Raul Alcala is not a name I'm familiar with, to be honest. Nevertheless, I have learnt that he made his mark on the pro peloton, winning a couple of Tour stages (pretty remarkable for a Mexican) before he was done.
Alcala triumphantly announced his return to pro racing a week ago, after a scant fourteen years away from the game. His debut being la Vuelta de Chihauhua, where the man lasted all the way into stage two before crashing on a mountain descent and ripping face and body badly enough to pack it in. Alcala declined to comment on the situation, and remained in the team car while holding bandages to his herridos.
¡Qué mala suerte! is a all I can say, being only in the second week of my new Advanced Spanish class. Raul, you'd be happy to know that I'm making a reaparición myself, not having studied any foreign language for some years now. Entonces amigo, creo que es mejor elegir sus batallas sabiamente. At 44 years of age, a man needs to care for his ego gently, I should think.
Pero hay otras reapariciones actualmente, Raul: Atras de Armstrong (37), Laurent Brochard (40), y Ivan Basso (29?) tambien. Yes, the fad is growing madly since Lance announced his return to the pro peloton this Fall, if only to spread everywhere the message of the yellow bracelet.
Now we could speculate madly about Lance's reasons (i.e., for the glory of Kazakhstan), or his chances in le Tour 2009, or the palace coup brewing in his Astana team (la ragia azul de Alberto Contador), but why do that when one can speculate juicily about who will be the next to announce his great reaparición (yes, I've heard about Aleksandr Vinokourov's ludicrous announcement about re-joining the Astana team he founded - that's not going anywhere). Attempts to reapariciónar, so to speak, the peloton back to c. 2002 have only just begun you see.
No, I'm thinking the time-away-from-pro-racing can be vastly improved upon - let's listen carefully to Belgian national news in Flemish - I'm waiting to hear from you, Eddy Merckx. Come back and spank these ignorant young punks, why don't you M. Cannibal?
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