Cyclopedia (28 page)

Born:
Villava, Spain, July 16, 1964

 

Major wins:
Olympic time trial champion 1996; world time trial champion 1995; Tour de France 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 12 stage wins; Giro d'Italia 1992, 1993, four stage wins; San Sebastian Classic 1990; world hour record 1994

 

Nicknames:
Big Mig

 

Interests outside cycling:
tractor repair, reading, sleeping

 

While other TOUR DE FRANCE greats such as LANCE ARMSTRONG and BERNARD HINAULT wore their hearts on their sleeves and FAUSTO COPPI and JACQUES ANQUETIL made headlines with scandal in their private lives, “Big Mig” was famously impenetrable, verging on the boring. However, he was not without his wry side, as the American journalist Dan Coyle depicted in the book
Tour de Force
. Indurain is shown a $250,000 time trial bike developed in secret by a team of technicians; asked what he thinks of it, he replies, “Very good, but don't forget about the legs.”

The suspicion lingered that anyone who delved behind a façade consisting of a shy grin, understated humor, and banal statements of the obvious would find there was not a great deal hidden underneath, other than the fact that Miguel was a dab hand at tractor maintenance and was sadly missed on his family's
farm when he was away racing. One Spanish sports journalist complained that “Twenty years from now, the woman of his life will not know who she has spent her life with.”

Indurain's cycling career began with the tractor: one day as a child he rode to the fields to play on the machine and had his bike stolen by a pair of tramps. To console him, he was given his first racing bike, becoming a fine sprinter as a teenager. Slimmed down from his amateur days but still weighing in at 182 pounds, Indurain could have won the 1990 Tour had he not been told to assist his team leader Pedro Delgado at a critical moment. As it was, he dominated the Tour de France from 1991 to 1995, taking a “double of doubles” in 1992 and 1993 in the Giro and Tour and becoming, briefly, Spain's most popular sportsman, named the country's athlete of the 20th century: the victory that defined his career was in the Luxembourg time trial in the 1992 Tour that GREG LEMOND described as “from another planet.” For the next three years, he was totally dominant in the event.

In 1994, for all his massive shoulders, he was seen riding over the Mont Ventoux in the Tour at 21 mph with his team managers pleading with him to slow down for his own good; that year he put in the definitive mountain performance of his career, burning off all the climbers such as MARCO PANTANI at Hautacam in the Pyrenées. He also broke the HOUR RECORD at the end of that year. A pragmatic, gentle giant, he dominated the Tour because his fellow cyclists liked him as well as fearing the power in his legs. “I pray to Saint Michael every time I want to stop for a pee,” said ROBERT MILLAR, implying that if Indurain decided to attack he might be in serious trouble.

Indurain faced one major crisis in his five victorious Tours, when the ONCE team put him under massive pressure in a 1995 Tour stage through the Massif Central to the town of Mende; Big Mig's Banesto team cracked but he had given out so many favors in the previous four Tours that virtually every team in the race was willing to help in the chase.

Indurain was said to have lost his temper while racing only four or five times, once en route to defeat
in the 1996 Tour. His implacable good nature meant he remained immune to stress as the Tour grew in size through the 1990s: his almost exclusive focus on the race—he used the Giro essentially as preparation—contributed to the Tour's transformation into the dominant event in the cycling calendar. He retired in January 1997, embittered at his team after they pushed him to start the 1996 Tour of Spain against his will, and now lives near the family home in Villava, a suburb of the northern Spanish city of Pamplona. His brother Prudencio also raced briefly as a pro.

 

(SEE ALSO
SPAIN
)

IRELAND
A “small” cycling nation that has consistently punched above its weight and has produced a fine array of international stars in spite of over half a century of political conflict between various governing bodies. More significantly, perhaps, Ireland was where the pneumatic tire was patented by John Boyd Dunlop and the first bike using those tires was advertised by one Will Edlin, of Dunlop's home city, Belfast.

Ireland had an early star in Harry Reynolds, world amateur sprint champion in 1896. Then it lay fallow as cycling became bound up in the conflict over national identity. Even so, TIME TRIALLING, British style, went on, but with one important difference: the Irish could wear shorts rather than black alpaca tights. That meant they could go faster, and the outcome was that the key time-trialling barrier for the English, 25 miles inside an hour, was actually first broken in Ireland in 1934, when Alo Donegan rode 59 minutes 5 seconds; four years later, the Englishman George Fleming visited Ireland to push the record down to 57 minutes 56 seconds.

Reflecting the politics of the island, Irish cycling was split between those who wanted it united, north and south, and
those who didn't. The dispute led to violent scenes such as those in 1956 at the RÁS—an eight-day stage race which remains the linchpin of the calendar—when an Irish tricolor was carried over the border to Northern Ireland on the race lead car. The Irish flag was banned in the North, so when police tried to remove the flag, there was a fracas and the stage was abandoned. As the riders cycled to the finish, Republican songs were sung and one rider tried to remove a Union Jack from a telegraph pole. In Cookstown there was a riot involving a unionist crowd and police, and one rider was badly beaten.

There were also incidents at the 1955 world championship and the 1972 Olympic Games, where there were fights between rival Irish teams.

Amid all this, Ireland's pioneer emerged: in 1954 Shay Elliott, a quiet lad from Dublin, won a mountain stage in the Route de France amateur race; the following season he raced for ACBB in Paris (see FOREIGN LEGION for other stars to come through this club) and in 1956 he turned professional, at a time when racers from outside the European heartland were truly the exception.

Elliott took groundbreaking wins in the Het Volk CLASSIC and stages in the Giro, Tour, and VUELTA A ESPAÑA, as well as becoming the first Irishman to lead the Tour and the Vuelta. He also took a silver medal in the 1962 world road race championship, but by the late 1960s his career was on the slide. His marriage failed, as did a hotel he owned; he returned to Ireland but never truly put his life back on the rails and in 1971 he committed suicide. He is remembered with a MEMORIAL on the pass of Glenmalure in the Wicklow Hills, and a road race is organized annually in his honor.

The political rumblings continued, and it took six years for Elliott's successor to emerge: the arrival of SEAN KELLY in pro cycling began a golden era for Irish cycling, with STEPHEN ROCHE joining him in taking the sport to new heights in the 1980s, when between them the pair won all three major Tours, the world championships, and a welter of stage races and Classics, with Kelly ranked world number one for six years. That decade also saw the foundation of the around-Ireland Nissan Classic stage race and produced other professionals: Martin Earley, who enjoyed a solid career as a
domestique
, Roche's brother Laurence, and Paul Kimmage, who went on to a controversial career as an award-winning journalist.

After Kelly and Roche retired, the Nissan ended and Irish cycling reverted to what it had been: based around the Rás, with occasional star performances at international level. The 1998 world junior champion Mark Scanlon never quite made it, but the foundation of an Irish cycling academy in 2005, and a second division pro team—both with Kelly's support—provided an injection of energy.

Most promisingly of all, in
2006—7 the sport was unified for the first time thanks to the process of political reconciliation in the North. A professional Tour of Ireland emerged again, with LANCE ARMSTRONG among the 2009 field, and that year saw three promising young riders on the pro circuit: Roche's son Nicolas—who came close to winning a stage in the Tour—his nephew Daniel Martin, and Philip Deignan, who won a stage in the 2009 Vuelta.

Ireland has given cycling the pneumatic tire, PHIL LIGGETT'S most memorable quote (“It's Roche, it's Stephen Roche”), and too many convivial evenings to count on the Nissan Classic and Rás.

ITALY
Cycle racing began early in Italy, with the first event recorded in Padua in 1869. Firenze–Pistoia, the oldest cycle race still run, began in 1870, Milan–Turin in 1876. The GIRO D'ITALIA was founded in 1909 but there was none of the conflict with the bike manufacturers that resulted in tension at the TOUR DE FRANCE. Instead, the organizers welcomed the bike makers' teams, who in turn liked an easier course that would result in more predictable racing, one result being ALFREDO BINDA's outrageous dominance. The ALPS and DOLOMITES did not figure until the 1930s—whereas in France HENRI DESGRANGE sought to make his Tour as tough as possible.

Italian cycling developed its own way of thinking, focused heavily on the
campione
or CAMPIONISSIMO, with teams constructed around helping the star. For example, just four riders—Binda, Costante Girardengo, Gaetano Belloni, and Giovanni Brunero—won virtually every major race in the 1920s, and that set a pattern that lasted until the
21st century, when
campioni
regularly fell foul of antidoping rules. The small number of stars set the stage for the RIVALRIES that marked Italian cycling—some real, many blown up by the press—while making cycling easy to read for the public.

Desgrange's decision to move to national teams prompted more of the
campioni
to appear in the Tour, with GINO BARTALI taking a dominant win in the 1938 edition with the backing of Mussolini's fascist regime, which pulled strings to make sure he did not waste his strength racing that year's Giro.