Victor Hugo Pena: 2004 Tour de France

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Outside Magazine, July 2004

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2004 Tour de France: The Ultimate Guide
Mountain Grown (cont.)


	Parts for sale: a bike shop in Medelín (Antonin Kratochvil)

PEÑA AND BOTERO are Colombia's two most well-rounded cyclists, but that doesn't mean they win races in Colombia, where the climber is king. In 1997, Botero led the Vuelta a Colombia for a stage, but when the race hit the mountains, he could barely finish. Peña's best Vuelta showing was eighth.

"In Europe, I can be a climber," he says. "In Colombia, I am no climber."

That was evident from the get-go. "In my first race, on the first climb—the first rider dropped was me," Peña remembers. He was 19, a late starter because his father had long refused to let him ride competitively. Hugo Peña had been a national track-cycling champion in 1974 and rode the Vuelta a Colombia for several years, delivering telegrams by bike to make ends meet. He believed the cycling life was too difficult; better for Victor to hang out at the pool and watch girls. Victor had obviously inherited his father's athleticism, though, and he swam well enough to win two national championships in the breaststroke. In the end, Hugo relented and let him ride.

As it turned out, Peña could do something most Colombians couldn't. On the velodrome, he demonstrated the kind of relentless speed that wins time trials and pursuit races. Those skills made him a hot property. "A Colombian who can time-trial is basically a complete rider," says Bruyneel. "Because they can all go uphill."

In 2000, riding for Vitalicio Seguros, a Spanish team, Peña won a time-trial stage in the Giro d'Italia—a huge triumph for a Colombian. His reward? A season of abuse from his Spanish team's director, which eventually led the hot-tempered Peña to challenge the man to a fistfight on the team bus during the Vuelta a España.

After that season, it looked as if Peña would end up like so many Colombians racing in Europe: homesick and burned out. But then Bruyneel placed a call to Peña's agent. He remembered seeing Peña perform well in 1998, Bruyneel's last year as a racer. After negotiating a handshake deal for a low- to mid-six-figure salary, Peña joined the team that had helped Lance Armstrong win two Tours de France.

In January 2001, Peña flew to Tucson, Arizona, for what he thought would be a two-week training camp with his fellow Postal support riders. Instead, Lance himself picked him up, and they drove out to a cabin deep in the woods on Mount Lemmon, which rises north of the city. It was just the two of them: Lance, the millionaire superstar, and Peña, the poor kid from Piedecuesta, who spoke no English at all. Every day they rode five or six hours on the empty desert roads, always finishing with a long climb back to the cabin.

While the team atmosphere was more relaxed than Peña expected, he'd never worked harder. Along with Viatcheslav Ekimov and George Hincapie, Peña became one of Postal's designated hard men, the guys who ride up front, chasing down dangerous breakaways. Postal's enforcers are so good, and so feared, they can quell other riders' ambitions with a sharp word—or even a look.

Even so, helping Lance win doesn't mean Peña's job is ever secure. After his two-year contract ended, Postal cut his salary by more than a third, with little explanation. "He'd had a medium season," says Bruyneel, unapologetic about the brutal economy for gregarios.

To everyone's surprise, Peña didn't complain. The money still went a long way back home, and there were certainly advantages to riding for the Tour-winning team while waiting for his chance to ride for Colombia—and for himself.

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