THE THIRD MAN
GIANBATTISTA BARONCHELLI PLAYED THIRD FIDDLE TO SARONNI AND MOSER THROUGH THE 1980S, BUT SOMETIMES HE ECLIPSED THEM BOTH. PROCYCLING LOOKS BACK AT THE 1986 GIRO DI LOMBARDIA
For 25 years, with a few exceptions, the Tour of Lombardy had rolled out of Milan, been sorted out on the climb to the Madonna del Ghisallo and concluded in the picture-postcard lakeside town of Como. Almost without exception the best man had won, but now, for the 1986 edition, race patron Vincenzo Torriani saw fit to shake it up for the second time in two seasons. In 1985 he’d got it wrong. The established Milan-Como route was reversed. There was nothing wrong with that, but the flatter terrain was nothing short of an outrage to the fans. Sean Kelly, the best rider in the world, had still won, but the race needed mountains, and so Torriani went to look for more appropriate challenges for his event. He’d been criticised by the international press for the comparatively easy routes in his other event, the Giro d’Italia, a judicious piece of course design that helped the cause of Italian cyclists in their home race. But in frontloading the challenge in Lombardy, he’d gone too far.
And so the 1986 route featured a ferocious new climb, the 12-kilometre Valcava, which would shatter the gruppo 100 kilometres from Milan. The descent would be followed in short order by the 10-kilometre Colle di Valpiana, and only the very best would survive that. The race would then barrel southwest through Monza, turn right into Corso Buenos Aires and dogleg into Piazza del Duomo for the dream finish.
That terrain duly put seven minutes between a leading group of six riders and the rest of the race by the outskirts of Milan. Of those six, four wore yellow jerseys; two from Kas, two from Del Tongo. Kas had defending champion Kelly and his team-mate Acácio da Silva, while Del Tongo had the young,
up-and-coming Flavio Giupponi, and old campaigner Gianbattista Baronchelli. It was Baronchelli, the winner of the 1977 Giro di Lombardia, who attacked with two kilometres to go. With two riders in the group behind, it was up to Kas to chase. But for some reason, they sat tight. “I didn’t get on with Francesco Moser,” Baronchelli tells Procycling. “I couldn’t abide the way he treated people and I couldn’t reconcile his approach with my values. He had to be number one. When they told me he was joining our team in 1986 it was inconceivable that I’d stay. I let myself be persuaded, and it was probably the worst decision I ever made. It was probably the best as well. The best and the worst.”
Baronchelli was one of cycling’s more sensitive souls. He also contrived to lose the Giro d’Italia 13 times. Ten times in the top 10, twice a runner-up but, in the final analysis, nothing. At his debut Giro in 1974, aged just 20, he was within 12 seconds of toppling Eddy Merckx. He came close again four years later, beaten by 59 seconds by the Belgian Johan De Muynck. But the following year, 21-year-old Giuseppe Saronni won the Giro and he and Francesco Moser fell out during a live TV interview. Italian cycling was reconfigured accordingly. The mountains were scaled back, whereupon Saronni and Moser recalled the golden age of Coppi and Bartali by winning 500 races between them. Nice guy or otherwise, Baronchelli still bridles at the very mention of it.
“Cycling was a business, and Moser and Saronni were box office,” he says. “They were very charismatic, and completely different on and off the bike. Moser was strong, but Saronni was fast, durable and clever. Man-on-man rivalries are the foundation of cycling and people couldn’t get enough of theirs. Moser had control of
Baronchelli was a wonderfully mercurial rider. As Italy’s best climber, he won six Tours of the Apennines in succession, and won Romandy and the Basque Country
the media, and he practiced a sort of psychological warfare. Saronni was able to cope with it, but I just didn’t have the tools. I wasn’t equipped.”
Baronchelli couldn’t sprint, but he was still a wonderfully mercurial rider. As Italy’s best climber he won six Tours of the Apennines in succession, and won the Tour of Romandy and the Tour of the Basque Country, as well as his 1977 Lombardia.
Headed into 1986, he was 31. His career had started to peter out, but he and older brother Gaetano had a year left on their contracts at Supermercati Brianzoli. He was still just about relevant as a stage racer (he’d finished sixth at the 1985 Giro) but he’d won just once that season, a stage at the Vuelta.
Saronni, too, looked spent. For years he’d resembled a bike racing genius, but now he seemed washed up, a shadow of his old self. Meanwhile Moser, the common enemy, was a cyclist reborn. His 1983 form had been lamentable, his decline looking terminal. But aged 32, he’d seemingly reversed the ageing process. Aided by a team of sports scientists from Enervit, he went to Mexico to break the Hour Record, won Milan-San Remo and finally, at the 11th time of asking, took the Giro. It was astonishing. He had all of Italy under his spell.
Then they told Baronchelli that Moser was coming to the team. “That changed everything. I told them I wanted out, but they told me to wait and see.”
Moser came with strings – many of them – attached. He was an autocrat, and it was implicit that the others would do as they were bid. The team’s manager, Gianluigi Stanga, would need to dump Wilier, the erstwhile bike supplier. Moser-branded frames would be deployed instead, and the Enervit entourage, headed by Professor Francesco Conconi, would be retained. That little lot cost a great deal, but Stanga was young, dynamic and ambitious. He’d deploy Moser’s boundless popularity to garner the requisite sponsorship and the results would be handsome recompense for the backers.
By now the Conconi method – powerbased training, threshold work, psychology and blood transfusions – was commonplace in Italian cycling. Those who had adopted it were enjoying significant performance benefits while those who hadn’t weren’t. Gianbattista Baronchelli, and as likely as not Giuseppe Saronni, were in the latter camp.
“They persuaded me to stay. Stanga assured me I wouldn’t have to work for Moser, and Moser would desist from rubbishing me in the press as he had in the past. We agreed to go forward on that basis.”
The spring came and went. Baronchelli kept his head down as was his wont, and with the Giro reverting to something approaching hilly type he focused his efforts on preparing for May. By the time he reached Palermo for the prologue he was ready.
“I was calm because I knew I was in good shape physically and, paradoxically, there was less pressure with Moser in the team. I had some help from Conconi at the start of the season, though I wasn’t one of his disciples. I’d never worn the maglia rosa before, but I attacked on stage 3 in Calabria, stayed away and finally got to wear it. That was great, but it was also the beginning of the end. Moser just couldn’t help himself.”
Baronchelli knew better than to expect much by way of help. With Moser and Italian champion Claudio Corti harbouring GC aspirations of their own, they were a team only insofar as they had a jersey in common. And for Moser, the self-styled ‘Sheriff’, Baronchelli in pink constituted a net loss.
“Most of the riders were pleased for me after all those years, but it needled him,”
says Baronchelli. “He was a guy who needed attention, and when he didn’t get it he couldn’t cope. He refused to speak to the press at that Giro, which showed his mood.
“We were on a small climb. I was trying to bring it under control, but maybe he thought I was attacking. He piped up with the usual insults, loud enough for everyone to hear and, most importantly, for me to hear. It was his way of humiliating me and trying to unnerve me. He knew I didn’t cope well with conflict, so he was trying to provoke it. It was also a way for him to assert his control over the gruppo, which was paramount to him.”
Baronchelli lost the jersey the next day: “A close friend of mine was in the hotel that evening. He walked past Moser’s soigneur’s room, and his clan were in there celebrating my having lost the jersey. Typical.”
By stage 16, a summit finish at Passo Foppolo, any lingering pretence of unity had evaporated. Saronni led, with Roberto Visentini at 1:10 and Baronchelli third at 1:51. Moser was next at 2:50; Corti out of it at 4:18.
“Moser and Saronni were dropped, so there were six of us on the last climb. I pulled because I knew no other way, and Visentini did a bit. LeMond did nothing as usual, nor Muñoz because he was after the stage. Chioccioli was just hanging on, and Corti didn’t lift a finger. That was fine because I felt good, but then I had a bit of a crisis about three kilometres out. What do you do at this point if you’re the sports director? What do you say to Claudio Corti, who has not a hope of winning either the stage or the Giro? Corti took one look at me, and rode away. I was trying to win the Giro, but he just carried on as if I didn’t exist. Unforgiveable.”
Baronchelli shipped a minute to Visentini, the new maglia rosa. Stanga whinnied his displeasure to the press, at which point Baronchelli freely admits that he lost his head. He was still third on GC, but the next morning he decided he couldn’t stomach another six days in an atmosphere turned poisonous. Stanga made the usual excuses about sickness, but he was fooling nobody. The Baronchelli-Moser axis had collapsed, just as they’d said it would. A calamity.
Baronchelli was done with Supermercati Brianzoli, but their lawyers weren’t done with him. They filed for damages, but he’d seen that one coming. His medical files confirmed that he had been ill at the Giro, and they went their separate ways.
He was out of the woods financially, but psychologically and professionally he was on the floor. He had no morale and, more damaging still, no desire to race. Cycling, it seemed, had finally done for Gianbattista Baronchelli, and 1986 was only half over.
“My friend spoke with Ernesto Colnago. I’d known him since I was a kid, and he was sponsoring Del Tongo, Saronni’s team. He said it wasn’t right for me to finish that way. Saronni and I had had our run-ins over the years, but he was essentially an honest guy. It was all taken care of quickly, so within a fortnight I was riding the Italian national championship with Saronni, up against Moser and Corti.”
The symbolism of Saronni having taken him was lost on nobody. It was one in the eye for Moser, his arch rival, but Saronni was nothing if not pragmatic. There was a World Championship coming up in Colorado, he fancied his chances of winning it, and there was no better gregario than a committed Baronchelli. In the event Saronni came up just short, but by Lombardy Baronchelli was in a good place physically and emotionally. Elsewhere Visentini was injured, Saronni and Moreno Argentin were sick, and Moser was having nothing to do with it. “Too hilly,” he blustered. “The new route is a nonsense.”
The new Lombardy route still didn’t assure
a home winner. The Irishman Sean Kelly was favoured to clinch his third edition. He’d won San Remo and Roubaix that spring and was, by a country mile, world number one. He was the best passista on the planet, while Australia’s Phil Anderson was the best bridesmaid. Both would be strong favourites.
On the eve of the race, Baronchelli roomed with Giupponi, a gifted 22-year-old climber from along the way in Bergamo. Giupponi had grown up supporting him, and now he had the honour of working for his former hero. When he’d attacked on the Valcava only four were able to follow. Kelly was towed up by his Kas team-mate Da Silva, a Portuguese climber par excellence. Anderson made it on, as did an unknown young Swiss, Leo Schoenenberger.
Giupponi was a gifted cyclist, but he couldn’t outsprint Anderson, let alone
Pietro Algeri, DS of Del Tongo, told them to wait as long as they could. Then they’d need to take it in turns to attack, and hope for the best. Grazie Pietro. Thanks for nothing
the rapier Kelly. As such Baronchelli, floating, had a decision to make.
“They had two minutes, but I just rode across. I caught them three or four kilometres from the top, and to be honest I was ready to attack on the Valpiana. That would have left me to ride 70 kilometres on my own though, and Giupponi told me to wait. He was right, because realistically a climber like me couldn’t do that against Kelly and Anderson.”
And so, as they spun onto Corso Buenos Aires, they were six. Cycling logic suggested it would be no contest, that Kelly’s Law would prevail, Anderson would add yet another podium spot and that Da Silva and Schoenenberger would fight for the crumbs. Baronchelli would be seventh, narrowly beaten by his own shadow. Pietro Algeri, DS of Del Tongo, told them to wait as long as they could, but not as long as Anderson. Then they’d need take it in in turns to attack, and then hope for the best. Grazie Pietro. Thanks for nothing. After Baronchelli’s attack, two kilometres out, Kelly didn’t budge. His explanation was that it was Da Silva’s job to chase. Anderson certainly wasn’t going to drag Kelly across the gap, and Schoenenberger was too tired. Giupponi happily watched his team-mate riding away into the distance, while Da Silva inexplicably soft-pedalled.
Adriano De Zan, RAI’s legendary cycling commentator, had company in the box that afternoon. Saronni and Ernesto Colnago were gushing all over Kelly when, suddenly…
De Zan: “Baronchelli goes! Baronchelli on the left is attempting a desperate attack! He has a lead of 100 metres! Giupponi in the role of stopper. Saronni?” Saronni: “Incredible. I’m very emotional.”
De Zan: “He’s almost in Corso Venezia!” Saronni: “If he wins he deserves it.” De Zan: “Final kilometre. There’s an incredible indecision among the others…”
Saronni: “I need to thank him because he’s a rider who deserves… after everything he’s suffered this year… With this win I think he’s responded…”
After the race, pundits observed that there had been a lot of talking between Kelly, Da Silva and their DS Jean de Gribaldy. Kelly later wrote in his autobiography, Hunger, that there had been extensive discussions between the Kas and Del Tongo team cars, and that De Gribaldy told him that if Baronchelli attacked, they were to leave it to Anderson or Schoenenberger to chase. “You’d be mistaken to think the race was fixed. The latter part of any big bike race is like a game of poker. Everyone does whatever they can to make the best of the hand they have,” Kelly wrote.
For Gianbattista Baronchelli, playing that hand resulted in a swansong victory.