“The yellow jersey is a dream come true for me. Because of the great respect I have for the Tour de France, it’s a magical moment for me. I wanted to seize this opportunity and I succeeded. We worked well as a team in the finale, which was nothing short of spectacular.” Tomorrow on the Galibier, the yellow jersey will be on the shoulders of the Ecuadorian Richard Carapazwho today in Turin snatches it from a Tadej Pogačar who keeps himself well away from the risks of the sprint. He is a man in command: we will see in Valloire. And he is the first Ecuadorian in history to wear the leader’s jersey at the Tour. A dream comes true but he is not the first because the climber of the Education First he has already climbed onto the podium of the Grande Boucle and has already won a lot including a Giro and an Olympic gold medal, even if he won’t go to Paris this time because he wasn’t called up. But the Olympics, at least today, are not on his mind “This jersey is the best in the world – he says at the finish line – Tomorrow will be a tough day and the rest of the week will be complicated so we will do our best and enjoy every moment. This is history, it is the culmination of a huge amount of work, always far from my family and my country … “. But the story of the thirty-one year old Richard Carapazbegins in Ecuador one morning many years ago when his father, in a landfill in the municipality of El Carmelo in the Canton of Tulcan, recovers a rather battered bicycle. However, he fixes it up and gives it to him as a gift. From there it is a moment to find himself at 15 years old pedaling in the Carchense Panavial-Courage, an amateur team from the Province of Carchi, side by side with hopefuls and champions. And it is also a moment to start winning the Vuelta del Guatemala or the Panamericano Under 23 title. It always starts like this. But time flies by and five years ago, all dressed in pink, Carapaz enters the Verona Arena as a winner. The 102nd Giro is his. A triumph almost as an unknown that comes after a victory in the Vuelta a Navarra and a fourth place in the Vuelta a Castillo y Leon. Not much because the Giro is the Giro especially in Ecuador where cycling is the most followed sport, where offices and shops close to follow its stages, where if you exclude the tennis player Andres Gomez who surprisingly won the Roland Garros in 1990, beating Agassi and the race walker in the final Jefferson Perez gold medal (the only one) in the race walk at the Atlanta Olympics in ’96, no one had ever won anything. So the story of Carapaz becomes the national story, it becomes parties, photos, redemptions and dreams that come true. It becomes the podium at the Tour and it becomes a gold medal at the Tokyo games on the slopes of Mount Fuji which may not be Mount Olympus but it looks a lot like it. It becomes a fairy tale with a happy ending if you think that only a few years ago the champion of Education First could not even train and took care of his family’s livestock on the farm in Carchi. Also for this reason the yellow jersey today is a dream come true…