by Carol McGann
The race continued heading for the western side of Italy with another day in the Apennines. There were two rated climbs that allowed van Impe to get clear with Marino Lejarreta and Jostein Wilmann. With only a few kilometers to go into Salerno, all three crashed, allowing a big sprint finish to settle things. Moreno Argentin won the stage, but Saronni’s third place gave him enough bonus seconds to take the lead and don his twentieth Pink Jersey.
After stage seven and a week of racing, the General Classification stood thus: 1. Giuseppe Saronni
2. Silvano Contini @ 8 seconds
3. Wladimiro Panizza @ 45 seconds
4. Didi Thurau @ 48 seconds
5. Giovanni Battaglin @ 58 seconds
As the race turned northward, the next few stages didn’t affect the standings, with Saronni keeping his slim lead. Visentini seemed to be the only rider who consistently challenged Saronni. He got into a good-looking break in the hilly stage eleven in western coastal Tuscany, but the move, less one rider, was reeled in with a few kilometers to go. It was 37-year-old Lucien van Impe who surprised everyone when he shot off the front of the dying break, winning the stage seven seconds ahead of the surging pack.
Saronni blitzed the Parma time trial, beating Visentini, also an excellent man against the clock, by 30 seconds. Moreover, by turning in such a good time, Saronni delivered a serious setback to the specialist climbers who were looking forward to the coming high mountain stages, but who now had an imposing time gap to close. Van Impe lost over two minutes.
The last stage of the second week took the riders out of Emilia-Romagna and into Liguria and the coastal road used by the Milan–San Remo race. The day’s riding was perky enough to have Saronni put his Del Tongo team (most notably Thurau) at the front of the pack to bring a few wayward riders back to the peloton. Saronni’s position was vastly improved because Battaglin was suffering from stomach problems and lost a half-hour.
After fourteen stages and two weeks of racing, the high mountains were only two stages away. The General Classification stood thus:
1. Giuseppe Saronni
2. Roberto Visentini @ 2 minutes 20 seconds
3. Didi Thurau @ 2 minutes 34 seconds
4. Silvano Contini @ 3 minutes 8 seconds
5. Lucien van Impe @ 3 minutes 16 seconds
Battaglin, sick and well down on the Classification, abandoned at the start of stage sixteen.
Stage 16b went over the Roncola Pass on the way to Bergamo. Van Impe did what van Impe did best: he attacked on the climb, but Saronni was able to stay with him while Contini was dropped. They came together on the descent for the nearly inevitable Saronni sprint win. So far, at no point in this Giro had Saronni been in trouble.
The next day was a short 91-kilometer stage with a hilltop finish on the Colle San Fermo. Once the pack hit the 1,067-meter-high mountain, van Impe was off the front again. Saronni kept him in sight while Alberto Fernández caught and dropped the Belgian. Saronni tried to hold a surging Visentini’s wheel but couldn’t. The damage was manageable, as there was only 15 seconds between them.
After Paolo Rosola won the sprint into Vicenza for his third stage victory, there was another rest day. There were two mountain stages and a time trial left to affect the outcome.
Stage nineteen up to Selva di Val Gardena, into the heart of the Dolomites, could have been a challenging climbing stage. It wasn’t. The organizers looked for and found the easiest gradients into town. There was a climb at the end but van Impe didn’t participate in the final rush for the line. Hoping to lighten his load for the climb, he had tossed his musette with food and later came down with the hunger knock. It was a strange error for one of the most experienced and finest riders ever to turn a crank. His teammate Alfio Vandi caught up to him and revived van Impe with his own food. The Belgian was able to repair a lot of the damage, but he wasn’t able to attack on a day that he had planned to gain real time. Mario Beccia led Lejarreta across the finish line and Saronni and Visentini finished just 17 seconds behind them.
Stage twenty was the only real day in the mountains, a race on the sinuous and beautiful road around the Gruppo Sella massif with ascents of the Campolongo, Pordoi, Sella, and Gardena passes, and then up the Campolongo again. Alessandro Paganesi rode an epic race by escaping on the first ascent of the Campolongo and holding his lead all the way to the end. It was heroic, but did not affect the outcome of the Giro.
What did matter was Visentini’s attack on the Pordoi, the Cima Coppi for the 1983 edition. Saronni didn’t jump to close the gap, continuing instead to ride at his own measured pace, keeping Visentini in sight. By the top of the Pordoi, Visentini was a minute ahead of Saronni. Over the Sella, the gap remained unchanged. As they climbed the Gardena, Visentini appeared to be weakening and at the top, the gap was down to 40 seconds. Both riders were tiring. After the final ascent of the Campolongo they flew down the hill to Arabba and at the end of this titanic pursuit through the Dolomites, Visentini had managed to hold off Saronni by 29 seconds.
The flat penultimate stage could have given Saronni and his wonderful ability to sprint a chance to gain to bonus seconds, but others beat him, leaving him with a two-minute cushion on a man most thought to be the superior time trialist.
“Expect a surprise,” Visentini predicted.
With only the final 40-kilometer time trial stage left, the General Classification looked like this: 1. Giuseppe Saronni
2. Roberto Visentini @ 1 minute 56 seconds
3. Alberto Fernández @ 2 minutes 50 seconds
4. Mario Beccia @ 4 minutes 1 second
5. Marino Lejarreta @ 5 minutes 9 seconds
Looking stylish and elegant on his bike, Visentini did win the stage, but took only 49 seconds out of Saronni, not nearly enough to wrest the Pink Jersey.
When I visited Italy that fall for the Milan bike show I heard unbelievable stories about an attempt to sabotage Saronni’s time trial ride, but half-doubted them as gossip. It turns out they were true. Visentini rode Battaglin bikes equipped with FIR rims and the owner of FIR, Giovanni Arrigoni, was a little too eager for a Giro victory on his equipment. Signor Arrigoni traveled to the hotel in Gorizia where Saronni’s Del Tongo team was spending the night before the time trial and tried to bribe two of staff to put Guttalax, an extremely powerful laxative, in Saronni’s food. Despite the offer of two million lire (about $1,500), the alarmed hotel employees called the police and the press and Arrigoni was arrested. Saronni’s food was safe. It was a strange move for a well-liked man whose company was enjoying extraordinary worldwide success in the rim market and who had contracted to have Saronni use his wheels the following season.
Final 1983 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Giuseppe Saronni (Del Tongo-Colnago) 100 hours 45 minutes 30 seconds
2. Roberto Visentini (Inoxpran-Lumenflon) @ 1 minute 7 seconds
3. Alberto Fernández (Gemeaz Cusin-Zor) @ 3 minutes 40 seconds
4. Mario Beccia (Malvor-Bottecchia) @ 5 minutes 55 seconds
5. Dietrich Thurau (Del Tongo-Colnago) @ 7 minutes 44 seconds
Climbers’ Competition: 1. Lucien van Impe (Metauro Mobili-Pinarello): 70 points
2. Alberto Fernández (Gemeaz Cusin-Zor): 43
3. Tie between Marino Lejarreta (Alfa Lum-Olmo) and Pedro Muñoz (Gemeaz Cusin-Zor): 27
Points Competition: 1. Giuseppe Saronni (Del Tongo-Colnago): 223 points
2. Moreno Argentin (Sammontana-Campagnolo): 149
3. Frank Hoste (Maria Pia-Europ Decor-Dries): 139
Visentini complained that his actual riding time was less than Saronni’s and without the time bonuses, he would have won the Giro. Saronni won 3 minutes 20 seconds in bonuses compared to Visentini’s 1 minute 25 seconds. By my arithmetic Visentini rode the 1983 Giro 48 seconds faster. But, them’s the rules Roberto, and that’s how the game is judged.
The 1983 Giro being run over such an easy course, probably the least challenging postwar route to date, was raced at the then record pace of 38.937 kilometers per hour, finally beating 1957’s record 37.488 kilometers per hour held by Gastone Nencini. 1957’s Giro was fast not because the course was easy, but because the competition that year was nothing less than savage.
1984. Torriani was acutely aware that his countrymen were passionate about wanting to have an Italian winner. In 1984 the best Italian stage racers were still thought to be Moser and Saronni. So Torriani again laid out a rather flat course, in the words of racing historian and journalist Pierre Chany, “to favor either Saronni or Moser.” Racer Mario Beccia, the leader of the Malvor team and a competent climber, echoed those thoughts. Even Moser had reservations about the generous time bonuses in play for stage wins in the 1984 edition. Moser himself was in top form, having won the most coveted of all single-day Italian races, Milan–San Remo; and even more extraordinary, using an aerodynamic bike, he had smashed Eddy Merckx’s world hour record. It was an impressive career renaissance. Only later did the world learn that Moser had blood-doped (reinjecting his own saved blood), not a banned practice at that time, to beat the hour record. And the other races he won during his late-career bloom, who knows? He was being trained by Francesco Conconi and we’ll have more about Signor Conconi later. The man who could offer the greatest challenge to the two Italian gentlemen was Frenchman Laurent Fignon, nicknamed “The Professor” because he had attended college for a while and wore glasses, both rarities in the 1984 peloton. Fignon won the Tour in his first attempt, in 1983. Not only had Fignon won it, he won it with startling ease. He had stalked Pascal Simon, the leader for much of the race, who was suffering from an extremely painful broken shoulder blade, waiting for him to abandon, which he eventually did. Moreover, Fignon was both good against the clock and an excellent climber, a true passista-scalatore.
This Giro and the accusations that the organizers (meaning Torriani) took an active part in influencing the outcome of the 1984 Giro has been the subject of spirited (meaning shouting and bulging veins) discussion ever since the winner was given his final maglia rosa.
We’ll start with the route itself. It had a healthy 140 kilometers of individual time trialing, which worked to Moser’s advantage. On the other hand there was a team time trial, where the Fignon-led Renault riders could be expected to do very well. And the climbing, where Fignon enjoyed a marked superiority over Moser, leaned to Fignon’s advantage because of a planned ascent of the Stelvio in stage eighteen.
The other major climbing stage, with the short climbs around the Gruppo Sella in the Dolomites, was unlikely to allow Fignon to permanently dispatch Moser. On paper then, it looked that Fignon’s only chance to win would involve a heroic climb up the Stelvio, but because of the way the stage was designed, even that looked iffy.
No other rider on the start list seemed to be on the level of Fignon and Moser. 1984 wasn’t Saronni’s year and he couldn’t be expected to time-trial or climb well enough to beat the two favorites. Neither Baronchelli (still riding reasonably well) nor Battaglin (in his last year as a pro) were on the level of these two at this point. Van Impe was the Belgian Champion and had finished fourth in the 1983 Tour, a big improvement over his ninth in the 1983 Giro, but his fourth place was to Fignon.
The race started in Lucca and Moser, as expected, won the 5-kilometer prologue time trial, with Fignon eighth at 16 seconds. Fignon’s well-drilled Renault squad won the team time trial the next day, but the team time trial’s real times did not count towards the General Classification, though first place was good for a 2 minute 30 second bonification. Moser’s Gis team was third, their bonus being 2 minutes 10 seconds, netting Fignon 20 seconds over Moser and the lead, by 4 seconds.
He slightly increased his lead in stage three, a circuit race in Bologna that included a stiff little climb that let Fignon put another 16 seconds plus a 15-second time bonus for second place between himself and Moser.
An American team, Linea Italia-Motta (run by professional cycling’s first-ever female manager, Robin Morton), was entered, and a member of the squad, Karl Maxon, managed to become the virtual Pink Jersey in stage four when he gained 22 minutes in a solo break. Saronni’s efforts to leave Fignon for dead when the Frenchman crashed enlivened the field and kept Maxon from winning the stage.
Stage five should have been Fignon’s chance to hammer Moser back down the standings because it finished at the top of Block Haus. For a while it looked like Fignon, who was leading the front group, was going to do something special, but about four kilometers from the summit he was done in by hunger knock and struggled to the top. Moser, on the other hand, was having a terrific day and narrowly lost the stage win to Moreno Argentin. Fignon had to concede 88 seconds and the lead to Moser.
There was a crash on a badly marked corner during a descent in stage seven. The riders were incensed over the dangerous oversight and rode slowly the rest of the way to the finish. Almost all the riders, that is. Swiss sprinter Urs Freuler, seeing an easy stage win, jumped ahead of the striking riders.
The Giro reached the arch of the boot at the end of stage seven and headed up the western side of Italy. Still, Moser remained the maglia rosa with nothing happening to change the top ranks of the standings, which remained close. The first 25 riders were all within five minutes of Moser.
At the start of stage nine, Murella withdrew its team from the Giro to punish its stage seven striking riders, taking out Baronchelli. The Murella riders announced they would continue riding the Giro, even at their own expense. To prove their worthiness, the Murella riders rode the stage like fiends with Baronchelli attacking hard several times and finally setting up his teammate Erik Pederson for the stage win. Having proven himself to be a master manipulator (I’m sure he would have considered “motivator” to be a more accurate term), team director Luciano Pezzi concluded the Murella soap opera by ending his threat to withdraw.
But the polemiche were not finished. Felice Gimondi had resigned as president of the Italian Professional Riders Association to protest what he thought was a stupid strike, and vice-president Vittorio Adorni joined him. Incensed that their organization hadn’t stood with them, the riders decided that future officers must be currently racing to hold office.
There was much noise, but the racing over unchallenging roads generated little heat. The race was back in northern Italy for the stage fifteen time trial going from the Certosa di Pavia to Milan. Before the 37-kilometer stage was run, the General Classification stood thus:
1. Francesco Moser
2. Roberto Visentini @ 10 seconds
3. Moreno Argentin @ 34 seconds
4. Laurent Fignon @ 39 seconds
Moser won the time trial, beating Visentini by 53 seconds and Fignon by 88 seconds, yielding the following standings: 1. Francesco Moser
2. Roberto Visentini @ 1 minute 3 seconds
3. Moreno Argentin and Laurent Fignon tied @ 2 minutes 7 seconds
Fignon and Visentini started to divide up the Giro’s spoils, both expressing confidence that the coming mountain stages would surely be the scene of Moser’s downfall. Yet, Fignon later wrote that with each passing day he could see that Moser was getting stronger and more confident.
Cue ominous background sound of cellos playing minor chords. News came that the Stelvio was blocked with snow, but would be ready for stage eighteen. After stage seventeen was completed, the word was the Stelvio was not yet passable.
Now here’s where it gets complicated. Torriani had photos proving that it would be easy to clear the Stelvio and said he badly wanted the race to go over the pass. It was said that a government worker in Trent (Moser’s home town) refused to allow the Giro to go over the Stelvio. Who, in writer Samuel Abt’s words, evaporated the stage? I don’t know.
To substitute, the race went over the Tonale and Palade
Passes. Visentini, believing that the fix was in, quit the race after the stage. Fignon felt that even with the Stelvio eliminated, there was enough climbing left to give him a fair shot at the race.
Fignon tried to get away on the Tonale, but couldn’t. He did cause Moser to get dropped, however. But Moser, a fine descender, got back on and apparently Fignon did not attack on the Palade.
The French erupted with white-hot fury after the stage was over. Fignon’s director Cyrille Guimard said that Moser had been pushed by both spectators and riders and that when he had been dropped, he had been allowed to draft follow cars to regain contact. Moser didn’t directly deny the charges, and there was no adjustment to Moser’s time, as the Giro had done in decades past. To rub salt in the wound, the race jury penalized Fignon twenty seconds for taking food outside the feed zone. Cynics noted that this was a hard mountain stage that, strangely, had 46 riders finish within 5 seconds of stage winner Bruno Leali.
Stage nineteen was run without drama. Fignon left Moser 49 seconds behind going into Selva di Val Gardena. This tightened things up, and with the five-pass stage coming next, here were the standings:
1. Francesco Moser
2. Laurent Fignon @ 1 minute 3 seconds
3. Moreno Argentin @ 1 minute 7 seconds
4. Marino Lejarreta @ 1 minute 8 seconds
5. Mario Beccia @ 3 minutes 55 seconds
The twentieth stage was the last chance for the climbers, with the Campolongo, Pordoi, Sella, Gardena and again the Campolongo passes. The 169-kilometer stage wasn’t the pure climber’s play because this classic loop of shorter, hard climbs can give a good descender a chance to regain contact before the next climb hits. Fignon escaped on the Pordoi and no one was able to catch him. He sailed into Arabba 2 minutes 19 seconds ahead of Moser, who came in eighth. Fignon took the lead, 1 minute 31 seconds ahead of Moser.