Long before he would take a bow, clad in the white jersey, on the podium in the shadow of the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, long before he would rise in clever, frenetic fashion to fifth on GC in the Vuelta a España, Gino Mäder rolled to a halt at the foot of a different cathedral in Burgos, the evening light pooling shadows in its high-Gothic tendrils and spirals. Big disc wheel slowing, whomp, whomp, whomp, he stopped when called and coughed into his fist from the dry heat.
“You cut your hair,” I observed. We had never spoken before, and this was an easy opener, the absence of Mäder’s familiar head of afro-like curls. He laughed.
“I had to do something to help with the heat.”
“Did it help?”…
