by Carol McGann
4. Roberto Visentini @ 1 minute 40 seconds
8. Andy Hampsten @ 2 minutes 38 seconds
The top standings remained unchanged over next five stages, the only excitement being the cancellation of stage eleven when a group of demonstrators blocked the finish line.
Stage twelve had four rated climbs with a finish at the top of the Selvino. The days in the high mountains had begun. Del Tongo’s manager Pietro Algeri decided to gamble on Chioccioli’s excellent form and had Saronni and Giupponi keep the speeds high during much of the stage, bringing the best riders to the base of the final ascent together. Once on the climb, Hampsten scooted away with Delgado. They clawed out a fifteen-second gap on the group containing Breukink, Zimmermann, Bernard, Visentini and Chioccioli. Hampsten won the stage and Chioccioli took the Pink Jersey. Podenzana, too big to be playing in the hills with these boys, lost 16 minutes 5 seconds.
The General Classification: 1. Franco Chioccioli
2. Urs Zimmermann @ 33 seconds
3. Roberto Visentini @ 55 seconds
4. Flavio Giupponi @ 1 minutes 10 seconds
5. Andy Hampsten @ 1 minute 18 seconds
This takes us to the legendary 120-kilometer stage fourteen of the 1988 Giro d’Italia with its crossing of the Aprica, a trip partway up the Tonale and then a left turn up the south face of the Gavia pass with a final steep, technical descent into Bormio. The day was wet and cold. Until the start Torriani had been considering an alternate route because of the possibility of bad weather. It would end up being, in the words of La Gazzetta, “the day the big men cried.”
Over the first two climbs, the cold, wet riders stayed together. When they began ascending the Gavia with its patches of fifteen percent gradient (back then, only the Gavia’s switchback turns were paved), it began to snow and as the riders continued up the pass, it got ever colder. Johan Van der Velde, in just shorts and short sleeves, was first over the top. He was followed a few seconds later by Breukink, Hampsten and then by Chioccioli and Marco Giovannetti.
Breukink and Hampsten had dropped the Italians well before the summit and crested together. The conditions were appalling; the road was frozen and when the riders began the descent, their brakes wouldn’t work on the frozen rims. Some had their gears jammed up with ice. Van der Velde gave up, dismounted his bike, waited for warmer clothes to be brought from the team car and descended the steepest part of the pass on foot. He lost 47 minutes that day.
Photo of Hampsten
Hampsten and Breukink pressed on down the steep, icy descent and into Bormio where Breukink won the sprint and Hampsten donned the maglia rosa.
The new General Classification: 1. Andy Hampsten
2. Erik Breukink @ 15 seconds
3. Franco Chioccioli @ 3 minutes 54 seconds
4. Urs Zimmermann @ 4 minutes 25 seconds
5. Flavio Giupponi @ 4 minutes 55 seconds
Let’s look at some of the important riders and what happened to them on that harrowing descent. Chioccioli is still bitter about that day, saying he was only 40 seconds behind Hampsten when he reached the top, but he was wearing shorts and a short sleeve jersey. He was still the virtual maglia rosa, yet, incredibly, the team car was back with Giupponi; Chioccioli said he had to make it to Bormio with no hat or even warm gloves. Feeling abandoned by his team, Chioccioli’s morale was shattered and after the Gavia stage he stopped riding offensively for the rest of the Giro.
Breukink had to take both feet out of the pedals to balance his bike on the descent. Hampsten had been descending ahead of him and Breukink only saw him in the final kilometers of the stage. He closed the gap and seeing that Hampsten was at his limit, out-sprinted him for the stage win.
Most of the teams were unprepared for the terrible conditions, even though they knew the weather was going to be rough at the top of the Gavia. The directors may not have expected the dantesque conditions they met, but the slovenly way most of the directors took care of their riders was deplorable.
Mike Neel, Hampsten’s 7-Eleven team director, was ready with warm drinks and clothes to give the riders at the summit. Also, Neel had a 25-tooth rear sprocket mounted on Hampsten’s bike while the others were thrashing 23s. In many ways, Hampsten’s leadership in the Giro was one of preparation meeting opportunity. Even with Neel’s foresight, 7-Eleven rider Bob Roll went to the hospital with hypothermia. He recovered quickly and was on the starting line the next day.
Unfairly, many in the press and the peloton thought Hampsten’s position the result of good fortune rather than careful riding by a man who could climb as well as any in the world. The next day he got his first test as the new owner of the Pink Jersey. The fifteenth stage was originally scheduled to start in Bormio and go up the south face of the Stelvio with the finish at the Merano 2000 ski station.
It was snowing at the top of the Stelvio, so Torriani had the race start over the hill in Spondigna, just beyond the Stelvio descent. The riders faced a slightly downhill roll along the valley into Merano followed by a stiff climb to the ski station. Bernard went away at the base of the ascent with Urs Zimmermann for company until Zimmermann couldn’t take the Frenchman’s searing pace. Alarmed by the growing gap, Hampsten chased, but only hard enough to keep Bernard in sight, managing to gain a little time on Breukink in the process.
Bad weather continued to harass the riders. Stage sixteen, to Innsbruck in Austria, went over several difficult passes in cold and snow. The riders stopped a couple of times, hoping that Torriani would cancel the stage. Not this Giro. Breukink’s director Peter Post had his team ride hard, causing a split that left only Hampsten and Breukink of the highly placed riders in the front group. The chasers nearly caught the leaders and the day’s result was a few seconds added to the gap Hampsten and Breukink had on the rest of the contenders.
Hampsten had the same problem as many of the best pure climbers, questionable time trial skills. With a 40-kilometer individual test coming in the final stage, Hampsten had to pad his lead, otherwise he’d get run over by Breukink, a more complete rider.
He did get the bit of insurance he needed in stage eighteen, an 18-kilometer uphill time trial. Hampsten won the stage while Breukink was fifth, 64 seconds slower. Hampsten also pocketed the 20-second stage winner’s time bonus. Bernard, feeling that he had lost the Giro, abandoned, hoping for better in the Tour. He didn’t finish the Tour either.
The General Classification stood thus: 1. Andy Hampsten
2. Erik Breukink @ 1 minute 51 seconds
3. Franco Chioccioli @ 11 minutes 29 seconds
4. Marco Giovannetti @ 14 minutes 40 seconds
5. Pedro Delgado @ 14 minutes 51 seconds
It almost all came undone for Hampsten in stage nineteen. Zimmermann and Stefano Giuliani blasted away from the pack and carved out a large lead. The alarms went off in the peloton because Zimmermann, a racer not to be toyed with, was now the virtual maglia rosa and was cruising to victory. By the end of nearly three weeks of racing, Hampsten’s team was a wreck. Instead, Breukink’s Panasonic riders and the Del Tongo squad, looking after the interests of both Flavio Giupponi and Chioccioli, took up the chase. Giuliani and Zimmermann weren’t seen until the stage’s end, but the gap was narrowed enough to keep Hampsten at the top of the standings. Zimmermann was now second.
Now only the final stage’s 43-kilometer individual time trial stood between Hampsten and final victory. Bad weather had dogged the riders this year and the final stage was ridden in the rain. Breukink was tiring and came in fifth, beating Hampsten by only 23 seconds.
Hampsten’s victory was clear-cut. He not only won the General Classification, he took the Climbers’ prize and was third in the points. For the second year in a row, there were no Italians on the podium.
Final 1988 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven-Hoonved) 97 hours 18 minutes 56 seconds
2. Erik Breukink (Panasonic-Isostar) @ 1 minute 43 seconds
3. Urs Zimmermann (Carrera Jeans-Vagabond) @ 2 minutes 45 seconds
4. Flavio Giupponi (Del Tongo-Colnago) @ 6 minutes 56 seconds
5. Franco Chioccioli (Del Tongo-Colnago) @ 13 minutes 20 seconds
Climbers’ Competition: 1. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven-Hoonved): 59 points
2. Stefano Giuliani (Chateau d’Ax-Salotti): 55
3. Renato Piccolo (Gewiss-Bianchi): 49
Points Competition: 1. Johan Van der Velde (Gis Gelati-Bruciatori Ecoflam): 154 points
2. Rolf Sørensen (Ariostea): 131
3. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven-Hoonved): 128
1989. Vincenzo Torriani, the grand old patrono of the Giro, was in failing health. Since 1975 he had been collaborating in running the Giro with Neapolitan lawyer Carmine Castellano, Castellano’s assistance being limited at first to handling the logistics of southern Giro stages. Castellano moved to Milan in the 1980s and became more deeply involved in organizing the race. Although Torriani was credited as co-director though 1992, Castellano actually took over running the race in 1989. In the later years of Torriani’s tenure, the Giro had opened up to become an important international race. Under Castellano, during the mid and late 1990s, the Giro would again become more of an Italian competition with fewer of the big international teams riding. While Castellano was effectively in charge, Torriani hadn’t gone home just yet. When he phoned Laurent Fignon to entice him to ride the 1989 Giro, he told Fignon that it was, “one of the toughest in history”. The 1989 edition was indeed loaded with mountains, plus days of heavy roads and again was run without a rest day. World Road Champion Maurizio Fondriest said of the 1989 route, “With a course like this, Moser would never have won.”
After winning the Tour for a second time in 1984, Fignon was plagued by injuries and went into a deep decline. In 1987 he began to recover and in 1988, beating Fondriest in a two-up sprint, he won Milan–San Remo. In 1989 he astonished the cycling world with a second consecutive Milan–San Remo victory. His squad, however, was a shadow of the powerful team that had supported him in the early 1980s. He and his director Cyrille Guimard now owned the team and Fignon wrote that Guimard had become penny-wise and pound-foolish in his management which was reflected in the reduced quality of the team and support staff.
Torriani pulled out his checkbook and was able to induce Fignon to return to the Giro, but the Frenchman had no trust in Torriani, calling him the “same old bandit”.
Hampsten’s 7-Eleven team also returned, but their real goal was the Tour in July. Looking at the 3,418-kilometer, 22-stage race, Hampsten told Fignon that this race would not be won by the strongest man in the peloton, but by the smartest.
After his abortive 1988 attempt to ride the Giro, LeMond returned with a new team, ADR, a squad made largely of Classics riders and generally unsuited to Grand Tours. LeMond’s fitness for shorter races was tolerable: he came in fourth in the March two-day Critérium International. A three-week race would be an entirely different challenge.
After mass defections to other teams at the end of 1988 season, Alfa Lum found itself without riders. Maurizio Fondriest, for instance, moved from Alfa Lum to Del Tongo after winning the World Championship. In a perfect deus ex machina, a solution presented itself to the team management. The year before, the Soviet Union relaxed its ban on its riders turning pro. Alfa Lum pounced and signed up the cream of Russian cycling and instantly had a squad of fine riders. Alfa Lum’s entry into the 1989 Giro represents a giant step in the mondialization of professional cycling.
With a Sicilian start followed by stages taking the peloton first to the Dolomites and then the Alps before heading to a finish in Florence, 1989’s route left little of Italy unvisited.
After the three Sicilian stages, Contini led and his Malvor teammate Flavio Giupponi, fourth the year before, was sitting 15 seconds back, in third place. That third stage was a 32-kilometer team time trial and Fignon’s weak Super U squad was seventh, a minute and a half slower than winner Ariostea. Hampsten’s 7-Elevens were sent to the ground after a black cat picked a bad time to cross the road, making the team second to last, more than three minutes behind Ariostea.
The southern mainland stages, though hilly, produced no changes to the standings until the eighth stage which finished atop the Gran Sasso d’Italia. Marino Lejarreta, Erik Breukink and Colombian Luis Herrera, winner of the 1987 Vuelta, jetted off the front, gaining six seconds over the main body of contenders. Breukink was in pink by a single second over Acácio Da Silva.
The first individual time trial was at the Adriatic coastal town of Pesaro. Polish rider Lech Piasecki, a time trial specialist, won the 36.8-kilometer stage, but it was Breukink’s second place that really mattered. Fignon created no fear in his competitors (but apparently a little in his director Cyrille Guimard who expected better) with his eighth place, a half minute slower than Breukink. Fignon pronounced himself satisfied with the effort as it was his best time trial since 1986. Roche looked good with a third place that was only 8 seconds slower than the Dutchman’s.
After ten stages and with the Dolomites coming in just three days, the General Classification stood thus: 1. Erik Breukink
2. Stephen Roche @ 46 seconds
3. Laurent Fignon @ 1 minute 1 second
4. Piotr Ugrumov @ 1 minute 5 seconds
5. Flavio Giupponi @ 1 minute 23 seconds
Probably no one at the time was aware that history was being made, but the winner of the twelfth stage was 22-year-old neo-pro Mario Cipollini. That was the first stage win in a long and prolific career that would later see him try to break Alfredo Binda’s record of 41 Giro stage wins.
Leaving Padua, stage thirteen was a rainy trip to the top of Tre Cime di Lavaredo. At twenty kilometers to go, Herrera blasted off. Fignon said it was an almost exact replay of Herrera’s attack on l’Alpe d’Huez in the 1984 Tour de France and he got the same orders from Guimard, “Stay put!” Guimard surely feared Fignon’s blowing up while trying to chase one of the best specialist climbers ever. Herrera rocketed up the steep mountain, leaving a grumbling Fignon exactly 1 minute back with Breukink a further 4 seconds behind Fignon. The result of Herrera’s attack was Breukink’s remaining in pink with Fignon second at 53 seconds.
The tappone arrived and what a queen stage it was, with five major passes: Giau, Santa Lucia, Marmolada, Pordoi and the Campolongo. The finish was in Corvara, at the bottom of a short but twisty descent from the summit of the Campolongo. It was a horrible day in the mountains with dense and dangerous fog, snow, rain and temperatures near freezing. Fignon, who normally rode poorly in cold, wet weather, consented to having his entire body massaged with an extremely hot embrocation. The hot liniment put him in misery until the stage started, but he said he barely noticed the cold once he got going. He did several probing attacks and finally went hell-bent for leather on the Campolongo, taking a few riders with him, including stage winner Giupponi.
Breukink lost six minutes after going weak from hunger while Herrera crashed on the Marmolada. Fignon was the maglia rosa with Giupponi second at 1 minute 50 seconds and a now-interested-in-the-Giro Hampsten third, 2 minutes 31 seconds behind the Frenchman.
The terrible weather kept coming. The sixteenth stage was to have both the Tonale and the Gavia passes, but amid cries from the Italian press that Torriani was favoring Fignon by running the stage despite the bad weather, the stage was cancelled. Fignon was actually in trouble with an old shoulder injury making climbing in the cold almost impossible. But given his history of not only favoring Italians, but specific Italians, the accusation that Torriani was working to help a Frenchman win the Giro seemed strange. Furthermore, he had already confided to others that he hoped Giupponi would win.
For the moment, Mother Nature was on Giupponi’s side. The 10.7-kilometer timed hill climb up Monte Generoso, jus
t over the border in Switzerland, was held under overcast skies. The day was cool enough to make riding up the mountain torture for Fignon. Herrera won the stage and all of Fignon’s competitors did well. Hampsten was third, only 35 seconds slower than the Colombian rocket. Roche and Giupponi were another half-minute behind. Fignon was seventeenth, 1 minute 45 seconds off Herrera’s pace.
Fignon was losing ground: 1. Laurent Fignon
2. Flavio Giupponi @ 1 minute 15 seconds
3. Andy Hampsten @ 1 minute 21 seconds
4. Urs Zimmermann @ 2 minutes 29 seconds
5. Franco Chioccioli @ 2 minutes 43 seconds
There were two hilly stages in Liguria and Tuscany and they might have spelled doom for Fignon, who was struggling. And then the worst possible thing for Giupponi happened, the weather turned warm and Fignon revived. Fignon mounted an attack on the Passo di Cento Croci, but had to slow because the lead motorbike wasn’t moving fast enough. He led out the sprint out, won the stage, and took back 10 seconds.
Another five rated climbs awaited the riders in the penultimate stage, and this time Fignon came close to losing the race. He was marking Giupponi and while following him on a descent, crashed with Belgian Claude Criquielion. By this point Fignon’s exhausted team was in tatters, leaving him without support when he needed it most. Fignon said Giupponi and Hampsten used the opportunity of the crash to attack. Fignon had no choice but to straighten his handlebars and go after them, which he did, catching them after a ten-kilometer chase. Showing that there was no damage from the crash and chase, Fignon won an intermediate sprint, snaffling up five precious bonus seconds.
Photo of Fignon and Bugno