BOIFAVA -- THIS CHARMING MAN

by Herbie Sykes, ProCycling

As boss of the mythical Carrera team, Davide Boifava managed some of the greatest champions of the eighties and nineties. ProCycling has an audience with a genuine living legend…

In the weeks preceding the 1979 Giro, strange notices began appearing in the European cycling press. Half the peloton, we were informed, had been laid low with a virus which presented as a form of conjunctivitis. Many speculated that the Flemish rider Alfons De Wolf had contracted it first, and had spread it through the Italian gruppo at Tirreno-Adriatico. Others believed it had been provoked by the riders’ excessive use of cortisone-based “stimulants”, though quite the soigneurs, mechanics and sports directors had caught it wasn’t entirely clear. Regardless, the daily medical bulletins informed us that Giro favourites like Gibì Baronchelli and Dietrich Thurau wouldn’t be in Florence, and that entire teams were in peril…

Worst affected was Inoxpran, a new outfit led by the mercurial Giovanni Battaglin. Six years prior he’d podiumed at his debut Giro, but then his career had gone into freefall. He’d won odds and sods, but nothing remotely commensurate with his ability. This year, however, Battaglin had a new impetus, and apparently a new set of legs. By common consent the best in the race, he’d finished third at Tirreno, and had followed up by winning the Tour of Calabria and the Trofeo Pantalica. At the Tour of the Basque Country he won three stages and the GC. Then the virus swept through Inoxpran, and Giovanni Battaglin’s miraculous rinascita was put on hold. A disaster for him, for his nascent team, and for the 32-year-old direttore sportivo masterminding his comeback…

We’re at the headquarters of the Carrera bike brand, near Brescia. It’s 36 year since that same DS, Davide Boifava, was compelled to inform the Giro that Inoxpran wouldn’t be in Florence, since he took a decision that would ultimately reconfigure cycling history; “No Italian team had ridden the Tour the previous year, and we Italian cycling generally took a month off in July. I needed to keep the show on the road, so I rang Félix Lévitan at the Tour and he told me to go and see him. I flew to Paris and pleaded with him to give us a ride. He accepted, Battaglin won the polka-dot jersey, and it saved our season. It probably saved his career as well…”

Battaglin would prosper under Boifava’s gentle, considered stewardship. He galloped to the Vuelta/Giro double in 1981, as Boifava cemented his reputation as the riders’ choice. The Carrera jeans company replaced Inoxpran as main sponsor in 1984, ushering in a decade of tumultuous peaks and troughs. Champions like Stephen Roche, Roberto Visentini, Claudio Chiappucci and Marco Pantani thrived under Boifava, as Carrera became one of the truly great teams of the late-twentieth century. That they did so – and that the Carrera brand remains synonymous with cycling still today – is testament to his genius as both talent scout and manmanager. Put simply, if anyone could manage the unmanageable, it was Davide Boifava.

His story began in Nuvolento, a small village east of Brescia; “I was the youngest of nine kids, and it’s true to say that life wasn’t easy. I started work as a waiter aged eleven, then as a tailor, all sorts. I desperately wanted to be a cyclist, but I didn’t have a bike. I went to the local club, but they told me I was too skinny to be a rider…”

As luck would have it a cycling-mad local priest ran a team of his own, and invited him to join. The absence of a bike proved something of a handicap, but the father of a friend stepped in to help; “He had a bike workshop, so when he finished repairing the bikes he’d give them to me. I’d “test” them in the race at the weekend, and then give them back.”

Hardly the most auspicious start, then, but by 1969 Boifava had worn yellow at the Tour de l’Avenir, and earned himself a professional contract with Molteni. On stage two of his debut Giro he rode away from the peloton, and into the maglia rosa. That autumn he lined up with Eddy Merckx at the Trofeo Baracchi, a 100 kilometre two-up time trial between Brescia and Bergamo. Resolved to crack 47 kmh for the first time, Merckx set off like a train. Ultimately, though, Boifava’s pace was too much even for him. The greatest rider in the world collapsed so completely in the final fifteen kilometres that they staggered home third. Merckx, never the most magnanimous in defeat, issued a tearful apology to Boifava at the velodrome. Italian cycling legend has it that Boifava is the only rider ever to have reduced him to tears, but little did the boy wonder know that it would be the apogee of his career; “I started to suffer badly with tendinitis, and I was never the same again. I still won from time to time, but I seemed to spend more time in hospital than on the road.”

His innate humility ensured that he remained an immensely popular figure within the Italian sport. In 1978, as he contemplated retirement following yet another operation, the boss of a local pots and pans firm called him up. Angelo Prandelli informed him that Inoxpran wanted a pro’ team, and that he was the man to head it up. Unsure whether or not to accept, he called up Giorgio Albani, his old mentor at Molteni. Albani said he’d be happy to help out as and when, and Battaglin’s 1981 heroics heralded the birth of a thoroughgoing cycling legend. It also delivered Inoxpran a massive boost in visibility, and Boifava more leverage in rider negotiations…

During his final Giro as a rider, Boifava had roomed with a talent even more precocious - and even more fragile - than Battaglin. Born into a wealthy family on the lakes of Lake Garda, Roberto Visentini had not only been world junior champion, but had seemed destined for greatness. A formidable time trialist and a high-class climber, he drew easy parallels with the three-time Giro winner Felice Gimondi. Visentini, however, was a bundle of contradictions. With his red Ferrari and his predilection for the Lake Garda club scene, he’d developed a reputation as a playboy. By the same token he was ill-at-ease with himself and with his team mates, and struggled to build the human relationships which underpin the best leader/gregario relationships. Little wonder that Boifava, one of the most amiable riders in the peloton, had been charged with overseeing his emotional wellbeing; “He’d grown up close to Brescia, and I’d followed him for years. I knew he wasn’t a “normal” person, but that’s not unusual for champion cyclists. A lot’s been said about Roberto, but if he liked you and he trusted you he’d do anything for you…”

And so it was that, as Battaglin prepared to leave the stage, Visentini became Inoxpran’s leader for the 1983 season. He seemed ready to win the Giro, but the percorso was designed for the great finisseur Beppe Saronni, the reigning world champion. Visentini dropped Saronni three times during that Giro, but with only one major mountain stage and time bonuses on every stage, he was effectively beaten before he started. He rode the fastest Giro of all time, but it made no difference.

Notwithstanding a bungled plot to sabotage his Giro by adding laxative to his minestrone, Saronni hoovered up the bonuses to win a second Giro. The whole thing played upon Visentini’s innate persecution complex, leaving Boifava to pick up the pieces; “Suffice to say he wasn’t terribly happy. He told me afterwards that if they carried on like this he’d ride the Tour instead. You could understand the sentiment, and to be honest he was better suited to the Tour anyway. There were no time bonuses at the Tour, and you always had three long time trials. The mountains were better suited to him as well, but the fact was that he was fixated on winning the Giro. He may have said he wanted to ride the Tour, but the Giro was the only thing that mattered to him.”

Carrera replaced Inoxpran as title sponsor in 1984. They beefed up the classics roster, but the business at hand, as ever, was the Giro. That January, 32-year-old Francesco Moser had arrested a seemingly terminal decline by breaking the hour record in Mexico, then followed up by winning Milan-Sanremo. Visentini didn’t yet know it, but Moser, aided by a bunch of dubious “sports scientists”, had discovered that by utilising blood transfusions he could produce more power, and ride at threshold for longer. Moreover, Italy wanted nothing more than for her most popular cyclist to reach the promised land of the pink jersey. Moser had been failing so to do the Giro for ten years, but now Giro boss Vincenzo Torriani studiously placed such climbs as there were far from the stage finishes. He removed the time bonuses in order to hurt Saronni, and the mountains to handicap Visentini. Anything and everything, in point of fact, that might constitute an impediment to Moser’s chances of delivering a famous win.

Headed into stage 15, a 38 kilometre time trial to Milan, Moser led Visentini by just ten seconds, with Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon a further 30 seconds in arrears. Here, however, Moser deployed the lenticular wheel which had powered him to success in Mexico, and drilled a further 53 seconds into Visentini. It played upon his sense of injustice, and by the eve of the queen stage he was on the edge;

“They cancelled the Stelvio because apparently it was impassable, and replaced it with the Passo Palade. It effectively neutralized the stage, which of course played into Moser’s hands once more.”

Moser had been helped by the percorso, by advances in wheel technology, by the weather and now by the organizers. He and Fignon finally distanced Moser on stage eighteen but, as he looked down the valley, he saw a RAI motorbike pacing the maglia rosa back up. Moser got back on, and Visentini hurled a volley of abuse at Torriani in a post-stage interview. However worse – much worse – was to follow the next day.

Once more he and Fignon dropped the people’s choice and, 13 kilometres from the top, looked set to inflict mortal damage. The anti-hero Visentini, though, was being abused by the roadside Moser fundamentalists. As they spat out their abuse – quite literally – their idol was once more in receipt not only of their pushes, but of the RAI motorbike’s munificence. Boifava is wincing at the memory;

“Roberto just climbed off. I managed to get him back on the bike eventually, but by then it was all over. He could have been winning the Giro, but instead he lost ten minutes. To be honest it was horrendous – his nerves were completely shredded…”

Boifava persuaded him to ride the Tour, but Carrera’s race was marked by a genuine tragedy. Carlo Tonon, a gregario from up in the Veneto, had been drafted into the team for his second Tour. By stage 19 Visentini had abandoned, leaving the team stageless, leaderless and pretty much rudderless;

“The stage finish was at Morzine, on the descent of the Joux Plane. Carlo was in the gruppetto, and I’d left him on the climb. I said, “No problem, just stay calm and I’ll see you at the finish…”

By the time Tonon’s group began the plunge into Morzine, however, the fans were on their way home. Tonon collided with a Swiss cyclo-tourist, and fell into a coma;

“The first I heard was from Gérard Porte, the Tour doctor. He said somebody had crashed and it was grave.”

The father of an eleven-month old boy named David, Tonon would remain hospitalized in France for several weeks. The Tacchella family, the owners of Carrera, had him transferred to Verona on 1 September, and ensured he got the best care available. The damage, however, had been acute. He’d always been the strong, but over time he became still more withdrawn. In June 1996, twelve-year old David Tonon would find his lifeless father in the hut by the family fishing lake…

In the winter of 1984, Visentini put his bike in a vice, took a saw to it, and delivered the remnants to Boifava in a shopping bag. This was an extraordinary turn of events even by his standards, but somehow Boifava persuaded him to try again. He looked on course to topple Bernard Hinault at the 1985 Giro, but a chest infection saw him abandon in the Apennines. Boifava sent him to the Tour instead, but it was utterly hopeless. When Visentini chittered to the media that he was sick, his DS countered that the illness was all in his head. In the second time trial, apparently made-to measure for him, he finished 82nd. It was Visentini at his abysmal worst, and it would have major consequences for him, for Carrera, and for Davide Boifava. Even he, the great stoic, was close to his wit’s end;

“Stephen Roche won on the Aubisque, and we were in the same hotel that night. I asked him if he would be interested in riding for an Italian team, and he said he was. We needed a reliable GC rider, and Roberto was more trouble than he was worth at the Tour. He couldn’t cope with it, so we went to France and signed Stephen. The idea was that he’d lead us at the Vuelta and the Tour, and that Visentini would have another chance at the Giro. It was probably the best decision I ever made, and the worst…”

The Carrera curse struck again as Roche contracted tendonitis, but in adversity Visentini finally delivered. He romped to the 1986 Giro, and Carrera sparkled at the Tour. Erich Maechler won the Puy de Dôme, Guido Bontempi on the Champs, and the Swiss climber Urs Zimmermann shared the podium with Greg LeMond and Hinault. Onwards and upwards…

In the event Roche didn’t ride the 1987 Vuelta, but was instead assigned to the Giro as preparation for the Tour. He took to the start in Sanremo in sparkling form, having won the Tour of Romandy.

The story of the 1987 Giro d’Italia is incredible even by Carrera’s standards. In essence Visentini, the reigning champion and maglia rosa, was ambushed by an attack on the road to Sappada, by a group including his team mate Stephen Roche.

The Irishman thus claimed the jersey, went on to win the Giro, and would add both the Tour and World Championship in a single calendar year. After the stage Roche told Italian reporters that he was “taking care of my own interests”. Subsequently, however, he disseminated a different version of events. He had simply followed the breakaway in the interests of the team, whilst Visentini had paid for his inattention and hubris. The Italian version, broadly speaking, is that Roche, at that point in the race a gregario, committed one of the most grievous crimes in the history of the race. He had agreed to work for the maglia rosa, but instead was instrumental (or at least complicit) in the ambush, and pilfered it. For Boifava it was both, and more besides;

“We always said that whoever had the jersey after the time trial would be our leader thereafter, and Roberto won it. As far as we were concerned it was all clear, and with Stephen in second place we were dominating the race. The problem was that Panasonic had Eric Breukink and Robert Millar, and they weren’t just going to lie down and let us win. It was logical that they would try something, and they were running out of time. They attacked on a descent, and Roberto was in the middle of the group. He was an exceptional descender, but for some reason he was too far back. I can’t say for sure whether it was premeditated, because the only person that really knows is Stephen. Regardless, the upshot was that he went with the break instead of waiting for Roberto…

“Irrespective of his motives, it wasn’t necessarily problematical for us as a team. Roberto had nearly three minutes on Stephen, so in theory there was no problem for him to be in that break. In point of fact it made sense for us to have somebody in it, because there were some important GC riders there. Sappada is a long, steady climb, about 30km. At half distance the gap was only a minute, and it looked like it would come together again. As a matter of fact Toni Rominger, who was third on GC, was also left behind with the Visentini group. He actually bridged across to the break and overtook everybody except Johan van der Velde.

“As Visentini saw it, Roche had betrayed him. He caved in psychologically, and lost three minutes in the final four kilometres. So regardless of what people think of Stephen’s behaviour that day, Roberto lost the Giro because he collapsed psychologically, not physically. If he’d head the head of a Roche, or a Claudio Chiappucci, he could have done whatever he wanted as a cyclist. There’s no question in my mind he could have won the Tour…”

In 1989 Boifava became a bike manufacturer. Podium built high end, Carrera branded bikes for his team, and in short order for thousands of amateurs. Chiappucci’s yellow jersey adventure at the 1990 Tour, allied to his caustic rivalry with Gianni Bugno, provided the perfect shop window. “El Diablo” came up short at both the Giro and the Tour, but his courage and charisma in the mountains thrilled millions. By the mid-nineties the white Carrera frameset and jersey, with accompanying faux-denim bibshorts, was ubiquitous. Better still, a pure climber even more dazzling than Chiappucci emerged to enrapture the tifosi;

“I’d known Marco Pantani from when he was eighteen-years-old. I always had a very

good relationship with him, and he trusted me completely. He approached us when

he turned pro, not vice versa…”

Pantani’s climbing pyrotechnics in 1994 and ’95 saw him usurp Chiappucci on the road, and in the public affection. He and Boifava parted ways at the conclusion of the 1996 season, as the Carrera era finally ended. With Boifava resolved to focus exclusively on selling bikes, the supermarket chain Mercatone Uno stepped in to build a new team around the genius Pantani. In the event Asics persuaded Boifava to construct a new team. Whilst he administered to the careers of Michele Bartoli, Paolo Bettini and a young Ivan Basso, Pantani won the Giro/Tour double in 1998. The following year he was excluded from the Giro for EPO use, beginning the doping tsunami which threatened to decapitate the sport. The two of them were reunited in extremis in 2003, but by then Pantani had fallen into the vortex of cocaine addiction;

“Mercatone Uno asked me to go and help him. It was extremely trying, but it was something I couldn’t not do. I knew he was in trouble, and I was with him between 2 January and the end of the Giro. Everybody knows his story, and there’s not much more I can add. The only thing I would say is that they should have tried to persuade him to ride the Tour after they expelled him from the Giro in 1999. I don’t say it would have made the difference, but it might have…”

Davide Boifava will celebrate his 70th birthday next year. He’s no longer to be found in the ammiraglia, but he’s first into the Podium office each day. On its walls are the yellow, pink and rainbow jerseys of the champions he managed over a quite astonishing 30 year career. His own maglia rosa is conspicuously absent – he’s far too modest for that – and the reality is that those that are displayed barely scratch the surface.

And nor, truth be told, have we. Not even close.

Arrivederci Davide Boifava…

THE SPIRIT OF EXCELLENCE…

When Carrera ceased sponsorship of the team, Boifava became sole proprietor of Podium. The factory at Calcinato was converted into a showroom and offices, and kids Simone and Sheila work alongside him. They produce about 3000 frames a year.

Davide finished managing top level pro’ teams in 2007. By then his riders had won just about everything, with the notable exception of Paris-Roubaix. The great sprinter Guido Bontempi was the most prolific of all, with 25 grand tour stages and any number of single-day races. Erich Maechler, the Swiss all-rounder, was a prodigious winner as well. In 1987 he romped to Milan-Sanremo, and spent six days in yellow at the Tour. Boifava also managed the “Tashkent Terror”, the legendary sprinter Diamolidine Abdoujaparov. He still lives close by, and the mere mention of his name still elicits a broad grin from the man who once tried to “manage” him.

Though he remains convinced that Visentini was the most talented of all, Boifava mentions the Russian Vladimir Poulnikov as another unfulfilled talent.

And regrets? The over-reliance on technology in modern cycling, and the damage inflicted on the rider/DS relationship caused by the medical “preparatori” of the 1990s…