Indurain
Page 29
José Miguel Echavarri who hails from the nearby village of Abarzuza – the home town, as it happens, of those shepherds who stumbled on the Virgin’s image a thousand years before – is back too. But Echavarri, rather than having any religious visions, has spent the eve of the GP Indurain in a cafeteria in Estella rubbing shoulders with various members of the Movistar team management, past and present. ‘The Basilica is not a hard climb,’ Movistar directeur sportif José Luis Arrieta observed during the informal gathering, ‘but after 200 kilometres, it can make a real difference.’
As the lowest ranked event in which World Tour teams can take part, category 1.1 races are very much the borderline between squads from cycling’s top league and the much more threadbare world of Continental squads. Whilst Sky’s presence is easy to see thanks to their huge, black team bus, complete with their bikes neatly lined up and outside arm’s reach behind the usual line of tape, the €30 million squad’s deployment of vehicles line up next to a white transit rental van, home to the Kuwaiti team for the day.
No matter what their status, all the 136 riders taking part then thread their way down a narrow stone-flagged alleyway, past a gaudily painted van doing a roaring trade in churros – lengths of oil-fried dough that are a Spanish breakfast favourite – and into the Plaza de los Fueros square, the centre of old and new Estella, for the signing-on ceremony. Particularly for the locally born riders like Xavi Zandio, the Sky veteran, or Josu Zabala, racing with a Spanish Federation amateur team, this is not a straightforward or rapid operation. Bikes propped against the barricades, they lean over to greet huddles of family and friends in the crowds that pack the market square. In the ensuing tangle of athletes and machines, for riders like Australian all-rounder Michael Matthews, keen to do a pre-race recon of the Basilica climb, the quickest way out of the human traffic jam is to heave his bike over the barriers and pedal away.
The signing-on podium – which looks suspiciously like the same vehicle used for the winner’s ceremony a few hours later – barely has space for a miniature easel for the papers where the riders sign. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the man after whom it is all named, together with his brother Prudencio and his family, prefers to stand outside, chatting quietly to club staff as the riders slowly inch their way onto the podium and Juan Mari Guajardo, speaker for races across Spain but locally born, rattles off endless statistics about the more famous participants through the PA system. Indurain is not directly involved in organising the race – that is the CC Estella’s responsibility – but from the cheers with which he is greeted as he strides in, it’s clear he is the star act of the show, albeit a very understated one. ‘His mere presence is a source of inspiration for all the riders who start today,’ claims the GP Indurain race programme, ‘and at the same time, it makes us recall those unique moments of his career that we all have in our memory.’
The locally based teams, given that this is far and away Navarre’s biggest cycling event, are more likely to be thinking about how much they can achieve in the race itself. ‘You don’t notice the pressure, but there are a heck of a lot more fans here round the bus at the start,’ says Hugh Carthy, a Preston-born second-year climber riding in 2016 for Caja Rural-Seguros RGA – like Movistar, a squad based in Pamplona. Speaking as Caribbean conga music, of all things, blares out on the PA system, Carthy says, ‘This is a real hotbed of cycling round here and as part of Caja Rural you get that extra bit of support from the side of the road. You know the roads, it’s a nice race for the team to do. I’m not sure why you don’t get more top names here, to be honest: it’s a great race to build up for the Vuelta al País Vasco [the Basque Country’s biggest stage race, which starts the following Monday].’
Just after midday, the race’s publicity ‘caravan’ – three vehicles at most – pulls away. Then whistles blare as officials wave the riders forward to the start line on the Paseo de la Inmaculada. In the first vehicle behind the pack, Indurain – as chief guest of honour – is seated next to the race president. After the riders and the endless lines of team cars and ambulances move off, bringing up the rear is the so-called broom wagon – a transit van that ‘sweeps up’ the riders who have abandoned and are too far behind their team cars to have their own transport. This is complete, in what is now a throwback, with a set of brooms stuck on each corner. Then as the barriers are cleared and the volunteers finally stop blasting on their whistles and redirecting traffic, the only relics of the race in the centre of town are route maps and a rather grungy-looking van with loudspeakers and Italian number plates, selling – or rather attempting to sell – packs of socks with the Giro d’Italia logo at five euros apiece.
Meanwhile, having headed out of town on a lengthy neutralised stretch past Estella’s magnificent collection of Renaissance buildings, ahead of the peloton are 191 kilometres across the plains and moors of western Navarre. These contain four classified climbs, three second and one first category, the high points of roads constantly rising and falling between 400 and 800 metres above sea level. In what could be a nod to Echavarri’s role as the father figure of Navarran cycling – and Movistar – the race route passes through Abarzuza twice. There’s also a brief incursion round the local Navarre motor racing circuit: ‘Maybe that’s why they were going so fast,’ Indurain jokes later. However, on such a perpetually undulating course and with a tough uphill finish, it’s clear that rather than for the tougher sprinters – as the race used to be when it finished in Estella city centre – this is a day for the peloton’s all-rounders.
It’s perhaps no surprise that the two riders who reach the foot of the basilica ascent ahead of the rest of the pack at around 5 p.m. are two lightly built racers, Movistar’s Ion Izagirre and Sky’s Sergio Henao. Izagirre leads as they swing left past the bullring, past a large piece of graffiti warning against the effects of global warming and onto the initial 200-metre grind up to the basilica. He remains ahead as they take the first of two steep little hairpins leading to the top.
Theoretically at a disadvantage by being in front, Izagirre, a locally born rider who finished on the podium the year before, shows that his knowledge of the run-in to the finish is actually what counts. A feint left by Henao as the road steepens briefly to a painful maximum of fifteen per cent and twists into a U-turn fails to work out for the Colombian. On the next flatter hairpin, which leads into a narrow lane to the top, Izagirre accelerates hard as he comes off the apex, leaving Henao no option but to fall in behind. There the Colombian remains, boxed in by the narrow walls of barriers, outpaced by Izagirre, now out of the saddle on the final right-hand turn leading to the finish. Watched by a lone radio commentator on a race motorbike a few metres behind Henao as he turns his final pedal strokes, Izagirre yells in delight as he crosses the line well ahead of the Sky rider.
By now the crowds that were on the climb have flocked over to the finish outside the basilica in their hundreds. With no giant screen and only the speaker’s information to keep them abreast of events, they cheer on the remainder of the finishers as they approach the line in ones and twos. Moreno Moser, the nephew of Italian cycling star Francesco Moser – to whom, coincidentally, Indurain was regularly compared in his youth – places third, Izagirre’s team-mate Giovanni Visconti, who has proved instrumental in closing down counter-attacks behind, is in fourth. Carthy’s lanky form, head nodding in near-exhaustion as he takes in the final corner, crosses the line in a more than respectable eighth, the second of his team home.
The ceremony, as ever in cycling events, takes a painfully long time to organise. Izagirre has about a dozen relatives and friends in the crowd, who cheer loudly as the 27-year-old – later to take an Alpine stage in the Tour de France that summer – walks onto the podium to claim his first win of the 2016 season. Movistar are not just present on the podium – Adriano Malori, an Italian team-mate of Izagirre’s in convalescence after an appalling accident earlier that year, has been brought to the race by Movistar to help with his re-adaptation to racing and watche
s Izagirre get his trophies.
Indurain hands over the bulk of the prizes and then stands happily talking to all and sundry at the foot of the stage. It almost goes without saying that there is not so much as a security guard in sight. In an old-school, longstanding event like this, the crowd, organisation and riders mix and common sense and politeness means that nobody attempts to gatecrash the podium. Zandio, the Sky veteran, gets the award for being the first Navarran to finish in the race, which, considering there are only two Navarrans taking part, is possibly the easiest prize he has ever managed to net. The speaker, meanwhile, having reeled off the long list of thanks to the sponsors of the race, keeps the crowd entertained with one last piece of information – the numbers from the race’s raffle.
The size and enthusiasm of the crowd, the small-scale yet efficient organisation, the solid line-up and a hotly disputed contest all seem to indicate that Indurain’s race is in good shape. However, for all Aramendi has been commentating on races since time immemorial, 2016 marks the first occasion that Basque television ETB (and with them Eurosport) have broadcast the GP Indurain in nearly a decade. ‘For years,’ local newspaper Noticias de Navarra had observed in its preview, ‘things have been very complicated for the GP Indurain.’ As the newspaper puts it in rather melodramatic terms, it has been ‘on the edge of the abyss’. ETB’s return then is a sign that behind the scenes, a corner has been turned in the right direction.
As for the man whom this race honours, as the clusters of friends and relatives of many of the riders gather ever more thickly around the front end of the podium, it is only thanks to Indurain’s height that you can still identify where exactly he is standing. As is so utterly characteristic of Indurain – and arguably what makes him, a five-times Tour de France winner, Olympic and World Champion, so special a sports star – he demands no special VIP treatment, does not need to be given constant pats on the back, metaphorically or otherwise, and has none of the self-conscious theatricality of many modern sporting celebrities.
A small but relatively solidly constructed event like the GP Indurain, just sixty kilometres away from his home town of Villava and in his home region of Navarre, is probably about as big a homage as he could want. Safe in the knowledge, presumably, that Indurain will be back again next year, nobody appears to make an exceptional fuss about the man often described as Spain’s greatest ever athlete.
Here in Navarre, amongst his own people then, Indurain remains just another face in the crowd. And that, bizarrely enough, is precisely what makes him so unusual, and, ultimately, his legacy so enduring.
Palmares
Miguel Indurain
Place of birth: Navarre, Spain.
Date of birth: 16 July 1964
Turned professional: September 1984
Retired: 2 January 1997
1984: TEAM: REYNOLDS
Wins
Tour de l’Avenir (Tour de la CEE) stage 10 (TT)
Selected Placings
Tour de l’Avenir (Tour de la CEE): stage 11, 2nd
1985: TEAM: REYNOLDS
Wins
Tour de l’Avenir (Tour de la CEE): stages 6 first sector and 10 (TT)
Selected Placings
Ruta del Sol: 2nd overall; prologue, 2nd and stage five (TT), 2nd
Midi Pyrénées: prologue, 2nd
Vuelta a España: 84th overall; prologue, 2nd
Vuelta a Burgos: prologue, 2nd
Other achievements:
Vuelta a Burgos: intermediate sprints classification winner
Leader of the Vuelta a España stage 2 to stage 5
Grand Tour abandons: Tour de France
1986: TEAM: REYNOLDS
Wins
Vuelta a Murcia: prologue and overall
Tour de l’Avenir (Tour de la CEE): prologue, stage 10 (TT) and overall
Selected Placings
Ruta del Sol: prologue, 2nd
Vuelta a Murcia: stage 5, 3rd
Vuelta al País Vasco: stage 5, second sector, 3rd
Midi Libre: stage one, 2nd and stage three, 3rd
Vuelta a Burgos: prologue, 2nd; stage 5 second sector, 2nd and hot spots sprints winner
Vuelta a España: prologue, 3rd and 92nd overall
Tour de L’Oise: prologue, 3rd
Tour de France: stage 7, 3rd and stage 5, 4th
Midi Libre: 6th overall
Spanish National Championships: 6th
Tour de l’Avenir (Tour de la CEE): stage 5, 2nd and stage 7, 2nd
Grand Tour abandons: Tour de France
1987: TEAM: REYNOLDS-SEUR
Wins
Vuelta a Murcia: prologue
Setmana Catalana: stage 4 second sector (TT) and stage 5
Vuelta a los Valles Mineros: stage 2, stage 3, stage 4 first sector, points classification and overall
GP Navarra
Volta a Galicia: stage 1
Selected Placings
Vuelta a los Valles Mineros: prologue, 2nd
Volta a Catalunya: stage 5, 2nd and stage eight, first sector (TT), 2nd
Vuelta a la Rioja: stage 1, 2nd overall
Setmana Catalana: 3rd overall plus points classification
Vuelta a Galicia: prologue, 3rd
World Championships: 64th
Tour de France: 97th
Grand Tour abandons: Vuelta a España
1988: TEAM: REYNOLDS
Wins
Volta a Catalunya: overall and stage 6, first sector (TT)
Vuelta a Cantabria: stage 4, first sector
Selected Placings
Vuelta a Andalucia: prologue, 2nd
Setmana Catalana: stage 2, second sector, 2nd and stage three, second sector, 3rd
Vuelta a Burgos: stage 2, 2nd
Vuelta a Galicia: stage 1, 2nd
Volta a Catalunya: stage four, 2nd
Clásica San Sebastián: 6th
Flèche Wallonne: 40th
Tour de France: 47th overall
Grand Tour abandons: Vuelta a España
1989: TEAM: REYNOLDS-REYNOLDS/BANESTO
Wins
Paris–Nice: overall
Critérium International: stage 3 (TT) and overall
Tour de France: stage 9
Selected Placings
Paris–Nice: prologue, 2nd; stage 4, 2nd; stage 5, 2nd; stage 7, second sector (TT), 2nd
Tour de Suisse: stage 6, 2nd
Tour de France: stage 15 (TT), 3rd and 17th overall
Flèche Wallonne: 7th
Liège–Bastogne–Liège: 10th
Tour de Suisse: 10th overall
Milano–Sanremo: 42nd
Grand Tour abandons: Vuelta a España
1990: TEAM: BANESTO
Wins
Vuelta a Valencia: stage 5
Paris–Nice: overall and stage 6
Vuelta al País Vasco: stage 5, first sector
Tour de France: stage 16
Vuelta a Burgos: stage 6 (TT)
Clásica San Sebastián
Selected Placings
Paris–Nice: stage 1, 2nd
Critérium International: stage 3 (TT), 3rd
Tour de France: stage 2 (TT), 2nd; stage 14, 2nd; stage 12 (TT), 3rd; stage 20 (TT), 4th
Vuelta al País Vasco: 3rd overall and stage 3, 3rd and stage 5 second sector (TT), 3rd
Vuelta a Asturias: 3rd overall
Vuelta a Burgos: 3rd overall plus points classification
Spanish National Championships (RR): 3rd
Flèche Wallonne: 4th
Vuelta a España: 7th overall
Tour de France: 10th overall
Liège–Bastogne–Liège: 12th
Amstel Gold Race: 19th
1991: TEAM: BANESTO
Wins
Tour de Vauclause: stage 1, second sector (TT) and overall
Euskal Bizikleta: stage 2 and stage 5
Tour de France: stage 8 (TT), stage 21 (TT) and overall
Volta a Catalunya: stage 5 (TT), points classification and overall
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p; Selected Placings
Tirreno–Adriatico: stage 5, 2nd
Tour de Vauclause: stage 4, 3rd
Vuelta a España: 2nd overall and stage 19, 2nd
Tour de France: stage 13, 2nd and stage 17, 2nd
Euskal Bizikleta: 3rd overall
World Championships (RR): 3rd
Liège–Bastogne–Liège: 4th
Milano–Sanremo: 124th
1992: TEAM: BANESTO
Wins
Tour de Romandie: stage 4, second sector (TT)
Giro d’Italia: stage 4 (TT), stage 22 (TT), Intergiro classification and overall
Spanish National Championships (RR)
Tour de France: prologue, stage 9 (TT), stage 20 (TT) and overall
Trofeo Castilla y León: stage 1, first sector (TT)
Volta a Catalunya: overall
Selected Placings
Paris–Nice: stage 1 (TT), 2nd, and 3rd overall
Tour de Romandie: 2nd overall
Giro d’Italia: stage 1 (TT), 2nd; stage 13, 2nd; stage 18, 3rd
Volta a Catalunya: stage 4, 2nd
Tour de l’Oise: 3rd overall
Tour de France: stage 13, 3rd
World Championships (RR): 6th
Milano–Sanremo: 167th
1993: TEAM: BANESTO
Wins
Vuelta a Murcia: stage six (TT)
Giro d’Italia: stage 10 (TT), stage 19 (TT) and overall
Vuelta a los Valles Mineros: stage 2 and stage 4
Tour de France: prologue, stage 9 and overall
Trofeo Castilla y León: stage 1 (TT) and overall
Vuelta a los Puertos