BORN TO BE GREAT
At the start of 1991, if followers of cycling had been asked to nominate a rider who would dominate the sport in the next five years, most would have come up with the same man. José Miguel Echavarri, long-time manager of Reynolds, would have been the exception in nominating his protégé Miguel Indurain, but ‘Miguelon’ wouldn’t have been the first name on most lips.
If the future of cycling at the start of 1991 didn’t belong to Indurain, then who? Not Greg LeMond, Stephen Roche, Pedro Delgado or Laurent Fignon. They were on the downward slide. Claudio Chiappucci, the surprise runner-up to LeMond in the 1990 Tour, was widely viewed as a one-hit wonder, and he was no spring chicken. Laurent Jalabert and Tony Rominger were not exactly unknowns, but they weren’t star material. Yet.
The obvious choice would have been the young Italian who had dominated the spring of 1990 and carried that momentum through the summer. Gianni Bugno (for it was he) was the coming man of professional cycling.
A near-perfect stylist, Bugno had won Milan-San Remo by a street. He had dominated the Giro – from start to finish in pink! – in a manner that recalled the young Eddy Merckx. He had gone on to the Tour de France and outsprinted all the best riders – LeMond, Breukink, Claveyrolat – to win at l’Alpe d’Huez, adding a second stage in a late breakaway at Bordeaux. He had added the Wincanton
