Don’t be fooled by the big smile

‘Chavito’ Chaves is the fresh faced Colombian winner of the Abu Dhabi Tour and a doublemountain stagewinner at the 2015 Vuelta. He has theworld at his feet, but his journey to get there is a heroic tale of recovery froma career-threatening crash

Words Gregor Brown, 

Cycle Sport, January 2016

Saturday, February 16, 2013. Esteban Chaves’s body and cycling career is wrapped around a signpost, fractured and motionless on the SP13 road that descends to Laigueglia, Italy. Had it not been for some clever surgeons back home in Bogotá, Colombia, and the faith of team Orica-GreenEDGE, Chaves might never have raced again.

Before returning to the top in 2015, Chaves had tried everything to recover fromthat career-threatening injury at Trofeo Laigueglia. Everywhere he searched on the internet, the freckle-faced Colombian read that the shredded and ripped nerves in his right armwouldmean he had “little chance” to race again. But thewords that his father had repeated since he was a little boy resonated in his head: “If you have a dream, fight for it.”

After nine-hours in surgery followed by 12months without being able tomove his armfully, Chaves returned
with Australia’s World Tour team Orica-GreenEDGE in 2014. At the tail end of the 2015 season, he beat cycling’s best on two summit finishes in the Vuelta a España. Chaves continued to the Abu Dhabi Tour, his final 2015 appointment, sensationallywinning the queen stage on Jebel Hafeet and with it the overall classification.

Fighting spirit
It had been a roller coaster ride: winning the top amateur stage race in 2011, the Tour de l’Avenir, facing up to the possibility that his career was finished after the 2013 Trofeo Laigueglia crash, and now standing with cycling’s élite. After theAbuDhabi Tour, cycling’s governing body, the UCI, hosted a galawhere all the grand tour winners were called to the stage alongwith others, including Chaves.
“You have two ways, fight or go back,” Chaves says. “My father taught me to continue to fight and try.”

The dreamcontinues, too. Chaves, 25, will say without blinking his dark green eyes that he is confident he can win the Tour de France.

“My dad’s a dreamer. He taught us the same. If you have a dream, you fight for it. If your dream is to go for the moon, thenwhy not? Try it. That’s the best way.”

Chaves smiles often and his white teeth help light up his friendly face. Dutchman Tom Dumoulin, who placed second behind Chaves in the Vuelta’s second stage and surprised many to compete for the overall, remembers his rival from the early days.

“Mikel Landa or Fabio Aru, they can produce the watts per kilo like Chaves, but the thing that stands out, like it did when I first met him at the Tour de l’Avenir the year he won, is his character,” Dumoulin says.

“He’s super friendly, really open. Especially so for the Colombians, who are normally quite closed in character.” The day before the queen stage in Abu Dhabi, Chaves agreed to this interview. But what if he won the stage the next day? And what about the long transfer back to the hotel after the summit finish at Jebel Hafeet? “Don’t worry” he said, “no problem.”

Chaves attacked solo on the 11-kilometre climb in the Abu Dhabi desert. He stayed upright through the final
corner, where Sky’s Wout Poels crashed, and won the stage. After an anti-doping test, a press conference and one hour in the car, he said, “Let’s meet after dinner.”
Such openness and availability is heartening given the struggles he’s had over the last two years.

Career ending
When he was 23 years old, Chaves raced in the black colours of Team Colombia. A quasi-national team
sponsored by the Ministry of Sports and based in Italy, home of manager Claudio Corti. After a successful first year in 2012, Corti told Chaves he would be on the list to ride the 2013 Giro d’Italia if the team received an invitation.
Part of the build up would include the Trofeo Laigueglia, a tough one-day race that finishes along Italy’s northwest coast near San Remo.

Chaves lined up on the startline on February 16, but he never finished. In fact he is still not sure what happened that day and the three days afterwards. His team-mate said that after 100 kilometres into the race, he misjudged a corner, hit a sidewalk and slammed into a road sign.
“The crash was bad,” Chaves says.

Chaves met with Cycle Sport on the terrace of the hotel around 10pm in the evening. He and the team had
celebrated his win with a beer and watched Australia play in the rugby World Cup. The humidity in the Abu Dhabi night was around 80 per cent. Beads of sweat ran down from his dark hair onto his brown skin, but he was happy to tell his story.

“I had a trauma to the head, blood in the lungs, a fractured jaw, broken ribs, collarbone, inner ear. It was bad. I can’t remember the crash. I forgot four days of my life.”
Chaves, after hearing what happened in the crash from a team helper in the hospital, asked to use his telephone so that he could call his parents. He spoke to his father Jairo, telling him the details and that he was in the hospital.
Unknowingly, Chaves had already made the same call four times to his father.

The medical situation slowly improved. The swelling on his brain went down. Chaves underwent surgery to fix his collarbone and his other injuries began to heal. As soon as he could, he flew back to Bogotá, where a doctor’s check revealed something serious, torn nerves. Chaves’s axillary nerve was ripped apart and the suprascapular nerve partially severed.

“They were damaged in the crash because my arm was pulled so far back,” Chaves adds. “That was the worst part. If you look in Google, reading one or two cases, you discover there’s no chance.
“I thought my career was over. What can you do? You are 23 and you have to re-start, you can’t race. Nothing.”

He flew back to Italy for another consultation. They confirmed the same problem, but did not share the same
urgency as doctors in Bogotá. Back home on May 30, doctors operated on him for nine hours, finding and tying together the damaged nerves. Because they were frayed so badly, doctors cut open his foot to remove nerves to fill the three-centimetre gap in his arm.
“I found doctors in Colombia who could do it. I was lucky. My surgerywent well and they told me I could recover, but I had to work a lot.”

Chaves, who was completely ignoring the rugbymatch now, is modest. He had to learn to do everything with his left hand, to write, to brush his teeth, everything. He could not lift his arm right up for one year. Thankfully, he could still pedal. He watched his team-mates debut in the Giro d’Italia. He stayed in his room while his friends rode on Sunday and sometimes pedalled his turbo trainer. He passed five weeks indoors with the help of his parents and younger brother before he rode for the first time, a half-hour to 40-minute ride that paved the way to the Vuelta and Abu Dhabi.

Colombian pioneers
To understand Chaves’s optimism, it is best to look at its origins. Dad Jairo was an avid follower of Colombia’s first golden period, whenCafé de Colombia raced in Europe and Luis Herrera ruled. Herrerawon theAlpe d’Huez stage in the Tour de France and became the first fromhis country to win a grand tour in the 1987 Vuelta a España.

Jairo transmitted his energy to ‘Chavito’ when hewas born in 1990. He took him to theworld championships in their backyard in 1995 when Abraham Olano won. He explained time splits and checks whenColombian Santiago Botero took the 2002 time trial world title. And he cheered along with his growing sonwatching Félix Cárdenas and Victor Hugo Peña in the Tour.
“My dad is truly a fan,” Chaves says.

“Herrera’s win in theVuelta in the 80s was a real important event for the country because at that moment it
was a really difficult periodwith Pablo Escobar and all that stuff. When a sport shows the beautiful face of the country, the people are proud for that. My father was crazy for cycling, the riders, and the ambiance.

“He didn’t pushme or my brother to do professional sports. Hewanted us to participate for the discipline, to stay away fromthe nightlife with the parties and alcohol, and all of this. He put us in soccer, running, or swimming.”

A duathlon event at 12 or 13 years old convinced Chaves cycling was his sport. On a borrowed bicycle over 20 kilometres, he caught and passedmany of his rivals while remembering those moments watching the Tour with his dad.

“‘If you like it, if you have dreams, try it,’my dad toldme. I said, ‘Dad, I want to do running!’ And he said, ‘OK, try it.’ “Then I toldmy dad, ‘I love this, I feel good on the bike.’

He replied, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ He never said ‘no.’

“My mum, Carolina, she was important in the process. Normally a mum might tell your dad, ‘No, you need to study and do this or that.’ But she supported us.”

Proud successor
Chaves is part of a newgolden era inColombian cycling. He helped his close friend and former team-mate, Nairo Quintana win the Tour de l’Avenir in 2010, one year before he won the race himself. Quintana, besides finishing second to Sky’s Chris Froome twice in the Tour, became only the secondColombian towin a grand tour at the 2014 Giro.
The current generation of Colombian professionals includes Rigoberto Urán Urán, Sergio Henao and his cousin Sebastián Henao, Carlos Betancur and Julian Arredondo.

What sets themapart is that they live in Europemost of the year and knowwhat to expect, whereas the former
generation lived, ate and trained in Colombia. Chaves, who now lives betweenGirona, Spain, and Andorra, first made the transatlantic journey with his amateur teamColombia Es Pasion-Coldeportes. He joined ClaudioCorti’s Colombia teamandmoved into the former home of Corti’s parents in Curno, outside of Bergamo in Italy’s north.

“I was putting together the team, I saw that he won the l’Avenir. I was interested, for sure,” Corti explains.
“He showed right awaywith teamColombia that he had motivation and thementality to emerge in international
cycling. You can tell when someone is very determined. He had something extra in his hopes and desires.

“If he sees a building there andwants to get to the top, he will look for a ladder. If there’s not a ladder, he’ll look for a friend with a rope to drop down. Or any other way.”

French talent Romain Bardet, now with teamAG2R La Mondiale, finished further down the classification from Quintana andChaves in the 2010 and 2011 editions of the Tour de l’Avenir. He said at the time, Quintana is pure class, but Chaves is an opportunist. Chaves, however, proved to have quality as well as fighting spirit.

“It was difficult to live alone in Europewith different languages, Italian and English, but you find yourself in these situations in your life no matter what you do,” Chaves explains.

“In Curno, I livedwith Jarlinson Pantano and Robinson Chalapud.We had four of us in one apartment, in two rooms.We were like a small family there: living together, making food, organising the house, travelling to the races and going home together. It was a small family of brothers. “2012 was my first year as a professional. My first year completely away fromhome, I lived a different language, culture, passed a full winter in Italy when it was cold. Those conditionsmade me tough.”

In that first year, Chaves won the final stage and the youth classification in the prestigious Spanish stage race,
theVuelta a Burgos. He returned to Italy, and collected the winner’s flowers in the one-dayGPCamaiore. Those victories caught the eye of the talent spotters Aussie lifeline Chaves received a call fromNeil Stephensmidway through 2013 while he was in Bogotá recovering fromthe crash.
Stephens had directed theAustralian team the year Chaves won the l’Avenir and theOrica-GreenEdge teamwhen he won the Burgos stage. Despite Chaves’s injuries, Orica wanted to sign him.
“If that operation had not been successful, his career would’ve been finished at 23 years old,” Orica sports director, MattWhite explains.

“We gave himmoney so he could get the best possible treatment and then at the end of September, we had him re-tested again and the doctorsmade the call that he’d be ready to race the next year. Even at that time, he could not raise his armso-high or shake your hand properly.”

They agreed on a three-year contract, 2014 through 2016, which was extended for two more years, through 2018, thisMay.

“Orica was my light at the end of the tunnel,” Chaves says with his team-mates watching a post-rugby show on TV. 

“I thought, ‘My career is not over. One day, I can race the Tour. I have a contract.’ That helped me get up and go to therapy daily.

“It was hard though, you get up day after day for three months and see no progress, but that light at the end of the tunnel was Orica. That wasmymotivation to continue. I was one step away frommy dream.”

In a comeback race, the 2014 Tour of Langkawi, Chaves climbed to fourth on the queen stage to the Genting Highlands resort. He rode back to the teamcar afterwards, sat in the back seat and cried as all the emotions from the past 12 months came out.

Chaves continued to improve and placed fourth overall in Malaysia. He said then in clear words, “Everyone asks me what my dreams are. I’m confident that I can win the Tour de France.”
He is progressingwell. Hewon the queen stages in the Tour of Californiawith team-mateAdamYates’s help and in the Tour de Suisse ahead of recognised professionals Roman Kreuziger and Bauke Mollema. The upward trend continued in 2015.

“Everything now—theVuelta, Suisse, California, Abu Dhabi — it’s oneway to say thank you toOrica for believing in me during a difficult part inmy life,” Chaves explains.
“They might not know, but they savedme. I have to say ‘thanks.’Without them, I may not have been able to push so hard.”

Just like the results, the kindness keeps coming. Cycle Sport thanked Chaves for continuing his long day and
sweating through an interview in Abu Dhabi’s oven. Chaves replies, “Thank you, friend.”


Colombian stars
Quintana onChaves
Nairo Quintana was born less than a month after Chaves — on February 4 compared to January 17, 1990 — but has gone further in cycling. In July, he battled with Froome until the final day on Alpe d’Huez and lost by 1-12.
They two spent two years together in the Es Pasion-Coldeportes team, in 2010 and 2011, when they each won the Tour de l’Avenir. They remain good friends and are often spotted talking and laughing together at races.

“We’ve always got on well,” Quintana explains. “He’s strong, you saw that as early as the l’Avenir. He worked for me to win and then I did the same for him. I’m happy that he came back from his injury and found a good team.

“Can he match me in a grand tour? I don’t know. Right now, he’s showing big things in races like the Vuelta. In one-week races he can do well, go for the GC in races like Paris-Nice.

“Now he’s with Orica, a big team that is organised and helping him work. Se abrio el cielo—or the door has opened for him to reach greater things.”


2016 programme
Time trials — must do better
Chaves will race the Giro and Vuelta in 2016 andwill target the overall. With trophies adding up, it could be easy to overlook his weaknesses. The biggest ones, he admits, are his ability to accelerate quickly on climbs and to ride an aero time trial bike.

Colombians regularly face climbs of 30 to 40 kilometres where resistance wins over the ability to launch multiple Alberto Contador-style attacks.

“In his first year at Tirreno-Adriatico, he was demoralised because he couldn’t stay with the best riders,” Claudio Corti explains.

“That’s one of the hardest races, all the riders are in form, it’s up or down the whole time. But in Colombia, you race with resistance, not with force. He wasn’t trained to use his strength because in Colombia it’s not needed.”

Chaves says his accelerations are still not perfect because had they been, he could have stayedwith Contador and Fabio Aru when the Giro climbed to the Abetone ski resort in May and possibly claimed the pink jersey. Instead, he slipped fromsecond to sixth overall.

“In Europe, we often have stages with three climbs of 10 kilometres each, that’s a big difference to Colombia.We have to learn to handle that and improve. We have to do intervals, go up and down on one climb and learn how to do it,” Chaves explains.

“I was really disappointed after that Giro stage. That showedme that I need to
trainmorewithmy accelerations. I need to train on a three to four day block because the Giro is like this. More kilometres and accelerations. I focused for the Vuelta. I stayed in Colombia and trained like a crazy motherf*****r! 

“The time trials in the Tour de France are so important if I want to have a chance. I need to practice. Look at Froome or Dumoulin now, they are at the same level with Tony Martin!”