Colombian climber Julián Arredondo was never one to do anything by halves: ‘I was mixing drugs with alcohol and women. I took a little bit of everything, but it never filled this deep emptiness I had inside me,’ he tells Cyclist.
As a young rider, Arredondo won a stage of Argentina’s Tour de San Luis just two days into his pro career with Trek Factory Racing in 2014 against no less a rider than Nairo Quintana, who had finished on the Tour de France podium the year prior. But a few short years later his life had changed radically. A hip injury saw him fall out of the sport in 2017 and what followed was four years of depression and drug and alcohol misuse.