Richard Carapaz and other Ecuadorian pro riders will be returning to Europe next week, after the Sports Department of the government has given the green light.
Richard Carapaz, Jonathan Narvaez (Ineos), Jonathan Caicedo (EF Pro Cycling), Alexander Cepeda (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec) and Jefferson Cepeda (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) will join the rest of their teams in Europe before July 31.
The riders will travel from Quito to Madrid thanks to the work made by the Sports Department, the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Spanish Embassy in Ecuador.
Miguel Landázuri, high performance director of the Sports Department, explained that their first objective was to go to Colombia and join the flight that will take the athletes to Europe, but decided against it after they knew they would have had to keep a quarantine in the neighbouring country.
“We started making arrangements with the Foreign Affairs Ministry to make it into the humanitarian flight from Colombia, but we realised that time was against our riders,” he explained. “We got in contact with the directors of each of the teams, and we could manage to have a direct flight from Quito to Spain with the authorization of the country.”
