by Carol McGann
The 1984 Giro d’Italia came down to the final time trial, 42 kilometers from Soave to Verona. Moser won it riding a road version of his aerodynamic World Hour Record bike with the remarkable time of 49 minutes 26 seconds. Fignon came in second, 2 minutes 24 seconds slower. Moser had gone at a blistering 50.977 kilometers an hour, the fastest-ever time trial longer than 20 kilometers.
Photo of Moser
That remarkable time trial ride gave the 1984 Giro to Moser.
The recriminations over this Giro continue to this day. There are three areas of controversy: the biased officiating that allowed Moser to be pushed up the mountains and draft the caravan cars, the elimination of the Stelvio climb, and problems with the final time trial.
It would appear that Moser did benefit from officials who turned a blind eye to the illicit help he received, yet they were quite willing to penalize others. Without a doubt, Fignon was hometowned.
The Stelvio question remains a muddle. Was the pass closed? The French magazine Vélo published pictures showing the Stelvio was open. If the Stelvio did have snow, it wasn’t much and clearing the summit would have been simple. The Giro organization seemed to be quite happy to save the big, muscular Moser the trouble of going up the mountain.
It is not clear to me that Fignon would have been able to take a lot of time out of Moser if the Stelvio had been run. The stage was scheduled to be run from the less challenging south-facing side, not the legendary 48-switchback Trafoi climb. After cresting the pass, the riders would have had a long technical descent and then a 50-kilometer flat run-in to Merano. Would Fignon have been able to hold a large gap on the descent and the road to Merano from Moser who was both a skilled descender and the superior time trialist? It’s all conjecture but in my opinion if Fignon had been able to create a gap on the ascent, it probably would have been erased by the time the he arrived in Merano.
The final time trial where Moser took the Pink Jersey from Fignon has problems, unless you are Francesco Moser. As Fignon told historian Les Woodland in a Procycling magazine interview, “In the time trial, just get out the tapes from the television and see for yourself. It’s very clear. The television helicopter was flying just behind him. You can see from the images. They are all from low down and behind him, so that the blades of the helicopter were pushing him along. Then look at the pictures of me and they’re all taken from in front of me, so that while the helicopter was pushing Moser along, it was pushing me back.” Fignon later said the turbulence from the helicopter came close to knocking him off his bike a couple of times. Furthermore, Moser rode the time trial strangely, staying in the center of the road, even in the corners where shooting the apex would have shortened his distance, which all professional riders normally do.
Moser countered, “Listen, the helicopter simply could not have flown that low. It would have had to have been just above our heads to make a difference. The story is so stupid because it’s just impossible.”
Clearly irritated by what he sees as French disinformation, in another interview he said, “One must remember the crono was in Verona on roads lined with trees and buildings.” He further said that the helicopter was flying around all day, filming most of the riders but that he only noticed it in the last 100 meters or so. He said that even if it was trying to blow him along, it wasn’t around long enough to make any difference. Further, it must be noted that Moser had soundly trounced Fignon in the stage fifteen time trial by a solid 88 seconds. He was the better man against the clock and Fignon said Moser was getting stronger as the Giro progressed.
The president of the race jury, a Belgian, said he followed Moser and that the helicopter in no way aided the Italian. He further remarked that he had never seen a rider go so hard in a time trial.
Moser is adamant that he won the race because he was the strongest while Fignon died believing he was robbed of victory in the Giro.
Final 1984 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Francesco Moser (GIS-Tuc Lu) 98 hours 32 minutes 20 seconds
2. Laurent Fignon (Renault-Elf) @ 1 minute 3 seconds
3. Moreno Argentin (Sammontana) @ 4 minutes 26 seconds
4. Marino Lejarreta (Alfa Lum-Olmo) @ 4 minutes 33 seconds
5. Johan Van der Velde (Metauro Mobili) @ 6 minutes 56 seconds
Climbers’ Competition: 1. Laurent Fignon (Renault-Elf): 53 points
2. Flavio Zappi (Metauro Mobili): 40
3. Moreno Argentin (Sammontana): 30
Points Competition: 1. Urs Freuler (Atala-Campagnolo): 178 points
2. Johan Van der Velde (Metauro Mobili): 172
3. Francesco Moser (GIS-Tuc Lu): 166
Winning a Grand Tour can require perfection in all the details. Fignon’s final deficit was less than the 88 seconds he lost by not eating enough on the way to Block Haus. He did, though, go on to deliver a splendid performance in the Tour, easily beating Bernard Hinault by over ten minutes.
1985. Was the Giro organization stung by the harsh criticism of the Giro routes of the early 1980s, which seemed to be made for Italy’s non-climbing stars? It seems there was some reforming going on with the announcement of the 1985 course. It had climbing starting from stage three, somewhat challenging mountains in the middle of the schedule and a couple of hard stages near the end. The field was big, both in numbers and quality. There were 180 entrants spread over 20 teams, including all of the Italian professional teams and one from the USA. The list of formidable riders included Moser, Contini, Lejarreta, Visentini, van Impe, Saronni, Johan Van der Velde and two from La Vie Claire, Hinault and Greg LeMond.
Fignon could not ride. Although he started the season well, winning the Coppi-Bartali Week in Italy and taking a third in the Flèche Wallonne, an inflamed Achilles tendon required surgery, keeping the gifted Frenchman out of both the Giro and the Tour.
Greg LeMond had come in third in the 1984 Tour and the breach between Hinault and LeMond that began with the 1985 Tour was still in the future. For now, Hinault was the world’s most potent racing machine, LeMond was a fast-rising, extraordinary talent and they were on the same team. If Moser wanted to repeat his 1984 win, he would have to ride extraordinarily well.
The 6.65-kilometer prologue in Verona went to an obviously in-form Moser with Visentini second at 7 seconds and Hinault in sixth place, 15 seconds slower. Moser got to start where he left off the previous June, in pink.
He didn’t get a chance to get comfortable in the leader’s jersey because stage two was a team time trial, won by Saronni’s Del Tongo squad, giving Saronni the lead. The aerodynamic revolution had come to the professional peloton. Many of the teams sported disc, or as they were then called, lenticular wheels, as well as cow’s horn handlebars and sloping top tubes.
Stage four went into the Dolomites via the Passo Costalunga to soften the legs before a hilltop finish at Selva di Val Gardena. Things were together for the final climb when Lejarreta dropped the hammer hard. Hinault reached deep into his reserves and managed to join the Spaniard, as did Baronchelli, Visentini and Hubert Saiz. The break stuck, with Saiz winning the sprint and Visentini becoming the new leader. Moser finished two minutes back while Saronni’s Giro was already over after he lost more than four minutes. LeMond showed the La Vie Claire one-two punch by winning the field sprint, coming in sixth, 1 minute 20 seconds back.
The next day, after one of his riders was relegated for dangerous sprinting, Malvor’s director Dino Zandegù threatened to withdraw from the Giro in protest. As usual, it was an empty threat and the team remained in the race.
The Giro then headed down the Adriatic side of Italy. La Vie Claire rode at the front, constantly attacking and harassing the peloton. Visentini declared in a press conference that the Hinault of this Giro was not the rider of years past and that Hinault was doing well only by virtue of his team’s efforts.
With the stage twelve 38-kilometer individual time
trial in Capua, just north of Naples, the Giro started in earnest. Here were the standings before the Capua stage:
1. Roberto Visentini
2. Bernard Hinault @ 28 seconds
3. Marino Lejarreta @ 1 minute 16 seconds
4. Francesco Moser @ 1 minute 36 seconds
5. Greg LeMond @ 2 minute 9 seconds
Hinault, having used the first two weeks of the Giro to ride into shape, won the time trial with Moser second at 53 seconds and LeMond third at 58 seconds. Visentini was sixth, 1 minute 42 seconds slower than Hinault. That gave a new General Classification and cause for Roberto to have a little bit more respect for Hinault:
1. Bernard Hinault
2. Roberto Visentini @ 1 minute 14 seconds
3. Francesco Moser @ 2 minutes 1 second
4. Greg LeMond @ 2 minutes 30 seconds
Stage fourteen finished atop the Gran Sasso, where Hinault seemed to be having an off day and let Moser gain a small gap on him on the final climb.
The next day Ron Kiefel, riding on the 7-Eleven team, became the first American to win a Giro stage when his squad chased down a fleeing Gerrie Knetemann, allowing Kiefel to cross the line in Perugia two seconds ahead of the former World Champion.
Stage seventeen, with the Prunetta and Abetone climbs, produced no real changes. When a break of good journeymen riders was allowed to gain over twenty minutes, the peloton left it up to the race leader and his team to bring them back. Hinault told the others that he and his team would not do it alone and rather than drag the entire peloton along, he would let the virtual maglia rosa, José-Luis Navarro, win the Giro. That got the chase going, cutting the break’s lead to about ten minutes at the end.
If observers felt that perhaps Torriani was going to offer a course so hard that it might put an Italian victory in doubt, they were to be sorely disappointed. Stage nineteen had the Simplon and Gran San Bernardo Passes, and at the unveiling of the route, the entire Gran San Bernardo Pass was to be climbed. When the day’s route maps were passed out, it turned out that Torriani had removed the steep final section of the top of the Gran San Bernardo from the day’s schedule, stopping at the entrance to the tunnel, six kilometers from the summit. Hinault was livid over the change. The result? Moser led in 53 riders at the end of what should have been a tough Alpine stage, allowing Moser to pocket the 20-second time bonus.
For stage twenty, a short, 58-kilometer stage going uphill to Valnontey, near Aosta, La Vie Claire had LeMond pound away at the front for almost the entire stage, trying to make Moser work hard defending his second place and perhaps tire him a bit before the coming time trial. The result, after the peloton broke up, was a second American victory, this time by Andy Hampsten, beating Reynel Montoya and Marino Lejarreta, excellent climbers both, by a minute.
That left only the final time trial. Moser won the stage, but he was only able to beat Hinault by 7 seconds, not enough. As in the 1984 Fignon-Moser time trial, the French accused the television helicopter of carefully flying behind Moser to push him along. The alleged assistance enraged Hinault’s sponsor, Bernard Tapie, who threatened to send up a private plane to intercept the helicopter. Tapie went on to spend six months in jail in 1997, not for aerial combat, but for financial irregularities in one of his companies.
That gave Bernard Hinault three Giro wins, only the second foreigner to do it (Merckx being the other, with five).
Final 1985 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Bernard Hinault (La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar) 105 hours 46 minutes 51 seconds
2. Francesco Moser (Gis Gelati-Trentino Vacanze) @ 1 minute 8 seconds
3. Greg LeMond (La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar) @ 2 minutes 55 seconds
4. Tommy Prim (Sammontana-Bianchi) @ 4 minutes 53 seconds
5. Marino Lejarreta (Apilatte-Olmo-Cierre) @ 6 minutes 30 seconds
Climbers’ Competition: 1. José-Luis Navarro (Gemeaz Cusin-Zor): 54 points
2. Reynel Montoya (Pilas Varta-Café de Colombia-Mavic): 47
3. Rafael Acevedo (Pilas Varta-Café de Colombia-Mavic): 38
Points Competition: 1. Johan Van der Velde (Vini Ricordi-Pinarello-Sidermec): 195 points
2. Urs Freuler (Atala-Campagnolo): 172
3. Francesco Moser (Gis Gelati-Trentino Vacanze): 140
1986. Torriani still played to the galleries of Saronni and Moser fans with a flattish parcours. Merckx called it “decapitated” and one writer lamented that a country of magnificent hills and mountains had shortchanged its national tour. As in 1976, the Giro’s Sicilian start was tragic. The first road stage had a mass crash and among the fallen was Emilio Ravasio of the Atala squad. The doctor took a quick look at him, thought he was fine and let him get back on his bike. He finished with several of the other fallen riders, about seven minutes behind stage winner Sergio Santimaria, who became the maglia rosa. Ravasio later fell into a coma and died about two weeks later. The tragedy brought to mind Portuguese rider Joaquim Agostinho who remounted after crashing during the Tour of the Algarve in 1984 and later fell into an irreversible coma, and Fausto Coppi’s brother Serse, who thought he was fine after crashing in the Tour of Piedmont and later succumbed to head injuries.
There were more crashes. Just a few kilometers before the stage two finish in Catania a big smashup took down La Vie Claire’s Giro captain Greg LeMond, costing the American rider more than a minute and a half. Some blamed the continual pileups on the high speed racing over the narrow Sicilian roads. In the peloton, riders would shake their fists at the television helicopters which they said were flying so low the rotor wash was blowing the riders around.
Before the Giro left Sicily there was a 50-kilometer team time trial. Saronni’s Del Tongo squad took a nine-second victory over Moser’s Supermercati Brianzoli team. LeMond’s La Vie Claire squad, already a man short due to crashes, lost over a minute and a half. Racing had barely started and LeMond was down almost three and a half minutes.
The General Classification seemed like old times: 1. Giuseppe Saronni
2. Francesco Moser @ 10 seconds
3. Didi Thurau @ 12 seconds
4. Claudio Corti and Giambattista Baronchelli @ 16 seconds
A day later Baronchelli used the hills of Calabria to jet away from the pack, leaving teammate Moser to lead the field into Nicotera 18 seconds later. For all his high placings in the Giro, including two seconds and a third, Baronchelli had not yet spent a day in pink. Finally, in the thirteenth year of his pro career, he pulled on the maglia rosa. It must have been sweet for the man who had won the Baby Giro way back in 1973.
The next day LeMond squirted off the front in the final kilometers, soloing into Cosenza with a Saronni-led pack just 2 seconds behind.
Saronni seemed to be enjoying a renaissance. In the early 1980s, he had been one of the world’s dominant riders but his legs had grown quiet. But when Visentini soloed into Potenza, Saronni was 11 seconds back, good enough to once again be the Pink Jersey with Baronchelli 8 seconds behind in the Overall.
Saronni couldn’t be budged from his position at the top of the standings and the 46-kilometer time trial in Siena allowed him to increase his lead. LeMond might have done better than his fifth place, but he let himself get distracted. He had the fastest intermediate time, so fast that he caught Gianni Bugno and Stefano Colage. The two riders knew a good thing when it went by and drafted the steaming American. Infuriated by the Italians glued to his wheel, LeMond complained to the officials and got so rattled he used the wrong gear in the uphill finish in Siena.
Visentini, excellent against the clock, had crept up to third place, a minute and a half behind Saronni.
Could Saronni keep his lead in the Alps? Stage fourteen was the first test and after the hilltop finish in Sauze d’Oulx, Visentini gained another 21 seconds on Saronni, while Baronchelli lost a half-minute.
Torriani wanted
to cancel the ascent of the San Marco pass, scheduled to be the major climb before the finish at the ski town of Foppolo, saying that with snow on the road it would be a difficult climb. This from the man who engineered stages like the famous Monte Bondone climb in 1956, where dozens of frozen riders, including the maglia rosa, quit in icy misery. LeMond, smelling a fix coming that would lock in Saronni’s lead, got ugly. Arguing it was one of the few chances for him and the other climbers to challenge Saronni, he raised enough stink that Torriani kept the climb. It was good for Torriani and the Giro that the ascent was retained because it was truly memorable.
LeMond and Visentini hit the base of the climb at full gas. The peloton exploded as the contenders scrambled to get up to the flying pair. At the crest it was still LeMond and Visentini at the front, but Baronchelli, Pedro Muñoz, Claudio Corti and Franco Chioccioli had dragged themselves up to the duo. Further back, Saronni and Moser were already two minutes in arrears.
On the ascent to Foppolo, LeMond and Muñoz separated themselves from the other four with the Spaniard winning the stage. Twenty seconds later Visentini came into town, Baronchelli arriving another minute later, Moser and Saronni needing still another minute to arrive. Visentini was in pink and Moser was in high dudgeon. Moser and his director Gianluigi Stanga accused Baronchelli of betraying his teammate Moser by selling his services to Visentini.
After the Alps the General Classification looked like this: 1. Roberto Visentini
2. Giuseppe Saronni @ 1 minutes 6 seconds
3. Giambattista Baronchelli @ 1 minute 54 seconds
4. Greg LeMond @ 2 minutes 5 seconds
5. Claudio Corti @ 3 minutes 24 seconds