … “