It was indeed tough, particularly as the rider in question was Delgado himself. Just as it seemed that Reynolds had their first Tour victory in the bag, their team leader risked exclusion from the race and the Tour’s director, Xavier Louy, reportedly asked Echavarri if he could remove Delgado from the race. Echavarri refused, but the pressure on Delgado and Reynolds could not have been greater. Reynolds had had a previous positive for a Grand Tour champion – Ángel Arroyo after winning the Vuelta a España in 1982 – but the news of Arroyo’s test had leaked out in the quietest of ways. Arroyo, having no phone in his home, had learned he was the first ever Grand Tour winner to be stripped of a title when a journalist, acting on a tip-off, rang him in a supermarket telephone booth. This time, Delgado was under the full media spotlight, to the point where he was smuggled out of a team hotel using the garage to avoid the press waiting for him in the lobby.
Why Delgado was, finally, able to stay in the race – and win it – was because the product for which he’d tested positive, probenecid, was a masking agent that was banned by the IOC but not by cycling’s governing body, the UCI. As a result of what some saw as a loophole, others (incuding the UCI) as an indication that the positive was not, in fact, a full-blown positive, Delgado was able to continue. After three days of serious tension, the UCI confirmed officially that he was in the clear. Reynolds’ first Tour de France victory was, finally, in the bag.
What is striking is the degree of indirect support Delgado and Reynolds received from the Spanish sports establishment. It was perhaps to be expected that Spain’s Luis Puig, the UCI president, should emphasise so strongly to the media that the UCI did not have probecenid on their 1988 banned list – although it was later added. But that Javier Gómez Navarro, Secretary of State for Sport, and Cecilia Rodríguez, head of Madrid’s anti-doping laboratory, should travel specifically to the race ‘to show solidarity’ in the former’s case and to defend a potentially maligned athlete in the latter’s, underlines how significant and high-profile cycling had become for Spain. At times, Reynolds must have felt like the Spanish national cycling team by another name. As much as for the precedent of winning the Tour itself, this creation of much broader social parameters for cycling shows how Delgado acted as a pioneer across the board for Indurain – and the effect on Spanish society that a Tour de France win could have, inside and outside sport.
Within Reynolds, in any case, rather than the pressure breaking the team apart, Delgado’s positive-that-wasn’t created an internal cohesion that arguably proved to be the silver lining for Indurain’s Tour years when the team found itself once again under the spotlight. Before each of the stages where Delgado’s positive-that-wasn’t continued to dominate the Tour, Arnaud would provide the key-note speeches. ‘I come from a rugby background and I gave them briefings a bit like it was a rugby meet,’ he recalls. ‘“Boys, we’ve got a team-mate in difficulties, and now, more than ever, we have to be by his side.” I all but told them, “You don’t want to do the work, you go home … collectively,” we did a last part of the Tour which was amazingly strong.’
Amongst those working so well was, of course, Indurain: ‘By then, he was really strong, he was riding as if he could be, one day, the winner of the Tour. It got to the point where I’d tell him what to do, but run out of legs myself. And he’d go on plugging away at the front, knowing what his job was. Working for Pedro, when you’ve got Indurain’s class, was an easy job.’
The 1988 Tour was also where Delgado first recognised Indurain as his possible successor – although the word ‘possible’ should be underlined after the Navarran had blown the field apart on the Tour’s toughest day in the Pyrenees, on the Peyresourde ascent. ‘Up until 1988 he’d shown that he could do well on the flat, shown that he could do well in time trials, but where he really surprised me that year was on the climbs,’ Delgado says before qualifying that by saying, ‘He still had a hell of a long way to progress.’ Curiously enough – and vitally for his Tour success in the future – where Indurain was strongest was on the longer climbs. ‘If it was just five kilometres long, then he needed to go at a higher speed up it, and he couldn’t. But on the longer climbs, like the ones in the Pyrenees and Alps, 12, 15 or 20 kilometres long, he really had it nailed. Above all, what was impressive was that this was in the third week. Although to go from there to winning the Tour, it’s a big leap.’
‘There are lots of riders with an innate level of greatness in them. But you need a spark to set that greatness alight, to exploit it. It’s like they’ve got the handbrake still on. In Spain, riders like Santi Blanco [in the 1990s] or Jesús Herrada [in the present] are presented to us as the “next big thing”.’ But as Delgado puts it – and he snaps his fingers for emphasis – ‘There has to be a moment when that …’ clack! ‘… breaks through. They break the mould.’ For Indurain that moment, Delgado says, did not come until 1990: ‘the Tour he could have won, but didn’t.’ What 1988 showed, though, was that the raw materials for such a breakthrough moment were definitely there.
Encouragingly, almost as the season was drawing to a close, for the first time in two years Indurain finally began to regain a higher profile, with victory in Spain’s second biggest race, the Volta a Catalunya. In his biggest triumph since 1986, Indurain beat one of the country’s most talented climbers, Laudelino Cubino, albeit by a scant eight seconds. Cubino’s prospects of victory in the Volta were somewhat limited by the route, with a 30-kilometre individual time trial, a team time trial, and few real incursions into the mountains. But for Indurain, Catalunya marked a turning point.
Nor was Catalunya an easy prey by any means. For many years considered more important than the Vuelta a España, Catalunya’s status had been threatened when it was squeezed down from its usual eight stages to six in 1988 by the UCI. Undeterred, the Catalan club, UE Sants, which organised the Volta, responded by holding two days of split stages – which effectively brought the total of race days back up to eight. The list of contenders, too, was impressive, and included Greg LeMond, Delgado, Jean François Bernard, Sean Kelly and Erik Breukink.
Such a tricky route and a good line-up made for an unusually hard-fought event for so late in the season, and in exceptionally warm weather, the tension heightened right from the opening stage when Delgado, Bernard and Breukink were all eliminated from the running by a late crash. The key stage, though, proved to be the one really tough day through the Pyrenees, with even more favourites losing time on the lengthy Coll del Cantó. Indurain, though, maintained a steady pace on the difficult ascent and then on the more straightforward ascent to Super Espot, he closed the overall gap on race leader Laudelino Cubino to nineteen seconds. Cubino was unable to match Indurain when it came to time trialling, and after Indurain claimed the victory on the following day’s time trial stage, the Navarran moved into the overall lead.
The margin was narrow, just eight seconds, but after two years of marking time, Catalunya at last confirmed that Indurain could now hold his own in major week-long stage races when Reynolds team leaders like Delgado were out of the running. Furthermore, he had proved that he could handle the longer mountain climbs, provided he could maintain his own pacing strategy, and even cope with hilly time trials like the one that decided the Volta.
There was also the question of handling pressure, time and again one of Indurain’s strong points. ‘The climb was tough enough to decrease the chances of all-rounders like Miguel [Indurain] and Pello [Ruiz Cabestany], whilst increasing that of Marino [Lejarreta], Pino and Cubino,’ El Mundo Deportivo, Catalonia’s leading sports daily, pointed out. ‘But Indurain, seemingly oblivious to the heightened threats, simply added time trial bars and aerodynamic wheels to his usual bike set-up. He then gained time on the flat and descent, whilst holding off the climbers on the ascent.’ Indurain’s nerve also held on the time trial course’s out-and-back format, with sections where, with no cones to mark out the middle of the road, it was perfectly possible to hit a rider coming in the opposite direction head-o
n. ‘Up until now it has not been a great year for Indurain barring his work for Delgado in the Tour,’ El Mundo Deportivo added, ‘but just like that Bobby Darin song, “Come September”, it’s been another story this autumn.’
‘It’s true, I was starting to get worried, because over the last two years I hadn’t made any progress,’ Indurain said. ‘I’d had a lot of problems in the Vuelta a España and that caused my form to drop off considerably. I know that I won’t ever get to handle the mountains well, because I don’t have the stature of the climbers. But I’m progressing in the hillier stages a lot, and I can be pleased with that. I’ve learned to suffer and that’s what really makes a difference.’ Nor was he ending the year feeling wholly satisfied, ‘because whilst winning a race like Catalunya is always a boost to the morale, this hasn’t been the season I wanted.’ That would have to wait until 1989.
For Indurain, probably the two most important moments of his ‘missing years’ were Delgado’s victory in the Tour and completing the Tour de France himself, for the first time, in 1987. Delgado’s win ensured that Reynolds would continue to make the Tour their main focus of the year, rather than diversifying or encouraging their riders to look at other events and kept the public’s attention on July and stage racing, too. Reynolds and Delgado therefore provided the right scenario, finally, for Indurain to concentrate on what he could achieve in the Tour de France. But equally important was his own confirmation that Grand Tours were for him – a moment that Arnaud, for one, believes arrived when Indurain reached the Champs Elysées finish line on the evening of 26 July 1987.
‘It was one of the hardest Tours ever. I had to abandon on the 20th stage because I was burned out, it was so tough,’ Arnaud says. ‘That Miguel could complete the Tour that year says a heck of a lot about what he could do.’ What Indurain had yet to do, though, was exploit that potential to the maximum, and see how much of the ‘Invisible Robocop’ label he could burn off in the process.
CHAPTER 5
1990: the One That Got Away
Bizarre as it sounds, the moment where Miguel Indurain’s rise towards the summit of international stage racing began to accelerate hard seemed to be as much about runner-up spots as it was about overall wins.
In the spring of 1989, Indurain captured the overall of Paris–Nice, the greatest victory of his career to date – and Spain’s first ever victory in the race, traditionally viewed as a showcase for the next generation to show their worth. Indurain certainly managed that, but curiously he did so without a single stage win, scooping second place in the Paris prologue, second on the race’s first summit finish at Mont Faron, second twenty-four hours later at Saint-Tropez in a breakaway, and second, finally, on the Col d’Èze uphill time trial.
Yet this series of runner-up places actually underlined three of Indurain’s greatest strengths as a stage racer: all-round consistency, a willingness to sacrifice minor success in order to strengthen his chances of overall victory and, equally importantly, no fireworks for their own sake. He was still only twenty-four, but Indurain’s marked increase in all-round ability in such different terrains against rivals of the stature of former Tour winners Stephen Roche and Laurent Fignon was impressive enough for one so young. But so, too, was his ability to keep his eye on the main prize rather than impetuously going for every win that was potentially on offer, and perhaps running out of energy in the process.
The crunch moment of the 1989 Paris–Nice came after the stage four finish on Mont Faron, a 5.5-kilometre ascent outside Marseilles where Indurain powered out of the pack and came within half a bike-length of taking the win from Bruno Cornillet. That explosive display of relentless climbing power, mowing down one rival after another as he closed on Cornillet, allowed Indurain to move up to third. However, on such a short climb, the gaps were small and Stephen Roche was just sixteen seconds behind at the summit. As a Tour winner and the winner of Paris–Nice in 1981, the Irishman – second overall behind Marc Madiot at that point – was once again catapulted into the role of odds-on favourite and as Roche himself put it, ‘I believe I’ve got a very good chance of winning.’
Yet twenty-four hours later, Indurain had not only moved into the lead, but left Roche reeling. After Delgado had softened up the opposition with attacks on the Col de Vignon, Indurain charged away on the descent. Within no time at all, he had caught an earlier breakaway, Système U rider Gerard Rue. By the finish at Saint-Tropez, the duo had opened up a minute’s gap. Rather than go for the win, in what was to become a classic Indurain tactic, the Spaniard gifted his rival the stage victory, whilst gaining a solid advantage over Roche and the rest.
This was effectively the first time outside Spain since the Tour de l’Avenir three years previously that Indurain was making his mark on one of cycling’s top-level events, and thus represented another major breakthrough. It was also the first time that Delgado clearly opted to take a back seat and let his young ‘successor’ fight for the win of a top-level race. It would be all but impossible to imagine other giants of the sport, a young Hinault or a Merckx, say, being so calculating under such heady circumstances as Indurain proved to be on that crucial stage of Paris–Nice, letting Rue have his share of the glory without even disputing the stage victory. Apart from the evidence that shows his ability to look at the bigger picture, it is possible to see Indurain’s good nature glinting through that decision, too. As he observed on another occasion, ‘I race to win, but I don’t race to humiliate anybody.’ As for those who accused Indurain of ‘lacking ambition’, like the notorious firebrand Luis Ocaña, Spain’s 1973 Tour winner, the Navarran simply paid them no attention whatsoever.
Physically, Indurain was also picking up his game. ‘By 1988, Indurain was really strong, but overall 1989 and 1990 were the key years,’ says Pedro Delgado. ‘Also they were the years where Indurain lost a chunk of weight, too, dropped from 80 kilos to 75. At the same time, his climbing improved steadily.’ This helped increase the odds, therefore, of Indurain moving up the cycling hierarchy at a greater pace, and Paris–Nice was a solid indication of that work in progress.
As Delgado observes in Nuestro Ciclismo, Indurain had a real head for sporting heights. ‘He won coldly, with class, showing he knew how to handle being a leader at every single moment. Paris–Nice showed me for the first time that Miguel was stronger, as a racer, when he was in the lead. He was the complete opposite of all other riders, leading a race actually made him calmer, not the other way round.’
‘Whenever it got really tough, you’d see Indurain up there, right at the head of affairs,’ added an admiring Marc Madiot. (Analysing Rue’s willingness to collaborate with Indurain, Madiot later claimed there might well have been an underlying desire by Rue’s sports director at Système U, Cyril Guimard, to settle an old score. Madiot was his former rider, and by getting Rue to work with Indurain, Guimard ensured that Madiot lost the lead. Whatever Rue’s reasoning behind his collaboration, it was hardly Indurain’s problem.)
On the Col d’Èze mountain time trial that concluded the race, Indurain turned in another unnervingly mature performance. Knowing that he had a 45-second advantage on Roche, rather than try to go for the stage win – and risk blowing completely – Indurain took it steadily, and had lost nineteen seconds to the Irishman by half-way up the climb. Yet by the summit, Roche had only gained another twelve seconds. Indurain was second again, but by limiting his losses and not panicking, his place as the first ever Spaniard to win Paris–Nice outright was guaranteed.
After recognising Paris–Nice as the most important victory of his career to date, Indurain pinpointed the Vuelta as the main target of his season, and, as after Catalunya the previous autumn, recognised that he had failed to progress for nearly eighteen months. Echavarri lauded Indurain to the rooftops, arguing, ‘The best thing is he’s got enormous potential and nobody knows, yet, what the upper limit to that potential is. I’m not going to predict anything for him, but my faith in him is total.’
Echavarri contradicted hi
mself, though, when he subsequently likened Indurain to Francesco Moser, a 1970s and 1980s Italian Classics specialist who also won one exceptionally flat Giro d’Italia with extra-long time trials. Rather than Grand Tours, then – and in any case, with Delgado, Reynolds seemed amply covered in that quarter – Echavarri seemed to be thinking Indurain might perform at his best in the Classics. However, in the first big Monument that followed, Milano–Sanremo, Indurain was unable to shine when a mechanical incident left him out of the running.
But Echavarri’s faith was to be quickly rewarded at the now defunct Critérium International, at the time one of the most prestigious two-day spring stage races. After forming part of a breakaway of seven on the Saturday’s opening stage – where Madiot took the win, presumably without complaint – Indurain turned in a devastating time trial performance to take both the stage and the event overall.
No other rider under twenty-five in Spain at the time was capable of performing at this level and such was the fuss over his prowess in stage racing – then as now, valued far more highly in Spain than one-day racing – that Indurain’s steady improvement in tough one-day Classics like la Flèche Wallonne, where he took seventh that spring, went all but unnoticed.
The Vuelta was a very different story, but in Indurain’s case, for all the wrong reasons. Technically the leader with Pedro Delgado – after yet another massive media storm when it emerged that Delgado could be taking part in the Giro again, something he finally opted not to do – things could hardly have gone worse for Indurain. First, he turned in a poor performance in the crucial uphill time trial at Valdezcaray, which effectively relegated him to the role of domestique de luxe. After that a bad crash on the descent of the Fito climb in Asturias left him with a broken wrist, and although he could complete the stage, he subsequently abandoned the next day. Lying ninth overall at the time, as he told the Diario de Navarra, ‘whilst seated, I could continue, the minute I tried to stand on the pedals, the pain was too much.’ For the third year running, Indurain abandoned the Vuelta, further reinforcing his troubled track record at the Spanish Grand Tour.
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