Third lap the podcast with Alejandro Gaviría and Ricardo Silva Romero, a podcast of
the locutorio arroba the locutorio of that This first conversation was not face- to
- face, it was I, if memory does not fail me in the
year two thousand eleven for a social network, so it was Twitter. Then
and I remember Ricardo making a comment at the time that caught my attention from
the one he disagreed with. He said the following. The madness of drug
trafficking framed in these eighties and four ninety- fours affected football much more than
cycling. And I replied to Ricardo saying maybe not Ricardo, maybe that drug
trafficking madness was almost undifferentiated everywhere. And I reminded Ricardo in that message of
the murders of Alfonso Flores and Gonzalo Marino. Welcome, everyone, to third
lap. I' m going to try this time a conversation with Ricardo a
little different. Ricardo is on vacation, deserved to rest, of course,
and this time we' re not going to resort to audios at Whatsapp,
to that audio exchange at Whatsapp, but I' m going to leave Ricardo
alone. I am going to try a conversation with two of your books,
I would say, two of your main books and, in addition, two
of your books that have a renewed importance at this juncture. I will put
it that way, two of his books that frame a period in the history
of our country, a period that goes from one thousand nine hundred and eighty
- four to one thousand nine hundred and ninety- four, ten long years
that marked the history of Colombia forever. I could put it this way I
think we have not yet recovered from what happened during this period. I'
ve scored repeating for two books by Ricardo, who will already have the opportunity
to comment in depth. During those ten years there was the seizure of the
Palace of Justice, the avalanche of armero, the murder of three presidential candidates
in nine hundred and eighty- nine in a period of eight months, the
bomb of the daz in that same year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-
nine and, in general, an epidemic of violent crime from which we have
not yet fully recovered in Colombia, the transformation of Colombian society on account of
drug trafficking. I believe that politics was marked almost in that period became a
political arctic, but this transformation of society also affected sport. I couldn'
t say that football became narco- football and that cycling was also contaminated by
this phenomenon, by the irruption of drug trafficking into Colombian collective social life.
In many ways, I remembered some dates preparing this conversation at a distance with
two books by Ricardo. I recalled the murder of Alfonso Flores, a cyclist
who had won the Tour del Avenir in April of nineteen hundred and ninety-
two. I recalled the murder of football refereeÁlvaro Ortega. In November of
one thousand nine hundred and eighty- nine. I recalled the murder of another
cyclist who was involved with the Medellín Cartel, which I followed in my youth
in Medellín, Gonzalo el Chalo Marín over there, in April of nineteen hundred
and ninety to tell this part of Colombia' s history, taking advantage of
Ricardo' s books. I want to go back and forth and start with
a novel that I read about ten years ago, about, a novel published
for the first time in the year two thousand nine and recently reissued. I
think this novel is also going to happen to television or cinema or to a
series that is being prepared. It is the autogol novel, a novel that,
in my opinion, has a witness value. It is going to say
this in this way a double witness value. It is a novel that narrates
those tragic, absurd, grotesque, sad events of the murder of Andrés Escobar
on July 2, 1990, ninety- four. It' s been going
for thirty years now. We' d do badly to say good afternoon to
them. Once again Colombia is filled with shame. Andrés Escobar, a player
in the Colombian National Team, was cowardly murdered in Medellín. Twelve shots blinded
the life of a man who gave himself whole or represented the country with dignity.
But in turn it has another value. You witness and is that you
describe that world of football inside Ricardo, talking to people, acting as a
keen reporter, is able to show us what happens inside the kitchen. Let
' s say that about the world of football. There is a story that
tells this book, which I could describe as a story of boom and fall.
This tragic, sad, terrible story. The Andrés Escobar murder. One
could start it at many times, but I think it would be worth counting
from September one year before September one thousand nine hundred and ninety- three,
when it is the five zero with Argentina. What a stick Rivera is lycating
as a cantilocative. What a manga, nice, marga, tito, little
bit, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah? And in the country at
the time we had a kind of coincidence. The country was self- destructing,
drug trafficking, literally destroying our country. But in the meantime, we
were all dreaming of that bizarre dream of winning the World Cup with that selection
that went to the World Cup of the year nine hundred and ninety- four.
And this novel, I think, captures that climate, that contradiction between
that football illusion and that destruction of our country. It is a very good
description of the period Ricardo does it using some narrative elements I find extraordinary the
television news, each with his personality, the marks of the different cars circulating
in that closed economy of that time, very different from those of now.
But it also describes a moment, a situation that happens when it reaches the
Colombia team, the United States, in particular California, believing that it will
win the World Cup and settles in a hotel in Southern California, at the
Hotel Married in Fullerton, and there coincide journalists, football players, fans and
there is a kind of euphoric climate that, in my opinion and in the
opinion of Ricardo I believe, also anticipates the catastrophe what was going to happen
next, not only the elimination of Colombia, but the murder of Andrés Escobar.
For those of you who have the autobol novel, I' m going
to read here, on page seventy- five, how Ricardo describes what was
happening at that Marriot hotel in California. Since we entered the Marrius de Fullerton,
there were a number of signs that things were not going to end Very
well we saw them read, but we followed straight as a caravan of drunk
drivers passing a red light. The show at the hotel was overwhelming. I
swear to God I saw Santo Domingo the Magnate eating tray country next to the
guys of the selection. I have chiseled in my memory the image of that
cart painted like the flag of Colombia that turned the block. I remember listening
at that time to the different commentators of what was happening or almost sociological analysis
and the madness that happened in that hotel. How these football players were intoxicated
with victory, how they behaved like badly bred children and how there what was
being prepared was not victory, but a great defeat. Colombia is eliminated from
the football World Cup. He loses first with Romania, several days later he
loses to the United States and almost by honor, he wins the last game
to Switzerland. Ricardo describes in the book a press conference that I had forgotten.
Where the technical director of the Colombia team, Francisco Maturana, came to
explain what had happened and I find it interesting reading the book again. How
at that press conference Maturana brought to mind what I would like to call a
convergence. There is present at that press conference the contradiction that I mentioned a
while ago between the self- destructing country and this bizarre dream of being world
football champions. This is how Ricardo describes it on page one hundred and fifty
- six of that press conference by Francisco Maturana. After the elimination of the
World Cup, we went to the last press conference of the team led by
coach Francisco Maturana. Behind the people of snail RCN and allelar, the serene
technical director, as in the case of the death of a loved one,
recognized that the selection was the reflection or the country that we lacked in Teresa,
that it was necessary to rebuild everything. We were cruel to him petty
creeps, little thing just when we had to. What I find most interesting
is that phrase, that phrase by Francisco Maturana, which I had forgotten.
His most famous phrase is to lose winning a little, but this one about
the Colombian team in a thousand nine hundred ninety- four was a reflection of
what was happening in Colombia. What was happening in the country could not be
separated from what happened in the World Cup. That autogol takes place on the
22nd of June of two thousand twenty- four. In the first time,
I remember well that moment, when we were watching the party, when the
autogol took place and the dreams of the country were destroyed almost at that moment
I lost it to my own good, go joke or b of Colombia.
Good time and then, almost two weeks later, in the early morning of
July 2, nine hundred and ninety- four, Andrés Escobar was murdered in
Medellín, on the Via de Las Palmas, in the parking lot of El
Indio restaurant. I' m going to describe how Ricardo describes it. I
will read better as Ricardo describes that moment, a moment that, in my
opinion, defined much of the madness of the recent history of our country.
He got into the car and, instead of taking the road to leave things
as they were, he headed to the adjoining parking lot where the black Toyota
lancrusser truck was parked and memory plated and TF seven four eight, truck in
which the two Galón brothers were traveling. I wanted it to be clear.
Andres wanted the elimination not to be his fault. Andres, the only thing
that mattered to him at that point was to say respect please, respect that
we all know it wasn' t my fault. He adjusted the retrodusor mirror
of pure custom, prepared to leave there, resigned himself to hear the word
" autogol" loaded with rage under the hateful eyes of a horde of drunkards,
squeezed his teeth because someone was raising his volume to insults and released him
helpless behind the steering wheel when he received six bullets on the left side of
his body. That' s how the discharge went It left everything pending.
Andres Moribundo took off on his co- pilot. That happened exactly thirty years
ago, in the first week of the month of July of one thousand nine
hundred and ninety- four. I' m going to tell my personal story.
With this murder, I traveled to the United States casually the same scenario,
to California, south of California, three weeks later to start my doctoral
studies, where I went and said I came from Colombia. This story was
in everyone' s mouth. I said I was Colombian, and everyone was
wondering what happened, what' s going on in their country. The only
thing I could say was to tell the story that I had grown up in
the same city of Andrés Escobar, that I had studied at the Jorge Robledo
Institute, that I had studied it in a school that was not many blocks
away, at Calasants College, that that Calasan school always beat him in football
to two surrounding schools, that Andrés Escobar was almost my age and that when
I thought about what happened. I just wanted to cry and that I had
made a personal promise never to go back to a football stadium. I'
ve returned that promise. I' ve failed, but only in the margin.
I believe that since then, since the year one thousand ninety- four,
I used to go ten, twenty, thirty times a year of football
matches. I' ve gone very few times, three or four. No
more. I can say that this story, the story of the murder of
Andrés Escobar, which tells Ricardo eloquently with great witness value. As I said,
it marked my generation Back in time and we reached the most recent book
by Ricardo Silva Romero, my companion and friend of the third season. The
most recent book has the title of a mythical stage of the France ALP tour
of West and the triumph of Luis Herrera de Lucho Herrera de Jardiderito, of
Pusagasuga, on 16 July of a thousand nine hundred and eighty- four.
Also in July, also at this time, no longer thirty years, but
forty years earlier, as the beginning said, among these ten years is contained
much of the history of Colombia and it caught my attention when I read Autogol
And now I read the Ped West that the same gentlemen appear. Pepe Calderón
Tobar, the sports commentator, the narrator, the fat wi Lense and the
narrator, the most narrator, the aristocrat Ismael Enrique Monroy, were the protagonists
of Autogol. It was the voices, the storytellers of the novel who gave
life to this testimony and I found it interesting to see them find in Alpe
de West this kind of conversation, as Ricardo, Jing and Yang, prose
and poetry, Sancho and Don Quixote, Ismael Monroy and Pepe Calderón tovar telling
us the story of that epic feat of this amateur cyclist, the first Latin
American to win a stage of the Tour de franz in the year nineteen hundred
and eighty- four, that 16th of July. I remember well that this
stage I saw on a small TV above the university cafeteria. I found it
interesting to read on page two fifty- eight of Alpe de Wuz the voice
of Pepe Calderón to drink saying the following. Whatever happens at the end of
this cost. My friend, we' ll tell the story and be together.
The flag that corresponds to life may be the sum of the days in
which one arrived first, but it can also be the days in which the
goal of the draw turned out to be an out of place. And the
answer to the question remained at the tip of the tongue. In the long
run, it' s either win by far or lose by little, because
everything happens to us to save memories for the day when it' s our
turn to spend them all. This sports commentator, who mixes epic stories with
the existential poetic reflection that life consists in maybe that, in accumulating memories for
the moment we need it, seemed exciting to me and I think I confess
a certain spiritual communion with Ricardo when seeing one of his alter egos Pepe Calderón
play narrating a cycle stage with these existentialistic bits at the end of the book
al Bewes. There is a factual information that I had forgotten, and it
was the final classification of the Tour de France, of the Tour de France
of that year, nine hundred and eighty- four. Lucho Herrera won the
West Alpe stage, but then the effort was so great that he lost minutes
and minutes in the stages that followed. The best Colombian was Rafael Acevedo,
Rafico Acevedo who was twelve. It appeared here in position eighteen Alfonso Flores,
who would be killed later in the same madness of drug trafficking. Lucho Herrera
was twenty- seven in the final standings to fifty- eight minutes thirty seconds
from Loran Piñón, who was the champion at that time, that unfriendly cyclist
who looked at the Colombians literally above his shoulder. I remembered reading Ricardo'
s books again, posing this conversation with him. An exchange that I had
with Ricardo our first conversation, our first conversation was not face- to-
face. It was I think, if memory doesn' t fail me in
the year two thousand eleven for a social network, so it was Twitter.
Then and I remember Ricardo making a comment at the time that caught my attention
and with which he disagreed. He said the following. The madness of drug
trafficking framed in these eighties and four ninety- fours affected football much more than
cycling. I replied to Ricardo saying perhaps not Ricardo,“ Perhaps this madness
of drug trafficking was almost undifferentiated and I reminded Ricardo in that message of the
murders of Alfonso Flores and Gonzalo Marín, which I mentioned in the first part
of this conversation. On second thought now, maybe Ricardo was a little right.
Perhaps those individual feats of cycling were a little more immune to the madness
of drug trafficking. But whatever it is. I just want to invite third
- round listeners to check out, don' t look at these two books
together for their testimonial value, the ability they have to describe what we are,
how sport or the background of sport, our ethical stories and our lyrical
excesses of sports storytellers were there in some way, telling a part of Colombia
' s history during our most tragic years, where this period of madness of
one thousand nine hundred and eighty- four, defined by the alponzo, which
begins with the Alpe de Wes and the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-
four, which ends with the murder of Andrés, is snuffed Ricardo from the
distance, from this booth, missing you celebrated your books, sent you a
hug, a hug also to all those who accompany us in the third round.
It' s clear we can all write. It is clear that we
can all, with luck and convocation, devote ourselves to what I did to
writing. I think we can' t just write. Writing is the best
therapy we have at hand welcome to fictionary an audio course on how and why
I wrote Take the audiocourse of fictional writing in the locutorio com slash fictionario with
Ricardo Silva Romero. Always pick a good time. Always choose a good conversation.
Third lap podcast. Subscribe now and listen to it every week on your
favorite platform a podcast produced by the speaker. The newsroom follows us as the
newsroom takes hold on social networks