One of the most enduring images in my mind of the Tour in the early 90s is of the monumental Stage 13 of the 1992 edition. Riders covered 255km over some of the most brutal and iconic mountain passes the race had ever witnessed, finishing at the Italian ski resort of Sestriere. The tifosi were out in force that day, with numbers estimated in the hundreds of thousands, cheering on their idol Claudio Chiappucci as he went on a day-long solo mission to take victory. Such was the magnitude of the crowd that a human tunnel formed on the final climb of the day, with the lead motorcycles unable to forge their way through the throng in places, with Il Diablo himself forced to overtake them, frantically waving his arms at his adoring fans to clear a path to the summit and an incredible win.
Some seven and three-quarter hours after setting out from Saint Gervais in France, Chiappucci stamped his name in the history books while leaving in his wake all the GC contenders, including Indurain, Bugno, Hampsten and Fignon. A visibly distressed and outclassed Greg LeMond struggled in some 42 minutes behind, signalling the beginning of the end of his race, and his career. But just 1:45 behind Chiappucci came another Italian, one that even the staunchest of tifosi may have had trouble identifying.
Franco Vona had been just another Italian who'd had some strong showings in his native country's Grand Tour, with a stage win and a 2nd in the Young Rider classification in 1988. The following year was unremarkable, before he seemed to drop off the radar in 90 and 91, with a dearth of results bar a mountain stage win at the Tour de Suisse. 1992, however, saw him suddenly at the front of affairs in the mountains of the Giro, taking two stages and 6th on GC. To the wider cycling audience though, it would be the Tour where he would really make his mark.
Having left the small Jolly team in 91, Vona found himself on the powerful GB-MG squad along with the likes of Museeuw, Ballerini, Tchmil, Cipollini and another 'great improver WHERE `id` = Zenon Jaskula. With being on a big team comes some of the benefits that money and power bring, including advanced 'training programs' and access to doctors and coaches who could realise a rider's potential through means the riders might not have previously encountered. Vona's new-found powers of recovery would shine the very next day at l'Alpe d'Huez, taking another second place, this time behind Andy Hampsten. Not even Chiappucci and Big Mig could match him, and Vona would eventually finish the Tour in 11th place.
Vona was clearly a man for the mountains though, and a weak time trial ability saw him thrust into a support role for Jaskula in 93, when the Pole made his own meteroic rise to the Tour podium. The Italian rode the next three Tours, but would never again reach the heights of 92, and he would end his career with another small Italian team, AKI-Gipiemme in 1996.
These days, Vona works as a cycling guide for the Silva Splendid Hotel in Fiuggi, central Italy. They describe him as their “pride and joy”, and state he will “disclose you the secrets of professional cycling”. I wonder just how many secrets he is willing to reveal?
[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/brettok@velominati.com/Franco Vona/”/]
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@brett
http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden>)
How articulatory.
@Good Geofelephant, @brett
Those are both some annoyingly good points. I knew that different riders had different natural hematocrit levels - and thus that different riders benefit more from blood doping etc, but I'd managed to ignore that when thinking about the whole "level playing field" thing.
Brilliant.
@Good Geofelephant
I'm gonna have to get me that book. That and the Professeur's new book...
Yeah, the Walsh book is a good read. There's a lot there you'll have heard about before, like Betsy Andreu on the alleged hospital room doping admission, and the six positive r-EPO results from 1999 samples analysed several years later (see, in that context, link posted above to interview with Mike Ashenden). But there's a lot of background and contextual stuff, plus a few new (to me) things like the alleged IM exchange.
What's "the Professeur's new book"?
@brett
Great post. I thought I was one to have spent too much of my memory banks on esoteric euro-pros but you, my friend, have put me to shame again. Franco Vona, I had never heard of him. It is story told more than once.
Your worries are unfounded. It would be interesting to somehow graph these rider's careers, see the spike in performance in the 90's. Just like Bjarne Riis, a journey-man domestique turned into a Indurain beating nut. The records books might as well be burned.
@john
But is there a discernible spike in peloton speed? I'm no statistician, but post-war average speeds in TdeF seem to have just steadily increased - http://bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdfstats.html. There's no immediately obvious 90's / noughties spike. Has anyone compared average times to average stage length (and average vertical metres climbed) to see if there's a statistically significant spike anywhere? If not, then maybe the doping wasn't that significant. Or alternatively it just kept getting more and more effective - which would raise questions about the lack of any obvious material decline of average speeds in recent years ...
http://bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdfstats.html
@brett
Frankie Vona, there's a name I'd forgotten. Spot on article both the way it's written and how that era worked in my eyes. A suggestion for another in your series is Gilles Delion, would make a change for you from having to write about riders who suspiciously came from nowhere. Co-incidently Delion finished his career on the same team as Vona. Actually, looking into it, that AKI team is a veritable rogues gallery. I'm such a Delion fanboy that I'd write the article myself, but it's your series.
As for the "level-playing" field justification. I considered myself to be pretty well up on pro-cycling and it's various "issues", but it was only when I undertook a lengthy reading and research session a couple of years ago. It was only then that I discovered just how wrong the "level-playing" field justification is and brett was right in saying in benefited some more than others and that was only when the UCI brought in the 50% haematocrit limit. Before that, the playing field was only as level as you wanted to risk your life and your pockets were deep.
Once the 50% limit came in it allowed riders to boost up to 49.9% with impunity. It just meant that those with a natural level of 39% would benefit massively in comparison to someone with a natural level of 46% and ultimately, all would have a massive benefit over those who wanted to remain clean.
There is also the post-Festina take on the level-playing field, or "cyclisme a deux vitesse", where at least the French teams were clean - recently it seems that a lot are saying that most of the peloton either cleaned up for a year, or toned things down a lot after Festina.
@Jarvis
We'd love you to write a piece on Delion... even if, as you suggest, he didn't strictly 'come from nowhere' which probably doesn't fit in with the definition of evanescent. But even guys like Vona still had to put in the hard yards, were devoted to a career in cycling, yet were elevated above and beyond their talents by the benefits of the EPO era.
So yeah, bring it on, guest articles are always welcome, and to hear of these 'second tier' riders is always interesting to us.
@brett
Delion probably does fit the description. OK, not a one-year wonder, but big results spanned three years and then nothing, but he's definitely one for the Velominati
@Jarvis
Cool, get on it!