He's a tyrant on the bike yet a man of the people off it. Procycling meets the quiet Colombian who is widely tipped to ascend to cycling's highest throne this July.
The biggest battle Nairo Quintana is fighting is not the one for the yellow jersey at the Tour de France. The Colombian rider is fiddling with a phone during his interview with Procycling but he's not browsing the net while half-heartedly answering questions. Having got on to the subject of what he does when not on the bike, Quintana is looking for images of a pro-equality gender rights television campaign in which he has starred.
He finds what he is looking for, and a tiny image of Quintana fills the screen. "Fighting for women's equality starts in the home," Quintana observes in the video he shows, not a little proudly. It's part of a campaign in his home region of Boyacá, centring on images of Quintana, a national hero and epitome of male athletic success in his country, changing his baby's nappies and then walking round the garden carrying his child.
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"My goal is to win the race against social inequality. Just because you do housework, it doesn't mean you're any less of a man," he explains to the cameras. Indeed, apart from the first five seconds when he introduces himself as 'Nairo Quintana from Movistar', on the video there isn't a trace of bikes, races or anything connected to Quintana's job.
Fighting for women's equality isn't the sort of extra-curricular activity you would expect a WorldTour professional to have, given they're often criticised for living inside the bike racing bubble, out of touch with the real world. But then a glance at his Facebook page shows that Quintana actually has a keen interest in social rights campaigns of all kinds, to the point where he has been named an ambassador for UNICEF. Other internet videos show that when the equal rights for women campaign got underway in Boyacá, Quintana stood up in a packed theatre hall, gave a lengthy keynote speech and then handled the media afterwards, with only a cursory mention that he rides a bike to make a living.
"Colombia has social problems," Quintana explains to Procycling. "But even if they're not as serious as in a lot of other countries, that shouldn't stop us from trying to get rid of them completely." It turns out he works in civic education programmes for young adults, too. "We want to be sure they are not just good at maths but that they are good members of society as well," Quintana observes. “And it's up to fathers to educate their kids like that, not just the mothers."
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