This week, O Gran Camiño, cycling race during the Galician Entroido

For a couple of harsh weeks of Galician winter, O Gran Camiño was home to Jonas Vingegaard, who responded to the love of the fans by giving his all and winning everything there was to win. This week, the great Dane will not be in a race that is justly increasing its days from four to five, and is internationalised from Oporto. “It’s because I was very cold,” said the winner of two Tours, who chose to race, and win, in the sunny Algarve last week, and, ironically, the same sun and good weather are announced for Galicia this week of Entroido.

Born from the imagination and desire of former Galician cyclist Ezequiel Mosquera, and living up to its name, in O Gran Camiño the journey is more important than the destination, the way it is organised and broadcast on television is more significant than the names of the cyclists who take part. There will be no big names, nor many big teams. The dates are killer, not only because of the possibility of bad weather. Sandwiched between the big week in February when the cracks made their debut – the Tour of the Emirates, the Vuelta a Andalucía, the Volta al Algarve and the Tour of the Alps coincided seven days ago – and the week of March from the 9th to the 16th when the first two major stage races coincide – Paris-Nice, Vingegaard’s next objective, and Tirreno-Adriatico which will see Juan Ayuso and Mikel Landa make their debut in 2025 – and coinciding with Het Volk, the opening shot of the Flemish classics, and terrain for Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert and, this year, Tadej Pogacar, O Gran Camiño breathes strongly, and grows, thanks to its culture and philosophy and thanks to its route which, as Mosquera always remembers, “unites heritage, legend and territory in a magical, almost mystical way”. Mosquera also says, continuing in his universe, that to organize this idea you need a creative, lyrical mind, and a square mind, which accepts the world of calculation and fear of cycling, as square, he adds, it is the head of the heads of the team leaders and of the leaders of the International Cycling Union (UCI), who devised the points system to classify the teams as if it were a football league, with promotions and relegations. “The system harms cycling and the Spanish organizers of stage races because a race, like ours, of category 2.1 (the third in stage races, after the WorldTour and the 2.Pro) only awards 14 points to the winner of each stage and 125 to the final winner of the general classification,” explains Mosquera. “While a one-day race like the Almería classic, 1.Pro, gives 200 points to the winner. "In the two years that Vingegaard has won here, he has taken fewer points than any second-tier sprinter who wins in Almería or Estella. It is normal for teams looking to stay in the league to focus on one-day races and forget about stage races. I could organise five one-day classics in a row, of course, but that would put an end to the philosophy of this race, and to the interest of the sponsors."

Santiago is reached from all over the world by many roads, but at least five pass through Galicia, the five that the race will cover this year, one more than in the first three editions, and the increase, with the addition of Oporto, underlines that in reality there are five Galician provinces. On Wednesday, there will be a round trip to the outskirts of Oporto – from Maia to Matosinhos beach – along the so-called Portuguese roads , the Braga, the central and the coastal roads. On Thursday, the gossips, between Marín and A Estrada, Pontevedra, and on Friday, the time trial, 15 kilometres from Ourense to Pereiro de Aguiar, and prehistory. On Saturday, Lugo and its mountains, from A Pobra do Brollón and O Cebreiro, and on Sunday, from Betanzos, arrival at Obradoiro de Santiago entering through O Milladoiro, and they will humble themselves, dazzled, by its dirt roads.

And during carnivals it will travel along narrow and steep roads and through villages and hills, and through oak and chestnut forests, on Thursdays of gossip, Fridays of folións and compadreo, Saturdays of goat feasts and Sundays of Entroido. And the fans will eat turnip greens and orella and sigh for the Galician idol Carlos Canal and for the youngsters of Kern, led by the Navarrese Urko Berrade, who became great in the Vuelta. And it will be a party.