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Road Cycling

Watch a Pro Cyclist Ride Slowly Behind a Rival Running to The Finish Line After a Tyre Puncture

...this Spanish cyclist is probably the nicest guy in the world

Professional road cycling isn’t all supervillains, EPO and knocking over old ladies who are just trying to cross the road. We hope you all know that already.

Most of us cyclists are actually stand up folk – good human beings who give to charity and give up seats on buses and offer to make other people cups of tea if we’re getting one for ourselves and can be bothered making a second cup.

And the proof? Augstin Navarro. He’s the Spanish cyclist who has become an online sensation in the past 24 hours or so, and he’s the dude who’s face now appears in the dictionary when you look up “sportsmanship”… Or it would do if the dictionary had pictures.

“To overtake him just before the finish line would have been unethical…”

Riding in the Santa Barbara cyclocross in Cantabria, northern Spain, Navarro was on track to come fourth, when he came up behind third placed Ismael Esteban near the end of the race. Ismael had a punctured tyre and was running towards the finish line.

Did Augstin pass him and take the bronze for himself? No he did not. He rode slowly behind and let Ismael away with his unfortunate luck.

Esteban later offered Navarro the prize in return for his efforts, but the ever-inspirational Navarro turned it down.

“I don’t want to win like that,” he later told a local newspaper. “To overtake him just before the finish line would have been unethical.

“[It was] out of respect for someone who had been superior in every moment.”

What can we learn from this? Cyclists are still good people. Sportsmanship is very much alive. And our sport is on a wonderful trajectory. Either that, or Navarro had put a £20 bet on himself coming fourth.

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