The Story of the Giro d'Italia: A Year-by-Year History of the Tour of Italy, Volume 2: 1971-2011

by McGann, Carol

  Sercu was probably gone but de Vlaeminck was a hungry shark who could smell blood in the water and the blood was Moser’s. Rather than let teammate Sercu take the stage win he had de Muynck deliver the coup de grace. De Muynck’s hammer-blow was it. Moser couldn’t take anymore. Others, sensing that the moment had arrived, piled on. Merckx, Gimondi, de Vlaeminck and Bertoglio bridged up to de Muynck. De Vlaeminck won the stage and Gimondi was now in pink, the first time since 1969, with de Muynck in second place, 33 seconds back. Moser was third at 52 seconds.

  Nothing changed as the race went north to Tuscany. Now that the gesture was without cost, it was decided to let a Spaniard win a stage in memory of Santisteban. The peloton was happy to have a true piano day while Antonio Menéndez was allowed to take a solo flyer that began the moment the starting flag was dropped. The pack finished over twelve minutes after Menéndez, who was no threat in any of the classifications.

  Stage thirteen presented the riders with a series of climbs in the hills near Lucca and Pistoia, the hilltop finish at Il Ciocco coming after the Prunetta, Abetone and the Radici ascents. The first three climbs whittled the pack down for the final selection, which started when de Muynck jumped with Panizza coming along for the ride. Up the little road they soared, but others were having a good day as well and it came down to six riders for the sprint. With Gimondi and Merckx a half-minute back down the hill, de Witte tried to lead out de Muynck but de Muynck’s chain jammed. De Witte won the stage then crashed into a spectator who wandered onto the course. Even with his mechanical troubles, de Muynck had closed to within 16 seconds of Gimondi while Moser lost 17 seconds. Merckx claimed his saddle sores were so bad he could barely sit on the saddle and sleep was almost impossible.

  De Muynck, in second place, was in a difficult position. He hinted, but would not state outright that his team was not behind him and that he felt he could be betrayed. De Muynck must have been walking on eggs because de Vlaeminck had already made that clear after the Matera stage.

  Up to Piedmont and eastward to Veneto the race headed. Even though Gimondi had crashed hard twice, his second fall knocking him out for three minutes, the delicate sixteen-second balance between de Muynck and Gimondi remained. The reason? Both times the pack rode slowly and let the maglia rosa regain contact.

  Stage nineteen had six rated climbs in only 132 kilometers: Staulanza, Santa Lucia, Falzarego, Gardena, Sella and a finish at the top of the Torri del Vajolet. One could reasonably expect this stage to disturb the equipoise that existed between De Muynck and Gimondi. Gimondi feared the steep, unpaved portion of the final climb, thinking the smaller climbers like de Muynck might scoot away from him.

  De Vlaeminck had crashed in stage seventeen and was showing the effects on the Falzarego when he wasn’t able to stay with the small group of Classification riders. Up ahead Spaniard Andrés Gandarias, who was too far down the standings to worry about, was having a brilliant day and eventually won the stage with a wonderful and mostly solo effort.

  Behind Gandarias and unworried about him, de Muynck, Gimondi, Moser, Bertoglio and a few others crested the Sella. They then started the Vajolet climb which was so narrow and crowded with insane tifosi the follow cars couldn’t accompany the riders. Both Bertoglio and de Muynck attacked and Gimondi grimly closed back up. They went again and this time Gimondi could not respond. Finally Bertoglio dropped de Muynck and beat him to the top by 18 seconds, with Gimondi 39 seconds behind de Muynck. De Witte was just 9 seconds slower than Gimondi.

  De Muynck was the Giro’s leader: 1. Johan de Muynck

  2. Felice Gimondi @ 25 seconds

  3. Fausto Bertoglio @ 32 seconds

  4. Ronny de Witte @ 1 minute 48 seconds

  Photo of Gimondi

  The next day had more climbing. Stage twenty went over a climb new to the Giro, the Passo Manghen, a dirt road with a stretch of eighteen percent gradient, followed by Monte Bondone. When de Muynck asked de Vlaeminck and his sidekick de Witte for assurance of their help if he came into difficulty, de Muynck said the two just laughed. On the Manghen, de Vlaeminck, still wearing the purple of the points leader, abandoned. Actually, he threw down his bike and ran into the woods. His gregario Ercole Gualazzini said he ran after him, fruitlessly calling the fast-running cyclocross champion back to the race. Later in the stage de Witte also quit. The Classification leaders all finished the stage together.

  This left only a final mountain stage into Bergamo and a last time trial before the ride into Milan.

  The next to last climb in the twenty-first stage was the Colle Zambla. Everyone was watching everyone else as they went over the top, and as the descent began, the pack ran into gravel where the road was being repaired. In an instant de Muynck was down. A few seconds later, groggy from the effects of the fall and all cut up, he screamed for his bike and remounted. Who should be coming down the road at that point? Eddy Merckx, one of the finest descenders to have ever turned a pedal. “Get on my wheel, Johan”, he shouted to the wounded Pink Jersey. Before the descent was completed Merckx had de Muynck back up to the Gimondi group, which had taken it easy upon learning of de Muynck’s fall. No one could get away on the final climb, the Selvino, so they came into Bergamo together.

  De Muynck’s hands were shredded from the crash. While de Muynck’s director was trying to tell others that he would be fine for the time trial, Merckx thought otherwise. “With his hands as they are, he will not sleep more than an hour.”

  Writer Jan Cornand says that when de Muynck came to the line the next day for the time trial, he looked a wreck. As Merckx predicted, the pain from his wounds kept him up all night, killing his time trial. Merckx gregario Joseph Bruyère won the stage while Gimondi was able to beat de Muynck by 44 seconds. De Muynck lost the Giro by only 19 seconds and Gimondi had won his third Giro.

  Belgian fans were so outraged at the lack of support given to de Muynck that angry protestors gathered outside de Vlaeminck’s house. They felt that if de Muynck had received even a little help he would have won the Giro.

  Final 1976 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Felice Gimondi (Bianchi): 119 hours 58 minutes 15 seconds

  2. Johan de Muynck (Brooklyn) @ 19 seconds

  3. Fausto Bertoglio (Jolliceramica) @ 49 seconds

  4. Francesco Moser (Sanson) @ 1 minute 7 seconds

  5. Giambattista Baronchelli (SCIC) @ 1 minute 35 seconds

  8. Eddy Merckx (Molteni) @ 7 minutes 40 seconds

  Climbers’ Competition: 1. Andrés Oliva (KAS): 535 points

  2. Andrés Gandarias (Teka): 390

  3. Francesco Moser (Sanson): 270

  Points Competition: 1. Francesco Moser (Sanson): 272 points

  2. Eddy Merckx (Molteni): 149

  3. Felice Gimondi (Bianchi): 143

  This was Eddy Merckx’s last Giro. He admitted that his during his 1974 season there were signs of wear and tear and by 1975 he was unmistakably in decline. In 1971, his best season, he won 54 out of 120 races, a fantastic 45 percent. Driving himself ever harder he contested more races during the following four years but his winning percentage declined in two-year plateaus. In ’72 it was 39 and in ’73 it was 37 percent. Then in 1974, his brilliant banner year, he won 27 percent and in 1975 it was 25 percent. In 1976 he was about done, winning only (by Merckx standards) 15 races, a paltry 13.5 percent of those he entered. He wanted to go out with the same dramatic winning power he showed when he entered pro racing, but the insane drive to win probably accelerated his decline.

  He would go on to ride the Tour in 1977, getting sixth place. He would never again win a major race. Merckx contested over 1800 road races and won 525 of them, almost a third, winning an average of one race a week for six years. He had flogged his magnificent body mercilessly, year round, and it had finally had enough. After riding only five races in 1978, he retired.

  1977. RCS Media Group purchased La Gazzetta dello Sport, the
sports newspaper that owned the Giro d’Italia. In 1927 Angelo Rizzoli had started magazine publisher RCS, then named Rizzoli Editore. Over the decades Rizzoli’s firm grew and prospered, culminating in its 1974 purchase of Italy’s most important newspaper, Corriere della Sera, leading to the firm’s being renamed Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera (RCS). The company’s complicated financial history during the 1980s and 1990s—including involvement in a banking scandal that led to a 1982 bankruptcy—would make any green-eyeshade owner cross-eyed. The ultimate result is that RCS Media Group is now a hugely successful international enterprise owning magazines, newspapers, broadcasters and most important for bicycle racing, RCS Sport. This is the branch of the media behemoth that organizes the Giro as well as Milan–San Remo, Tour of Lombardy and other important Italian races.

  The Flandria squad brought Freddy Maertens, one of the most extraordinary riders in the history of the sport, to the 1977 Giro; extraordinary in that he won 54 races in 1976, including the World Road Championship and the points competition in the Tour, where he won eight stages. Maertens says that his 54 professional road wins is the greatest single-year total in cycling history, arguing that the 54 claimed for Merckx for 1971 is wrong because that number includes three track races. In 1977 Maertens would win 53 races, including Paris–Nice, the Vuelta (winning 13 stages in a flat edition that was probably designed for him), the Tour of Catalonia and Het Volk. Maertens possessed one of the finest sprints in the sport’s history as well as a wonderful time trialing engine. He was formidable everywhere except in the high mountains.

  But trouble followed the gifted Belgian like a lost dog looking for a home. He earned disqualifications for doping in the 1974 Tour of Belgium and the 1977 Flèche Wallonne. Maertens’ positives didn’t occur with greater frequency than they did with other good Belgians of his era, but the opprobrium seemed to stick to him when others seemed to slough it off.

  For help in winning Giro stages Maertens brought along his good friend and loyal gregario Michel Pollentier, who would also become intimately acquainted with trouble. The short, powerful Belgian was one of the most styleless racers ever, but even with elbows out and knees flailing, he was a potent and feared rider. In 1976 he won the Tour of Belgium and was second in the Tour of Switzerland. Fine help indeed for Mr. Maertens.

  The age of Merckx and Gimondi had passed. After winning the Giro and Paris–Brussels in 1976, Gimondi would never again win a major race. The sport was owned by younger riders and the list of likely Giro winners included Baronchelli, Panizza, Battaglin, Bertoglio and the youngest of the racing Moser brothers, Francesco.

  This 3,968-kilometer edition started with a 7.5-kilometer prologue at Monte di Prócida, west of Naples, which Maertens won. Moser was only 3 seconds slower, with de Muynck at 21 seconds and Baronchelli at 25 seconds. The prologue times counted this year towards the General Classification.

  Maertens made it two in a row when he outsprinted the bunch in Avellino to win stage one. All the big men were clustered near the top of the standings with only a few seconds separating them, and it stayed this way day after day. Moser managed to gain a few seconds on Maertens and take over the lead, but by the end of the sixth stage at Gabbice Mare, the race was effectively unchanged.

  The gloves came off during the seventh stage with its climb to San Leo and the Rocca delle Caminate before finishing in Forlì. As they raced over the hills of Le Marche, the big guns boomed, causing a group of six riders to form off the front. Just as the peloton had been breaking up, de Muynck and Magniflex rider Alfio Vandi crashed. At the end of the stage Maertens led in Moser, Panizza, Pollentier, Baronchelli and de Witte while Gimondi, de Muynck and Battaglin lost 71 seconds. For them the day was short of being a catastrophe, but Bertoglio lost almost six minutes and Baronchelli more than eight.

  The standings at the top of the leaderboard remained tight: 1. Francesco Moser

  2. Freddy Maertens @ 16 seconds

  3. Giambattista Baronchelli @ 22 seconds

  4. Wladimiro Panizza @ 26 seconds

  5. Michel Pollentier @ 49 seconds

  Maertens took his seventh stage win at Mugello in Tuscany. A second half-stage was held that afternoon on the Mugello motor raceway. Maertens thought the next day’s time trial would see him back in pink. It didn’t work out that way. He and Bianchi’s crash-prone sprinter Rik van Linden collided in the final meters of the Mugello circuit race. Their handlebars tangled while they were traveling more than 60 kilometers an hour, sending both of them to the ground and then Maertens to the hospital with a broken wrist. Maertens’ fabulous winning run was stopped cold.

  Flandria gregari Marc de Meyer and Pollentier thought it would be best to go home and perhaps prepare for the Tour. Flandria director Guillaume Driessens wanted to remain. Torriani agreed with Driessens and thought it would turn out well for the team if they hunted for stage wins and looked for a way to take advantage of the growing feud between Moser and Baronchelli.

  Flandria stayed, and with Maertens on his way home to Belgium, Pollentier was made team captain. The people who are paid to know about these things said that the race was now going to be between Moser and Baronchelli. The tifosi, and it’s fair enough to say the two riders themselves, saw things that way as well. A rivalry was starting to grow between them, nothing like the Coppi–Bartali competition of years past, but the two riders waged a serious fight for the affection of the fans.

  The stage nine Pisa time trial didn’t clarify things much. Track pursuiting ace and time trial specialist Knut Knudsen won the stage with Moser second, a minute slower. But Quasimodo Pollentier tortured his bike into a fabulous performance and lost only 6 seconds to Moser.

  That left things thus: 1. Francesco Moser

  2. Michel Pollentier @ 55 seconds

  3. Giambattista Baronchelli @ 1 minute 15 seconds

  4. Wladimiro Panizza @ 2 minutes 16 seconds

  5. Ronny de Witte @ 2 minutes 42 seconds

  Pollentier managed to hook up with Wilmo Francioni and a trio of Spanish riders in the Ligurian hills without dragging Moser along. Stage twelve’s result was a 22-second gap between Pollentier and Moser and a doping positive for the stage winner Miguel-María Lasa.

  The stages taking the Giro to the Dolomites were for the fast men and when the race arrived at Conegliano for stage seventeen, the General Classification was unchanged.

  Stage seventeen went up into nosebleed country with the Rolle, Pordoi, Falzarego and Drusciè passes. Baronchelli had a crisis on the Falzarego and ended up losing two minutes. De Muynck crashed yet again and was now down more than twelve minutes. Pollentier pulled off his coup when he and Moser gregario Mario Beccia (who was supposed to be riding with his captain, not buccaneering in search of stage wins, especially with his man narrowly holding first place) beat Moser into Cortina by 25 seconds, making Pollentier the maglia rosa by three seconds.

  Moser was beside himself with rage over the narrow loss and nearly got into a fistfight with Beccia that evening. Driessens tried to smooth him over and told him not to worry, that Pollentier was not really an active combatant in the race. I wonder if he also told Moser the check was in the mail and that he would still respect him in the morning.

  Stage eighteen had six Dolomite passes: Valparola, Gardena, Sella, Costalunga, Mendola with the finish atop Campo Carlo Magno. Baronchelli and Pollentier made common cause, extracting another 85 seconds from Moser, increasing the Flandria ad hoc captain’s lead to 1 minute 28 seconds. Moser was a fabulously talented rider, but was a big man, a severe handicap when it came to dealing with the real climbers in the high mountains.

  Pollentier’s margin still needed to withstand two serious tests, the first being the final Dolomite stage: the nineteenth leg going over the Tonale, Presolana and Zambla passes on the way to its finish in San Pellegrino. Renato Laghi, a gregario who had labored for eleven years without a single professional victory, took off o
n a long solo flyer and after riding alone for 185 of the stage’s 205 kilometers, arrived at the finish a minute and a half ahead of Giambattista Baronchelli’s brother Gaetano, while Pollentier carved out another half-minute from Moser’s flesh. This would be good insurance against Moser’s fearsome reputation as a time-trialist with the penultimate stage being a 29-kilometer time trial, Pollentier’s second test.

  Pollentier surprised the pundits by winning the stage, riding 30 seconds faster than Moser. And that was the 1977 Giro; like 1975, won by a rider no one had considered a potential winner.

  Final 1977 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Michel Pollentier (Flandria) 107 hours 27 minutes 16 seconds

  2. Francesco Moser (Sanson) @ 2 minutes 32 seconds

  3. Giambattista Baronchelli (SCIC) @ 4 minutes 2 seconds

  4. Alfio Vandi (Magniflex) @ 7 minutes 50 seconds

  5. Wladimiro Panizza (SCIC) @ 7 minutes 56 seconds

  Climbers’ Competition: 1. Faustino Fernández Ovies (KAS): 675 points

  2. Ueli Sutter (Zonca-Santini): 490

  3. Michel Pollentier (Flandria): 320

  Points Competition: 1. Francesco Moser (Sanson): 226 points

  2. Pierino Gavazzi (Jolliceramica): 185

  3. Luciano Borgognoni (Vibor): 183

  Pollentier’s amazing 1977 kept rolling along. Seemingly unstoppable, that spring and summer he also won the Tour of Switzerland and the Belgian Road Championship. In 1978 he took the Dauphiné Libéré and a second Belgian Championship (Merckx could do it only once). In the Tour he became the Yellow Jersey after a brilliant solo victory atop l’Alpe d’Huez, but that evening he was caught trying to cheat the dope controls and was sent packing. Of course, after l’Alpe d’Huez, the Italians wondered out loud if Pollentier had been able to beat the doping controls in the 1977 Giro. Maybe. But given the ubiquity of doping in professional cycling, it hardly mattered.