For many central European road cyclists, Mallorca has become such a second cycling home that they seem to know every nook and cranny. But even those who frequently fly to the island for training, who know the most attractive routes in the Tramuntana mountains and along the coast, rarely get to talk to local cyclists as tourists. In addition to the flourishing scene of meeting points, bike hire companies and chic branded meeting places in tourist resorts, there are also classic club sports and those clubs that are mainly recruited from the Balearic population. "What we don't like is when people don't say hello," says Inés Bauzá, who has been cycling ambitiously for a few years now and is a native Mallorcan. She often observes this behaviour among tourists. You also sometimes hear that foreigners behave on the roads as if they were the only ones there: Lines of three on the country road, selfies in the opposite lane - it's just a holiday. But basically, the people talking about this story tend to see the positives.
The cycling guests are an enrichment, says Bauzá, they bring more bikes onto the streets and into the consciousness of the Mallorcans, which promotes the sport and with the athletes also comes a more sophisticated tourism. Inés Bauzá has been a member of the board of the Balearic Cycling Federation since last winter. Around 3,000 people are organised in it, the island has less than 900,000 inhabitants. By comparison, the BDR has just under 150,000 members. This means that cycling on the island is much more organised when it comes to members in relation to the population. Membership is a prerequisite for taking part in races and club rides. "That's a very good number," says Xisco Lliteras, director of the annual Mallorca 312 race. "You have to bear in mind that the vast majority of people take part in the sport without a licence." He can prove that the local scene is flourishing with another figure: 2,200 of the 8,000 participants in the tour of the island are Mallorcans. We met some of them.
Juan Garrido Moreno | Illes Cycling Club
"We have a secret," says Juan Garrido Moreno, the head of the Illes Cycling Club from Marratxi, a suburb of Palma. Whether at the local Mallorca 312, the race on the neighbouring island of Menorca or even on the mainland: the Illes Cycling Club is always there. However, he does not relate his club's ambition to its performance in the races. "We often have the oldest participants or the youngest, the largest group - but we are never the fastest." Garrido Moreno is a keen cyclist, father of three children, who actually has another son, as he jokingly says: the cycling club, which he founded seven years ago as a side initiative of a fitness studio. When a new owner took over and wanted to keep Garrido Moreno as managing director, he said: "You can only have me if you also keep my child." The site with its café, indoor and outdoor facilities has remained home to the club. "We don't have high costs, we don't need membership fees for the cycling club," reveals the founder.
In the meantime, the initiative has become a registered association. The head of the association emphasises its integrative character, and several people with autism have been integrated. The section has just under 130 members, who come not only from Palma, but also from Calvià in the west of the island, for example. "At most 20 of us cycle competitively, the rest do it for tourism," says Garrido Moreno. He is a bubbly guy who exudes good humour on the ride from Marratxi to the velodrome in Sineu, telling stories and keeping the group together. They chat and laugh a lot, and the riders split up along the way. The members ride at four levels, ranging from an introduction to hand signals and group riding to a very sporty style; there are rides three times a week.
Despite the euphoric mood, Garrido Moreno does not see his home island as a paradise for cyclists: there is much better infrastructure and more consideration near Valencia, in Calpe or on Menorca. "We had better starting conditions, but we didn't utilise our potential," he sums up. The managing director of the fitness club is critical of the sometimes aggressive atmosphere on the streets, the lack of sustainability in cycling tourism and the fact that events such as Mallorca 312 have been pushed out of Palma. In his view, tourism is a blessing and a curse. He appreciates it very much, but the unregulated aspects - as a cyclist, he just wants to escape them. He therefore only dares to go to Sa Calobra, where he likes to cycle, in winter, when there are no buses and hire cars clogging up the exit.
David Muntaner | Former world champion and bike café owner
When 40-year-old David Muntaner started cycling almost three decades ago in his home village of Estellencs near Palma, there was a lot less going on on Mallorca's roads. "Back then, you hardly saw any tourists, fewer Mallorcans and only a few professionals on the island," he remembers the early days on the bike. His father, a cycling fan with no sporting experience of his own, founded the club to help Muntaner get into cycling. It was not an unusual path, recalls the later track world champion, as cycling was already well established at the time. "But since then it has grown 500 times bigger," he says in his Cycling Planet racing bike café in Alaró, a small town in the heart of the island. The shop is a meeting place that attracts both tourists with a love of professional sport and the local population. Muntaner believes that the tourist boom has also galvanised the Mallorcans. "They saw all the racing cyclists from their cars and wanted to try it out," he says. "And then came the pandemic, which also got a lot of people on road bikes here."
Muntaner opened the mixture of bike workshop and café with shop in 2012. It was his way of starting a new life after his track cycling career and the Olympic Games in London. "We started very small and then grew with the market," he recalls. The opening was just over a decade ago, but back then you hardly saw any cyclists in Alaró. In the beginning, he mainly had local customers. Today, his shop rents out bikes, attracts tourists to the town and at the same time continues to serve the local population. However, he sees big differences. "In the high season in spring and autumn, the shop is always full, 80 per cent are tourists," says Muntaner. The Mallorcans often don't even try to drink a beer at his place then. They tend to come in winter. The workshop, where his brother Alberto works, doesn't just serve racing bike customers either. This ties in with a story that the owner was initially unaware of. "A few years after we opened, someone came to me and said: this used to be a garage where Alaró's bikes were repaired," explains Muntaner. "I think it's really cool that we're doing the same thing 50 years later."
Inés Bauzá | Member of the Board of the Balearic Islands Cycling Federation
It wasn't so long ago that Inés Bauzá got into cycling. At some point during the coronavirus pandemic, she had enough of just running. The inspiration was obvious. "If you don't have a neighbour here who does cycling, you have a nephew or uncle," says the equine therapist from Palma. The 36-year-old joined the Illes Cycling Club because it was important to her to find a social club. She quickly became involved not only in the club, but also joined the board of the Balearic Islands Cycling Association last year. There, Bauzá is responsible for cycling tourism and also for the promotion of female cycling. "We are still a long way from having balanced numbers, cycling is still mainly male here - but we are making progress year on year in terms of the proportion of women." Specifically, at the time of research, this means that 256 out of almost 3000 members of the Balearic association are female. Until now, the majority of women have competed at C level, the lowest licence level in cycling races on the island. "For a few years now, however, there has also been a race series just for women," reports Bauzá. This series has eight events and runs until the end of August. "There are also more and more women who are really strong riders, which also raises awareness and attracts new women," says Bauzá. One source of inspiration is "Mavi" García, a Mallorcan who has celebrated success at the highest level in the Women's World Tour.
For Bauzá, who studied on the mainland, Mallorca is and remains a cycling paradise. And even though she lives on an island, there are still new things to discover. "The best thing I experienced on my bike was last summer," she recalls. Because of the heat, many Mallorcans cycle into the night in midsummer anyway, with club rides starting at seven or eight in the evening. That evening, her team was even more consistent and set off with enough light on their bikes into the Tramuntana mountain range, which they rode through at night with around 40 people. "That was impressive. The silence, the darkness," enthuses Bauzá.
Joan Danús | President of CC Artanec
It took a group of young athletes to breathe new life into the cycling club in Artà in the east of Mallorca. Miguel Alzamora, 2007 track world champion and two-time Olympian, had been running the local club for around a decade and a half. The "local hero" rallied the athletes behind him, which initially resulted in the Mallorca 312, now an international race, as an internal club competition.
However, the club lost momentum and its races were cancelled. During the coronavirus crisis, Joan Danús, an engineer from Artà, wanted to relaunch the club together with friends. "We had actually just wanted to race together. It's hard to believe how far we've come," says the 28-year-old athlete, whose mother and father are Mallorcan. "Above all, we wanted to organise races again," says Danús, who lives with his girlfriend in Palma during the week. They both work there. At the weekend, they travel to the east of the island. They go to races together with their team colleagues; races for riders with a club licence take place almost every week on Mallorca or the neighbouring islands. On weekdays, the club president keeps himself fit near Palma; during the TOUR interview, he heads out of the heavy traffic over the Coll des Vent on quiet bends in the shady forest. "We decided to take it one step at a time," says Danús. But it went pretty quickly. The 160-strong CC Artanenc now organises a total of six races a year: the club hosts an individual time trial and a stage of the Primavera Challenge multi-day race, a criterium in the summer, a mountain bike race and a cross competition. "It was natural for me to get into cycling, it was just everywhere," Danús recalls. "When I was young, it was normal for us to cycle every day, but that's becoming less and less." In order to encourage this, his board of directors has also pushed ahead with youth work again. The team has been running a cycling school for two years, with around 30 children aged between four and twelve already taking part.
In Artà, says Danús, you can see how the Mallorca 312 cycling race has boosted the local scene. It's not just cycle tourists who are motivated by this event; it is also a fixture for many club members. "For the majority of cyclists from our town, it's the event of the year," says the club boss - and the sport on the island has also received a further boost. Meanwhile, it is not getting any easier to organise challenging races on other dates. This is because the authorities' requirements stipulate, for example, that none of the attractive mountain routes may be blocked by fields of riders. The authorities also demand more and more safety motorbikes when the level of the races is high. "The number of races is not decreasing, but the standard is gradually falling," says Danús, "it's impossible to even think about planning the beautiful climbs on our island."
