Rags to Riches | The Rise of Richard Carapaz

Richard Carapaz was born 29 May 1993.
Carapaz was born in El Carmelo, Tulcán Canton, to mother Ana Luisa Montenegro and father Antonio Carapaz.

They were a family of small farmers until his father switched to driving a truck. “For 15 years he transported coffee from the Ecuadorian Amazon, through the border controls with Colombia, to the coffee warehouses in Ipiales on the other side,” Richard says.
But Antonio Carapaz was clearly a shrewd businessman too, he operated his one-man haulage firm, he employed six permanent labourers on his own land, and rented fields.

In the 1990s and 2000s, his father Antonio was held up twice by Colombian armed groups. He still remembers the ants crawling on his skin as he lay on the ground, his hands zip-tied behind his back.
“When I was a child, there were always FARC attacks, car bombs, and so on, the other side of the border,” Richard recalls. “They closed the crossings from time to time, but you got used to it: they always opened again.”

Prior to taking up cycling, Carapaz competed for his school as a runner. Running in inter-school athletics competitions.

Aged fourteen, he found a bike in a shipment of scrap metal his father had picked up. 

“I rode it until the tyres had worn down to nothing and I was riding on the metal rims.”

Late in 2007 Whilst at school, former Olympic cyclist and winner of the pan American games, Juan Carlos Rosero, came to Carapaz’s school to recruit kids for his new cycling club, to inspire the next generation.

The day Rosero visited the school and invited the pupils to join however, Richard was absent.

His mother Anita had been diagnosed with breast cancer and father Antonio was doing everything to see that she got the necessary treatment, leaving Richard and his grandfather in charge of the smallholding. 

Eight cows needed milking by hand, and they had been difficult that morning, so he did not finish until 9am. School finished at 12.3, so it was not worth going. 

The next day, his schoolmate Amilcar told him about Rosero. Richard went to see him and joined the club with around 50 students. They started work with physical conditioning in January 2008, with the first pupils dropping out. Then, on the track in Tulcán, there were crashes and the group thinned out further. 

In the early years he and his coach dreamed about the Pan American Games and riding the Giro.

Carapaz began his career with amateur teams in Ecuador and Spain.

Richard's first proper race was the Vuelta al Retorno, a three-day stage race which he won returning home with a trophy, a basket of food and some cash. He began to invest his prize money in equipment.

In 2013 he Won the youth classification at the Vuelta a Guatemala and Pan-American Games road race U23.

Carapaz demonstrated his climbing abilities and strategic nature in his four-months an amateur in Spain: he finished 2nd in the Memorial Valenciaga, arguably the biggest one-day event in the country, in only his second appearance in Lizarte's pink and black jersey, before going on to win in Lazkao, the Urraki hill climb and also the prestigious Vuelta a Navarra, where he proved himself as the strongest on the ascents.

On the 28th of July 2016, he joined Movistar Team from Lizarte as a trainee for the remainder of the 2016 season and started his first full year as a professional rider ahead of the 2017 season.

His first grand tour win came in 2019 for Movistar at the Giro, before joining Ineos for 2020.

In 2020 he came second in the la Vuelta.

Prior to the 2021 season in training Carapaz reached the dizzy heights of 4800 metres. Carapaz rode at an altitude of 4,800 metres on the volcano, which is the second-highest peak in Ecuador at 5,897 metres. By comparison, the road around Mount Teide in Tenerife tops out at 2,356 metres, while the highest road used in a Grand Tour is the Cime de la Bonette at 2,802 metres.

In 2021 he won the tour of Swiss and placed third at Le Tour de France. He also won a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo olympics beating Tadej Pogacar.

Will Carapaz win this years la Vuelta? Have your say in the comments.