Vitoria, June 22 (EFE).- Sean Kelly, former cyclist of the now-defunct Basque team Kas, with whom he won the 1988 Tour of Spain, returned to Vitoria 31 years after his last visit in 1992.
There he has affirmed that in the mythical Kas he spent the best years of his career.
Kelly has gone to Vitoria for an act in memory of the Kas team, the great rulers of the seventies and eighties.
It was on the occasion of the departure of the Tour de France from the Basque Country on July 1.
The Irishman was the “king of the classics” in the eighties, when he won nine “monuments”.
There were three Lombardy Tours, two Paris-Roubaix, two Milan-San Remo and two Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Kelly won the return to Spain with Kas
In total, Kelly achieved 194 victories, including the 1988 Tour of Spain with Kas.
It was the last one the team won before disbanding.
Former Irish cyclist Sean Kelly, gives a talk in Vitoria about the KAS cycling team, of which he was a part in the 80s.EFE/David Aguilar
In Vitoria, he commented that the Basque Country is very special for him because he felt very comfortable at Kas, “a great team and a great family”.
With this commitment to his team, he also won the Tour of the Basque Country three times, something “important because it was the home” of Kas.
Van der Poel, Kelly’s favorite
Being a classicist who defended himself in the grand tours, Kelly has commented that of the modern cyclists the ones who most resemble him are Peter Sagan -recently retired- and the current Van Aert and Van der Poel.
The most special for him is Van der Poel, but “because I ran with his father”.
Then, of course, the two favorites for the Tour, Pogacar and Vingegaard.
He sees them both even with the possibility of wearing yellow from the first stage of the Tour-
It starts in Bilbao and has a port -Pike- with ramps of 20 percent a few kilometers from the finish line. EFE