Egan Bernal, the brilliant young Colombian who will probably win every race he enters next year, including the Tour de France, recently admitted to me that he gets out of breath walking upstairs. He wasn’t joking, either.
Bernal spends much of his life these days in hotel lobbies, car parks and on roads throughout Europe, at sea level, with occasional excursions up into the Alps, either for racing, or for training purposes. His professional existence is thus played out far from home, in an alien environment, where the air is thick with oxygen, silky with nourishment like full fat yoghurt. Where he comes from, the atmosphere is distinctly semi-skimmed, an appallingly meagre affair.
Twice a year, Bernal gets the opportunity to return home, climbing aboard a Boeing. He takes his…
