SerpApi.Org
Fifteen years since finishing his first grand tour, Nelson Oliveira is six stages away from the Tour de France end and setting an incredible record.
If he crosses the line in Paris, it will be his 24th consecutive grand tour completed. He has not quit a single Giro, Tour or Vuelta during his career. That is 495 successive stages ticked off – and counting.
The Movistar rider might not have won many bike races in his long career, but this unsung tough guy deserves his flowers.
“When I was young, I watched these grand tours on the TV and never thought I’d even do one,” the Portuguese veteran tells Velo. “I never thought I would do 24.”
Given that a rider spends approximately 27 days on a grand tour, he has spent practically two years of his life suffering in the gutter, sleeping in so-so hotels and shovelling down industrial quantities of pasta and rice.
It’s an endurance miracle, on and off the bike.
Oliveira’s Vuelta brush with barbed wire fence
Aside from the challenges of warding off debilitating sickness and staying within the race time cut during a three-week race, there are the inevitable crashes.
Oliveira’s most dramatic was his fall into a barbed wire fence in the 2021 Vuelta. He picked himself up and crossed the finish line in Córdoba, with blood streaming down his arms and legs.
That same race, he was walking uphill and fell over, over-stretching and hurting his foot. Fortunately, he experienced more pain off the bike than on it. A bizarre way to get injured on a grand tour, though.
There was one Tour de France – he doesn’t remember which one, testament to his nine and three-quarters editions – where he crashed and injured his rib. “The last week, I kept going and I was really suffering,” Oliveira says.
Avoiding bad luck is the key
That is the point: Oliveira is a racer with a four-leaf clover in his pocket who magically avoids misfortune. He has hit the deck many times in his career and felt the painful after-effects.
He broke an elbow and collarbone in the 2016 Paris-Roubaix and fractured a collarbone at the 2018 Paris-Nice.
Even five months ago, he crashed while training on his TT bike and broke his collarbone, going “too fast”.
He got surgery the next day, was on the rollers within five days, and out on the road within a week. He has recovered to do the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.
“I don’t call myself lucky, but I don’t have bad luck. Sometimes you crash and you need to go home. Until now, I have been fortunate,” he says.
What it takes to finish 23 grand tours
Making it through these races requires a ton of mental and physical fortitude.
“You need consistency. Resilience. I really don’t know – sometimes you are here and you don’t know why,” he says.
“I just keep focused and try to do my best every day – and don’t think about the next day. Don’t think too much sometimes!”
His versatile rider type is well-suited to these three-week suffer-fests. At 5’9 and 148 pounds, Oliveira is right in the sweet spot, powerful but able to handle the mountains. He has finished mid-pack or better in almost every grand tour.
A powerful time-trial rider and longtime domestique, it also means he can do a valuable job in any kind of race, ferrying bottles to his leader and taking opportunities to go up the road in breakaways. There is a lot of respect for Oliveira in the bunch, a real pro cyclist’s cyclist.
Laugh while you labor
Mentally and physically, the 37-year-old believes the biggest thing is having a good group and ambience around him. “So you can laugh after the stage. It makes you want to keep going. Mentally, it’s hard but with a good group of friends you can keep riding.”
He says former world champion Alejandro Valverde was one of his best leaders, while his current sports director Jose Joaquin Rojas brought the mood, as did Movistar alumni Andrey Amador and Imanol Erviti.
“They also helped me to be who I am in cycling,” he says. “I don’t want to forget anyone because they are really my friends. And I know what they gave me.”
Still chasing a Tour stage
Naming all those retired riders is a giveaway of the fourth oldest man in the Tour bunch’s age. “I know it’s a big career and I start to realize how long it is – and I remember how old I am!” he says, laughing.
His best result in the Tour de France was third in a hilly TT behind Tom Dumoulin and Chris Froome in 2016. On his tenth edition of the event, he is still hoping to win a stage.
“Always. It’s a dream and it’s possible because I’m here. I know it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible,” he says. This year, he has been one of the most active racers on the roads of France, making it into four breakaways so far.
It would be a red-letter day for his Movistar team, who lost their GC leader Cian Uijtdebroeks to sickness in the race’s first week. They are a long way from the dominating days of Miguel Induráin: the legendary Spanish team has not won a Tour de France stage since Nairo Quintana’s 2019 victory in Valloire.
Then and now: carbs, aero and clothing revolution
When Oliveira joined the WorldTour in 2011 with Radioshack, Lance Armstrong was his team-mate. He has seen so much change.
He believes that clothing and lighter, aerdynamic bikes have been big leaps forward when comparing eras. But he has no doubt that nutrition is the biggest thing that has evolved.
He says he did not even used to think about carbohydrate intake per hour and some squads did not even have a nutritionist. “Carbohydrates in racing, also at home [in training]: the way we eat is completely different. Before, when I started, we didn’t eat – because you were scared to gain a little extra weight. Maybe we made a lot of mistakes compared to now.”
If he makes it to Paris, he deserves a steak and a beer to celebrate breaking the record without needing to worry about calories or weight. He would surpass Spaniard Vicente López Carril, who finished 23 in a row between 1968 and 1978.
How will the Portuguese feel? “I never thought about setting records. I just want to go day by day and enjoy the bike if I can, and that’s it,” he says midestly.
And then this WorldTour hardman is doing the Vuelta a España next month… right?
“I hope not! My teammates joke about that too,” he says.
