Indurain

by Alasdair Fotheringham

  In late 1987 Echavarri and Indurain visited Italy to obtain advice from the controversial Professor Francesco Conconi – of whom more later – on weight loss, advice they finally did not follow to the letter because Indurain later said it was too harsh. This visit indicated that rather than bulking out, his team might want him to focus on stage racing. At the end of the 1986 season, Echavarri had already promised he would change Indurain’s race programme. But in fact, with the Vuelta and Tour at its centre, barring making an unspectacular debut in Paris–Roubaix and the Ardennes Classics, 1987 remained remarkably similar to what had come before, but with fewer high points.

  As for Reynolds as a team, after Unzué began to work full-time with the professional squad alongside Echavarri in 1986, it was the absence of top results in 1987 that really shaped the squad’s future. Indurain took several minor victories, but Gorospe failed to win anything at all and flopped completely in the Vuelta a España after injuring his knee. Ángel Arroyo garnered a single stage win in the low-level Vuelta a Aragón in the entire year. It was partly for that reason that despite strong rumours that he had already reached a deal with Kelme, Reynolds re-signed Pedro Delgado, now Spain’s top racer, during the Volta a Galicia that August.

  ‘I had left Reynolds [at the end of 1984] because [they thought] Pedro Delgado was too expensive and because they’d got Julián Gorospe on their books, and so they told me “you’re better off flying alone”,’ Delgado recollects. ‘When they signed me back they pretty much gave me a blank cheque and told me to name my price.’ Compared with the team Delgado had left three years earlier, ‘It had changed a lot, but for the better. Tactically, the team’s earlier limitations had disappeared. Reynolds was a team which was racing to win and they signed me out of desperation because they wanted to win big races and couldn’t.’

  Signing Delgado constituted a huge turnaround in Reynolds’ fortune and, indirectly, provided the platform for Indurain’s continuing progress without excessive pressure. Yet it had been touch and go whether the team would fold. According to Arnaud, in April 1987, Unzué and Echavarri had their doubts whether Reynolds would continue. Their co-sponsor for that year, Seur, went on to form their own team and with no guaranteed future backing mid-season, the two Reynolds directors started to put pressure on the riders in the Vuelta a España.

  ‘The team was cracking,’ Arnaud says, ‘four riders abandoned and Gorospe had fallen and had a bad knee injury, we almost all had to wait for him and chase for fifty kilometres in Cerler. I got annoyed with José Miguel, for the first and last time ever, because there were just four of us to do all the work, of whom one wasn’t going great, another [Arroyo] was too well placed on GC to have any room for manoeuvre, another [Julián Gorospe] who was in good shape but had half-broken his knee, and then there was me. Then the day after I got really cross, I went and won a stage.’ The team had saved face, but it was clear that something had to be done to resolve Reynolds’ future. Once Reynolds promised to continue sponsorship, Delgado, therefore, constituted the solution to many of the team’s ills.

  Indurain was on the team’s books already, of course. But despite Gorospe’s flopping and Indurain’s triumphs in smaller races, the younger rider was yet to make a definitive jump towards leadership in a landmark event. As Delgado puts it, ‘Miguel was still pretty green, even if it was common knowledge that he’d gone with Echavarri to see [Italian sports scientist Francesco] Conconi, something Echavarri had not done previously with any other rider.’

  Echavarri thought Indurain was, possibly, destined for greatness. Yet what kind of greatness was anything but clear. ‘What Conconi had told him,’ Delgado says, ‘was that Indurain was a one-day rider, made for the Classics. As for the Tours, Echavarri was taking him very gently: all this stuff of letting him race half a Tour de France then sending him home, that was absolutely unheard of at that time. It was usually more a case of “squeeze the cow’s udder until she runs dry”.’

  Indurain’s ‘special treatment’ did not, according to Delgado, produce any sense of jealousy in his team-mates: ‘But what it did create was a heck of a lot of column inches in the newspapers, to the point where he was even known as “Robocop”.’ The thing was, Delgado explains, ‘Nobody at the time went to specialist sports doctors’ – as Indurain had, going to see Conconi at the end of 1987 – ‘and in fact at the time there weren’t any in Spain.’

  ‘So José Miguel garnered a lot of publicity when he talked to the press about how “we’re looking after Miguel”, “what could a rider as special as this be really capable of doing” and so on. Even before Miguel really was somebody, he’d been “sold” to the media as somebody producing exceptional [physiological] data, somebody who had to get thinner, somebody with an amazing pulse rate or lung capacity, somebody who could do this, that and the other. All this in an era when this kind of stuff was rarely talked about. It all sounded like genetic gobbledegook, changing this chromosome or whatever, twenty-third-century jargon in a period when we were all thinking “Hmm, but isn’t this the twentieth century?” He’s still riding along like the rest of us, pedalling away, and he’s still getting dropped from time to time, too …’

  The issue was that, as Delgado sees it, Reynolds knew they had a top rider on their books but what kind of top rider was yet to become clear: ‘Miguel was still a modesto [a lower ranking rider] but the thing was nobody knew what he could do. José Miguel was always saying that he was going to be the first Spaniard to win a Milano–Sanremo’– something already achieved, in fact, by Catalonia’s Miguel Poblet in the 1950s (twice), but still a huge target. ‘So he later took him to Milano–Sanremo to see what he could do, motivate him for that and give him some very rigorous training plans so he’d be in good shape.’ Again, this was a plan that never saw any real results.

  For all Indurain was racking up multiple minor victories, the question marks were flourishing, and little else. A debut in the Ardennes Classics ended in an abandon in both Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège but for a still heftily built Indurain, hauling his fairly corpulent body over a series of punishing climbs was only marginally more to his liking. Echavarri was much given to saying in the years to come that Indurain ‘had it in him to win Paris–Roubaix.’ But there was no evidence that he felt it was important enough, in terms of publicity for Reynolds or later Banesto, for Indurain actually to try to do so.

  Instead, Indurain went back to more familiar terrain in the Vuelta a España. On the plus side he turned in a memorable performance when the race wound its way up to the ski station of Cerler in the Pyrenees – his team-mates had to tell him to stop driving so hard – and on the downside, poor spring weather in Spain that year saw Indurain come down with flu two days before the start in Benidorm. In Asturias, as the race reached its half-way point, Indurain abandoned. ‘I had built up for it the whole season, and it all went totally wrong,’ Indurain later commented in his usual laconic, understated, style. ‘I couldn’t do much about it.’ After previously catching pneumonia in the Vuelta 1985 and suffering the consequences throughout that summer, this was the latest confirmation that the Vuelta’s weather conditions in April were not suited to him. But it was far from being the last.

  After his Vuelta abandon Indurain was able to head for the Vuelta a los Valles Mineros, a small stage race in Asturias, where he snapped up three stages and the overall in the face of admittedly limited opposition. Even more pleasingly, Indurain took a victory in his home race, the one-day Trofeo Navarro, where he outpowered breakaway Iñaki Gastón. He was also able to claim victory in the fabled Subida a Txitxarro, a hill-climb criterium that rounded off the season for the Basque and Navarran pros.

  In between came the Tour de France, which Indurain managed to complete for the first time. He finished in ninety-seventh place, with a sixth place in the final time trial the real high point. Completing the Tour is recognised as a rite of passage for any pro and as such Echavarri called Indurain back to the team car as the peloton was riding
towards the Champs Elysées. The team director produced a paper napkin on which he had written ‘On this day Don Miguel Indurain earned his licence as a professional racer.’

  Had what until 1987 looked like a path of steady progress towards ever greater triumphs suddenly petered out completely, Indurain’s team-mates had no doubt that he could have made it as a domestique. But throughout the season it was as if Indurain, one of the tallest riders in the peloton, had a lower profile than ever before – and not just in the Tour. Some might nickname him ‘Robocop’ but perhaps ‘Invisible Robocop’ might have been more accurate.

  Arguably the most important moment of 1987 for Indurain was not completing his first Tour, but extending his contract with Reynolds for another three seasons. Interest ranged from PDM to Zor at home and Indurain refused the latter on the grounds that the 50 million pesetas he was offered by directeur sportif Javier Mínguez ‘was an awful lot of money’: ‘I expected any answer but that one, and I didn’t know what to say,’ Mínguez said later. It was not only Mínguez who was stumped at Indurain’s lack of financial ambition: according to Unzué, when his own team offered him a new contract, Indurain has been the only rider in their 36-year history who responded, ‘Wouldn’t that be too much?’ One motive for sticking with Reynolds was arguably Indurain’s intense sense of loyalty. There was also a chance to progress without as much pressure as he would have had as an outright leader – which he could have become, had Delgado not rejoined the Reynolds ranks.

  What initially changed in 1988 was not so much Indurain, but his team. In less than seven months Reynolds went from its most disappointing season since its inception to winning the Tour de France with Pedro Delgado. After going from the boom years of 1982 and 1983 to being a near also-ran inside Spain for four more seasons, suddenly the pendulum of fortune swung back hard. Reynolds was now the leading squad nationally and one of the most significant ones abroad.

  The difference was simple – Delgado. ‘When I signed for Reynolds, Unzué and Echavarri asked me, what makes a great team? And I said, that’s easy, a great leader,’ Arnaud recalls. ‘If you’re racing a team time trial without a leader, then you’ll do the best you can. If it makes the difference between your leader winning or losing the Tour, then it’s all very different.’

  Changes were everywhere. For the first time since its creation, rather than use the ski stations of the Pyrenees, the newly strengthened Reynolds headed south to Torremolinos for its first training camp of the year. But where media really perked up was when Reynolds announced that Delgado was heading for the Giro d’Italia, rather than the Vuelta. This was the start of an oft-repeated row between the Vuelta organisers and Reynolds, one which extended into the Indurain years, over which of Reynolds’ leading riders would head the team in Spain’s number one race. The strained atmosphere cannot have helped the riders focus on their goals.

  To cap it all, the Giro did not work out at all well for Delgado. ‘There was the legendary day over the Gavia and that was pretty much it,’ he commented in his biography about a blizzard that caused a huge number of riders to abandon. ‘I liked the race, but our lack of knowledge about it led us to make some important mistakes.’ However, the team learned an important lesson for Indurain. Citing the case of a team-mate, Laguía, who discovered that he could actually improve his form thanks to the way the Giro was raced, Delgado argued, ‘the first 150 kilometres of the Giro’s stages were normally without many attacks, or none worth mentioning. Only the last 50 were flat out. You use up energy in the Giro, like in any Grand Tour, but it didn’t punish you like in the Vuelta and on top of that, it left you in great shape for the Tour.’ It was only by 1994 and 1995 that ‘both the Giro’s route in general and even the way they race it’ had changed. The greater publicity value of having their leader race the Vuelta, as well as media and local organisers’ pressure inside Spain, saw Delgado only return to the Giro once, in 1991. But for Indurain, in his first two Giros in 1992 and 1993, Delgado’s analysis was to prove invaluable.

  The media storm surrounding Delgado and Reynolds over his non-participation in the Vuelta can hardly have gone unnoticed by Indurain, either. Spain’s best-known and most influential radio journalist of the era was José María García, who had been instrumental in the creation of Antena 3, Spain’s first fully independent radio station in the post-Franco era. García was furious after Delgado, having announced he would not ride the Vuelta, was then hired as a special commentator for the race by arch-rivals Cadena Ser. García promptly announced he would not be namechecking Reynolds riders at any point during the Vuelta, simply referring to them as ‘the team from Navarre’.

  Javier Ares, one of Spain’s top commentators and working for García at the time, recalled in Nuestro Ciclismo, por un equipo that ‘It was an era when radio played a huge part in the Vuelta, not so much because cycling itself was important but because of the huge degree of competition between rival media at the time. García had quit Cadena Ser’ – in 1981, although some sources say he was fired – ‘to create Antena 3 radio and he saw cycling as the ideal scenario for expressing his fearlessness and ingenuity [as a commentator].’

  As a result, radio stations from across Spain poured money into their Vuelta coverage, using everything from helicopters to motorbikes, mobile studios and a sizeable series of programmes, from live to behind-the-scenes to analysis that lasted well into the night. García himself had direct radio contact with each Spanish-speaking directeur sportif inside their team cars and what Ares calls a ‘close collaboration’ with Unipublic, the race organiser. Ares claims that García was so powerful he could help shape the outcome of the race itself, in particular when he used that radio contact to help determine the outcome of the controversial 1985 Vuelta, by ‘preventing certain Spanish teams from chasing behind the [Pepe] Recio/Delgado breakaway.’ Numerous factors are said, in fact, to have caused that infamous breakaway to work so well, and what degree of influence each had remains unclear to this day. The end result was so successful that Delgado won the race overall when he wrenched the lead from Robert Millar.

  As Ares points out, in terms of gaining publicity for cycling the knock-on effect of García’s influence was immense: his Supergarcía programme, which started at midnight each night, was by far the most popular of the era in Spain. At the same time, Delgado’s huge charisma was clear, too, reaching a point where García’s Antena 3 co-workers, fearing attacks from pro-Delgado fans, removed the publicity stickers from their race vehicles to avoid identification.

  Most importantly this crisis situation, as well as García’s ongoing interest in cycling, helped consolidate the Vuelta and by extension the Tour, as key events in the Spanish sporting calendar and for which the mass media of all kinds – print, radio and TV – was virtually obliged to provide blanket coverage. Indurain did not benefit directly at first, but it meant cycling had a fanbase and an impact on Spanish society during the Indurain era that it had not enjoyed since the Bahamontes–Loroño rivalry of the 1950s.

  It was purely ironic, of course that even if Perico – as Delgado is nicknamed in Spain – was not present in the Vuelta, his non-participation garnered almost as much publicity as riding might have done. The symbolism in a picture taken of Delgado riding in the opposite direction to the Vuelta peloton when he and 180-plus riders accidentally crossed paths whilst he was out training became one of the stand-out photos of the entire race. As for Indurain, as in 1985 and 1987, he suffered badly, going down with tendinitis and a severe cold. He finally quit the Vuelta on the very last stage. With Arroyo and Gorospe also abandoning, and their best rider, William Palacio in twelfth place overall, the Vuelta had become a race for Reynolds to forget. For Perico, seventh in the Giro was hardly a result to remember, either.

  The Tour was a very different story. With Stephen Roche, the defending champion, not taking part, Delgado was the de facto favourite. Despite losing a minute in the first week because of a crash, the Spaniard reached the mountains less than two minutes down o
n the race leader. Taking part in a strong attack by Lucho Herrera on the warm-up stage to the Alpine ski station of Morzine saw Delgado move up to sixth. The key stage though, was to prove to be on the road to Alpe d’Huez.

  When Indurain was briefly dropped on the Madeleine climb as his team-mates Arroyo and Jesús Rodríguez Magro hammered away at the front, Delgado ordered the team to wait. Indurain’s role – which having got back on, he then fulfilled to perfection – was to drive hard on the Madeleine’s descent and on the flat towards the Glandon, the next ascent. Delgado’s rivals were already on the back foot as a result of Reynolds’ high-pressure approach and on the Glandon, race leader Steve Bauer, Lucho Herrera and Erik Breukink all began to suffer and Delgado went clear.

  The race seemed all but sewn up in Delgado’s favour, but a Colombian macro-alliance behind saw his advantage reduced to a minute by the foot of Alpe d’Huez. Nonetheless, third on the summit allowed him to take over as race leader, and a powerful display of uphill time trialling at Villards-de-Lans the following day both captured the Segovia-born rider the stage and strengthened his grip on the Tour. Reynolds had claimed their first ever maillot jaune and for Delgado, with just two tough days remaining in mountainous terrain in the Pyrenees, it appeared to be all over bar the shouting.

  As Delgado recollects it, the news broke when he was in his hotel room in Bordeaux one evening, less than a week before the Tour ended and with the leader’s jersey still snugly in his suitcase. Arnaud, his room-mate, repeated what the TV news had revealed – that a rider in the Tour had tested positive. ‘That’ll be tough for whoever got caught,’ Delgado remembers thinking.