El dia menos pensado (2020)

Directed by: Jose Larraza, Marc Pons | 181 minutes | documentary, sports

The six-part documentary ‘El día menos pensado’ can be seen on Netflix, an impressive form of close-reading of a cycling team while riding the Grand Tours. We follow the Movistar team in the 2019 season. And what a team: winner of stages in Giro, Tour and Vuelta that year, winner of all three team classifications, winner of the Giro and a second place in the Vuelta. And that with four leaders: world champion Alejandro Valverde, the later Giro winner Richard Carapaz and the intended leaders in the Tour, multiple Grand Tour winner Nairo Quintana and Mikel Landa, generally regarded as the best climber.

Team manager Eusebio Unzue was already there in the eighties, and just like sports director José Luis Arrieta experienced the five Tour victories of Miguel Indurain. The brave José Vicente Garcia Acosta is a nice addition. We mainly follow the team during the matches, either in the team manager’s car, bus or the hotel. The common denominator is the collaboration needed to decide big cycling races, and that never gets old. Movistar’s Spaniards, Basques and South Americans are not afraid to expose their souls to the viewer.

The nerves of Garcia Acosta, the stubborn selfishness of loner Quintana, the team-popular melancholy Landa, the charlatanism of 39-year-old Valverde – the undisputed leader, no longer as good as before. Would these gentlemen give it up for each other in the race? The connoisseur knows that it was not all that clear-cut at Movistar, with strange racing behavior and leaders who attacked at their own moment; here we see what went on behind the scenes.

Eternal promise Landa messes up again in the Giro, but suddenly there is Carapaz who saves the furniture. Landa’s chance will come in the Tour, where according to Valverde he is the only leader, but Quintana thinks otherwise. And the team management is in two minds. That’s what comes of it. The beauty is that the ambiguity of the well-grouped Landa and Valverde, and the ambition of Carapaz and Quintana is fully revealed. The team management manages an accident in the pandemonium that is unfolding, especially in the Tour.

Quintana does what he feels like, whether it be unloading or attacking. In the first case, the team drives in front of him, in the second he takes off when the team drives in front of Landa. And see: Quintana wins a mountain stage and Landa doesn’t. And note: Landa and Carapaz leave for other teams because they want to claim the lead, and Quintana is completely lost: people hardly cheer when he wins an important stage and takes the leader’s jersey in the home round of the Vuelta. That we all experience it up close with curses, intrigue and tears is a major achievement.