As if riding the 3,261 kilometres of the 2024 Vuelta a España as his last race was not enough, Spanish veteran Luis Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi) is celebrating his retirement by riding the 600 kilometres from the Vuelta finish in Madrid to his home in Marbella in the south of Spain.
Maté started his three-day return on Monday morning “without getting up too early” and will stay overnight in Puertollano, a town some 250 kilometres south of the Spanish capital.
He will then pedal on to Lucena, roughly 220 kilometres further south, before reaching his home in Marbella on the Andalusian coast after a shorter leg some time late on Wednesday afternoon.
Maté completed his twelfth and last ever Vuelta in 61st place overall, during a final season in which he also celebrated a final win, a stage in the Volta a Portugal.
“It’s partly to get used to the idea of leaving my pro career behind, but I’m going on being a bike rider, and this is like a transition, riding home from being a pro to riding a bike ‘for real’, " the 40-year-old told Cyclingnews.
“So doing that in itself was appealing. But at the same time, I’m trying to make a statement about something really important, which is how we should be changing modes of transport, in the interest of fighting climate change for the good of the planet.”
“It’s one of the biggest challenges we face as human beings. Professional cyclists effectively act as loudspeakers. And if we can raise awareness about that particular question with rides like this, that’s something that matters a lot.”
Maté said he will be riding the 650 kilometres on backroads and secondary highways to avoid traffic and with the bare minimum of luggage to reduce weight: “A phone charger, some clothes to wear in the afternoon, a toothbrush and some other toiletries and that’s basically it.”
His brother will be riding alongside him in the three-day journey, but Maté said that other riders are welcome to join them along the route.
“It’s generating a lot of interest, so I’m going to publish the route and anybody who wants to come along for part of the ride, can do so. If they want to do a couple of turns on the front, then that’d be even better!” he said.
Mate has already carried out similar ecologically minded projects. In the 2022 Vuelta, for every kilometre he spent in a breakaway, he planted a tree in the Sierra de Bermeja mountains near his home after the area was badly affected by forest fires.
“That was another idea to try and raise awareness about the environment, too,” he recalled.
“Us professional cyclists have the best stadium in the world - it’s not Wembley or the Santiago Bernabeu, it’s one city or area of countryside after another, today Madrid, tomorrow Malaga or Valencia or Alpe d’Huez or the Picón Blanco, or wherever - and we have to look after it.”
“That forest fire was terrible, and it pained me badly because it was near my home. I wanted to be able to plant some trees so that future generations could see that area as we were lucky enough to see it in our own time.”
This isn’t the first time he has done such long trips home by bike. In 2021, when the Vuelta finished in Santiago, he did an inverse ‘Camino de Santiago’ - the world-famous network of pilgrim pathways to the Galician city. He rode from NW Spain to Marbella.
“That was longer - 1,200 kilometres and it took me six days. I enjoyed that last time, some very warm welcomes in villages along the way and lots of people with me, so that was really nice, and I’m hoping this one will be too.”
Then when he gets home, Maté says, he has planned something rather more festive to round out his career.
“There’s going to be a party on the beach, some nice paella and seafood and beers and so on. I’m looking forward to that too!”
