Fran Muñoz

Francisco Muñoz is a Catalan cyclist with Asturian roots whose love affair with cycling began in a summer holiday in Galicia and has had a first zenith, unprecedented in the heart of the U23 structure of the Contador Foundation, with his victory in the overall of the Spanish Cup Elite U23 2022 both absolute and U23 category. Muñoz’s family moved from Oviedo, where Fran himself was born on 24 June 2001, to Catalonia and it has been here where he has been growing as a cyclist in addition to other sporting experiences such as volleyball. Muñoz (24 June 2001) is a very consistent rider with no specific tastes in terms of routes. “I would present myself as a complete runner. I don’t shy away from any course. I manage whatever they put in front of me. I’ve never had any particular problems going uphill, apart from the logical suffering; I also consider myself strong on other terrains. In general, I like hard races, with complicated routes. I like elimination races, selection races”, he says. It all started on holiday. “At home we had no tradition of cycling. One summer, spending the holidays in Galicia, we went out on the bike with my older brother and we had a great time. On the way back home to Mataró, I went to the velodrome to see how I could continue. That year I was a second year child. And from then until now, although my parents didn’t like me doing road racing at first because of all the traffic and road safety issues. I started racing on my own, then I was with Paco Gálvez. As a first year junior I raced for Huesca La Magia, which no longer exists, and then to Club Ciclista Mollet for my second year in the category”. It was at the Mollet del Vallés club that he experienced his turning point. “That year, in 2019, I won the Catalan Cup in my category. It was the first year in which I started to train every day, to dedicate myself more specifically to the bike, and good results started to come. I made the leap to the U23 category with Team Compak, Team MP Group”. From this structure he jumped to the U23 structure of the Contador Foundation for 2022. One of the particularities of Muñoz is his studies: if he was already studying Industrial Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona, he has also begun studying Industrial Electronics and Automation Engineering at the Tecnocampus of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. “It’s hard, nobody said it was going to be easy. I’m going little by little. In winter I try to enrol in everything, even if I don’t end up getting all the subjects. Towards spring and summer there starts to be more trips, more days out…”.