The Story of the Giro d'Italia, by Bill and Carol McGann ... - Magniflex

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snow ploughs on hand, keeping the pass open. He also had a Plan B: a last minute switch to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo just in case the weather gods
decided to piss - or snow - on his parade. Here in Ireland all we'd have done is stick the statue of St Anthony in the garden and utter a few prayers, but
they do things differently in Catholic Italy.
De Vlaeminck's bubblegum-sponsored Brooklyn team-mate - and some-time track partner of Eddy Merckx in Six Day and Madison races - Patrick Sercu
almost opened the Giro with a stage win for the bubblegum boys. Almost, except that Marino Basso (Magniflex) grabbed a hold of his jersey and held him
back, the victory going to Knud Jnudsen (Jolly Ceramica). The next day Sercu set things straight and took the stage win.
And then the Gypsy went and mucked it all up. With the stage finishing atop the Prati di Tovo, down near Rome, De Vlaeminck started farting around with
his seat height. That's his excuse for losing four minutes three days into a Giro he was going to win.
The bubblegum boys may have blown their chances of winning the maglia rosa but they were still going to shake things up. De Vlaeminck bounced back
on the fourth stage and took the stage win. And again on the sixth stage. On the eight day he rested (as did the whole Giro) and the next day sent his
team-mate Marcello Osler up the road for a long one. After being away for 160 kilometres Osler rolled into Sorrento nine minutes up on the day.
The next day it was again the bubblegum boys having fun off the front of the race, De Vlaeminck himself breaking away with two others - Javier Elorriaga
(KAS) and Enrico Paolini (SCIC) - and staying away until the finish in Frosinone. Alas, alack and all that, while the Belgian and the Spaniard had done all
the spade work, it was the Italian who took the stage, having allowed the other two to tow him along and then buggering off before the Gypsy could
unleash his sprint.
Paolini was clearly puffed up after his little exploit and again tried to escape the next day. Each time he tried to launch himself off the front of the peloton
De Vlaeminck personally brought him back. You get the feeling that the Belgian was a little bit pissed off at the profiteur's behaviour the day before?
When a beak did get away it didn't contain Paolini. But it did contain the Gypsy. Kerching! Stage win number four for the Gypsy.
Two years before, in 1973, Merckx had romped home to overall victory with six stage wins under his wheels. Only half of Alfredo Binda's haul of twelve in
1927 but still an impressive tally. La Gazzetta dello Sport's Rino Negri wondered if De Vlaeminck could better Merckx' total. Seven stage wins? De
Vlaeminck asked rhetorically. No. Not possible. Negri decided to incentivise him. Would 100,000 lire make it possible? The Gypsy, a man who liked to
gamble, shook Negri's hand. You're probably wondering what Negri was up to, encouraging yet another of the stranieri to pillage the corsa rosa. Me, I'm
wondering how the hell you put a thing like that down on expenses and get away with it. (Sorry, it's my inner accountant, I just can't keep the bugger
down.) The next day the Gypsy extended his tally of stage wins out to five.
Negri, of course, didn't care if the stranieri won the stages. Because up at the pointy end of the race Torriani's epic gamble for a final day showdown on
the Stelvio was looking like it might just come off. Francisco Galdós (KAS) was in the pink but and Giovanni Battaglin was close enough to almost touch
it. And his Jolly Ceramica gregario, Fausto Bertoglio, was barrelling up quick on the blindside. After five years in which the final maglia rosa had gone
home to Belgium or Sweden (yes, Sweden - Gösta Petterson won in Merckx's absence in 1971), the Italians actually had a chance - two of them - of
winning their own race. And this time those two chances weren't slim and none. Nothing could go wrong now with Torriani's grand plan.
On the thirty-eight kilometre cronometro, which followed another stage won by the Brooklyn boys, Sercu again, bringing their tally so far to eight, Battaglin
- taking advantage of the slipstream of his police out-rider - landed in the maglia rosa, which the inept Galdós had effectively vacated by crashing at the
start of the crono. And you wonder why people back then said the Spaniards didn't know how to ride?
The next stage was another race against the clock, this time a cronoscalta. At the top of Monte Ciocco the Gods laughed long and loud: the leader lost
nearly two minutes to his water-carrier and the gregario, Bertoglio held the maglia rosa by six seconds over his boss, Battaglin. Battaglin proclaimed his
own seniority to the massed media. But his own direttore sportivo didn't seem to be listening. He said the Jolly Ceramicas would now take a two-leaders
approach. Bertoglio's maglia rosa would be defended. Battaglin was not a happy camper on hearing this. Would you be if you were asked - told - to play
gregario di lusso to your own gregario?
The next stage came and Battaglian was having a giornato no. Felice Gimondo - the two-time Giro winner and one of the men who had suffered (or, as
time moves on, gained) most riding in Merckx's shadow - was quick to notice his compatriot's off day. He himself was just three minutes off the maglia
rosa. The race was tootling though the hills of Liguria. Time to make mischief. Ten minutes were stuffed into Battaglin at the day's end. Down and out.
Bertoglio now had a two-minute cushion over Galdós and Jolly Cermica were back to having just one protected rider.
The 1975 Giro was now drawing to its close. The Gypsy - whose team-mates Sercu and Wladimiro Panizza knocked off another two stages in the final
week - still needed to take another stage win to equal Merckx's tally and another after that if he wanted to relieve La Gazzetta's Rino Negri of the weight
of 100,000 lire. On Monte Bondone, four days from home, the Gypsy equalled Merckx and surprised everyone. Suddenly people had to look back to that
third stage north of Rome when he'd lost four minutes through, he claimed, adjusting his saddle height. The words what and if leaped to lips and minds.
For the Spaniard, Galdós, to win the Giro he still had to close two minutes on Bertoglio. On the penultimate stage he claimed back more than half the
two, closing to within forty-two seconds of the Italian as the race laboured over the Staulanza, the Santa Lucia, the Marmolada and the Pordoi before
finishing in Alleghe. On the Pordoi Galdós slipped away with another rider. All Bertoglio could do was try to limit his losses. Galdós left the stage win to go
to his breakaway companion. Roger de Vlaeminck. His seventh stage win. One more than Merckx. If you're wondering what he spent the 100,000 lire on,
it wasn't the llama. That came years later.
The Gypsy wasn't the only man celebrating a gamble paying off. Vincenzo Torriani was also a happy camper. He'd gambled the house on a decisive
finale and now the Stelvio was about to deliver. The snow ploughs had done their job and the stage was set, and now, in the shape of Bertoglio, he had a
hero the home fans could cheer for.
It was eleven kilometres from the summit before the stage came alive. Galdós attacked. Only a few riders could hold his wheel. Bertoglio was one of the
few. Five kilometres later and it was just Galdós and Bertoglio. Galdós kept attacking. Bertoglio kept closing. Bertoglio counter attacked. Galdós closed.
Galdós attacked. Bertoglio closed. Nail-biting stuff. But, in the end, Galdós couldn't break the Italian. The Spaniard got the stage win. The Italian kept the
maglia rosa. The Giro d'Italia was Italian once more. RAI fell back in love with their race and resumed live broadcasts the following year. Torriani was the
real winner.
* * * * *
That's just one of the forty-one Giri tales are told in the second volume of The Story of the Giro d'Italia. The story above doesn't actually end with the
return of RAI to the Giro. Roll on from 1975 and into 1976 and you have the tussle between Roger de Vlaeminck and Johan de Muynck over who was the
leader of the Brooklyn boys, a tussle that helped deliver a third Giro victory to Felice Gimondi, a victory rooted back to the birth of the Giro and the era of
Coppi: Gimondi was wearing the colours of Bianchi. Roll into 1977 and you have Freddy Maertens showing De Vlaeminck how it's really done, rattling
off seven stage wins lickety-spit and only failing to challenge Binda's haul of a dozen because he broke his wrist and had to retire during a stage that took
place on the Mugello race track, more used to four wheels than two. The race was little more than a week done at that stage.
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