THE PERFECT CRIME

by HERBIE SYKES

…For all that the 1987 route was more traditional, the composition of the peloton continued to evolve. Professional cycling’s demographic was changing, and the Giro well reflected the fact. Of the 21 nine-man teams to take the start at Sanremo, eight were non-Italian. Three English speakers – Stephen Roche, the introvert Scottish climber Robert Millar and an Australian, Phil Anderson – were amongst those expected to shine, as was the Dutchman Breukink. 

Not since Balmamion in 1963 had a native won consecutive giri and, though Italy was running desperately low on grand tour contenders, Visentini was strongly fancied finally to break the hoodoo, particularly if Roche could be persuaded to work in his interests. However those (and there were many) who had predicted that the two would find it difficult to work together remained largely unconvinced, for a number of reasons. 

Logic suggested that Visentini, a reigning champion in decent shape, would lead the team for the Giro, then ride for Roche at the Tour. However logic and the Giro d’Italia have never been comfortable bedfellows, still less so when one factors Roberto Visentini into the equation. Problem was that by common consent Visentini hated the French and their bike race, and had hitherto shown not the slightest inclination to take the thing seriously. Furthermore Roche believed that come July Visentini would in all probability be lying on a beach somewhere. 

Prior to his excellent showing in winning the previous year, Visentini been known to suffer badly with nerves, and as such to have, on occasion, a really horrible day. Throw in the fact that the two of them, chalk and cheese, couldn’t make head-nor-tail of one another, and Boifava’s position, that the road would decide, seemed simultaneously sensible and a recipe for disaster. In the event it was both, and then some besides…

Visentini duly won the prologue, and with it the jersey, before Roche beat him in a weird downhill time trial on the Poggio, the hill which normally sorts out Milan-Sanremo. When Carrera dominated yet another time trial on day three, this one a team affair, Roche led by 15 seconds from Visentini, a lead he extended the following day in Tuscany. With Davide Cassani third, Carrera had a Giro 1-2-3 on the eve of stage six, the first true climbing test to Terminillo, the Apennine ski resort near Rome. Here, though, events would take a very, very strange turn.

The escape came when Jean-Claude Bagot, riding for Fagor, sprung clear. He was followed, and then joined, by Carrera’s Eddy Schepers, a very good Belgian domestique, and a close friend of Roche. That Schepers decided to follow Bagot, no GC threat whatsoever, instead of protecting Roche and Visentini, seemed odd on a mountain as long and demanding as Terminillo, but follow he did. An Italian rider, Pagnin, now jumped out of the peloton in an attempt to bridge across.

Urged by Boifava to remain passive, Schepers instead pulled hard with Bagot to ensure they stayed away. Next Roche briefly attacked with Millar, though their efforts were quickly neutralised and they were re-absorbed into the chase group. Finally Bagot sprinted to victory, followed by Schepers, who, having worked to see off Pagnin, showed precisely zero inclination to contest the sprint. David Boifava, interviewed after the Giro, was less than enthused;

‘That evening at Terminillo I spoke with Schepers because I understood immediately that something strange was happening. And do you know how I knew? When Pagnin went to join Schepers and Bagot, Schepers pulled to stop him getting on, then gifted the stage to Bagot. This was an irrational action for us, because in the first instance he should have been passive, just waiting in case Visentini or Roche would need help. Then, having worked to make sure Pagnin wouldn’t make it up to them, he should have at least tried to win…

‘After the stage I was livid. I went first to Schepers, and then to Bazzo, the DS of Fagor, and insisted that they explain themselves. They both said there was nothing unusual going on; Schepers had, as he put it, “bought a credit” for Carrera. I didn’t imagine for one minute that he might be managing the situation for himself and not the team…’

On stage 10 a pile-up saw Roche, the race leader, hit the asphalt and badly graze a hip. The following day he missed a mid-stage break, got back on, then lost seven seconds to Visentini on the scramble up to the finish at Osimo, one of the beautiful fortress towns in the Marche. Though he’d retained the jersey, Roche had shown signs of weakness, and Visentini hadn’t been on hand to offer support. Roche declared himself less than happy, but in truth these kinds of hilltop finishes, punchy little 4km climbs, are unmanageable, every man for himself - 34 riders had been separated by just 11 seconds. Carrera’s Bontempi won a bunch sprint the next day before Boifava, sensing the tension between his two leaders, called a team meeting on the eve of stage 13, a punishing 46km uphill time trial to San Marino;

‘At the meeting it was agreed by all that, should one or the other lead the race at the conclusion, the rest of the team would work for him, without exception. All seemed clear, and I was quite calm.’

Visentini flew that day. He so dominated the stage that by the finish he’d put 2’47” into Roche,

who could do no better than twelfth. The reigning champion and new pink jersey led his second placed teammate by 2’42”. With nobody else in remotely the same class Visentini looked well on course - barring mishaps or emotional meltdown, the Giro was his for the taking. Boifava explained it thus;

‘We were at Rimini, at the Ambassadors Hotel. I passed a good part of the evening with Roche, who was upset by the defeat, and sad that the crash had compromised his performance. He said though that he was very happy for Roberto, and that he was ready to put himself at his service, as we’d agreed.’

Years later, during an interview with Beppe Conti, cycling writer for Tuttosport, Boifava would add that;

‘…Roche in those days was in a hurry to sign with us for 1988, but we wanted to see how the race would finish first. Visentini, according to our agreements, would have helped Roche at the Tour, though some say that he’d already whispered to his friends that if he won the Giro he wouldn’t be going to France…’

Compare Boifava’s account of events following the time trial with that of Stephen Roche. In his book ‘My road to victory’ Roche writes that;

‘…I knew Visentini had already booked holidays for July when the Tour would be on, and had no intention of working for me. On the night after the time trial, my loyal teammate Eddy Schepers spoke to me about the race, telling me that I could not accept defeat, that I had come to win and that I must continue to try.

‘This is what I felt too but I had not the courage to say it like that. I agreed with Eddy and the two of us discussed where I might get the jersey back from Visentini. The race was not over and, more than anything else, that was the conclusion of our discussions…’

Following a nothing stage along the Adriatic, the fifteenth leg had the race towards the Dolomites.

It would conclude atop the long drag to Sappada, at 1286 metres the third and last of the climbs.

On the first of the hills, still some 90km from the finish, Bagot, beneficiary of Schepers’ apparent largesse at Terminillo, attacked, for no reason obvious to anybody else. Then Robert Millar, apparently eager for the green mountains jersey, led the chase with a young Italian, Conti. When Salvador, another Italian rider of no particular import, jumped across, Stephen Roche attached himself to his wheel. For Carrera it made no apparent sense. Boifava again;

‘…I went to him in the Team car and asked his reasons for what he was doing. He told me that he only wanted to win the stage. I told him that if this was his objective he just sit in and stay in the wheels. Instead he continued to pull, to keep the pace very high.’

On the descent Roche and Conti promptly caught and dropped Bagot, the rabbit. A chase group of 10 formed, minus the maglia rosa but including Roche’s good friend Millar, and his Panasonic teammate and GC hopeful Breukink. When they all came together on the second climb Visentini’s Giro was all but shipwrecked. Boifava again;

‘A crazy day. Roche made out he wasn’t pulling, but of course he had his friends doing it for him. I went back to the peloton and I saw that at the front of the group nobody was moving. I understood in a flash that there was a problem. You had Argentin and Giupponi there, not working, and I saw Anderson and Winnen from Panasonic. Roberto had the jersey, and so he didn’t get any help from the other GC contenders, but I knew immediately that the foreigners were working for Roche. In the end I had to tell my own team to go to the front and pull. I told Visentini that Roche wasn’t working, so as not to upset him. I tried in vain to keep him calm, but I couldn’t. His nerve completely deserted him…’

Roche;

‘…Boifava was furious and drove up to tell me that I must stop. He ordered the entire Carrera team to lead the pursuit. This made me angry because I felt it was Carrera’s interest to force all the other teams to pursue me. The war was on. I told Boifava that if the other teams did not chase me I would win the stage by 10 minutes and Carrera would still win the Giro. But it was clear that Carrera preferred their Italian to win the race and I was not going to accept that. Second place was as good as twentieth – in other words no good…’

Carrera chased their own rider in vain, and Visentini’s nerves betrayed him so completely on the final climb that he collapsed, losing in excess of six minutes. By five seconds Stephen Roche claimed the pink jersey of the leader of the Tour of Italy amidst a chorus of boos and whistles at Sappada. Interviewed after the stage the outgoing maglia rosa, incandescent that his own teammate had ambushed him, stated that ‘certain people will be going home tonight.’

That night the owner of Carrera was helicoptered into Sappada. He pointed out that, as leader of the Giro, Stephen Roche wasn’t going anywhere, and that the team ought to be getting on with the job in hand.

The following is extracted from an interview Davide Boifava gave to Bicisport, July 1987.

BS: ‘You went straight to the hotel. Why did you not stay at the stage finish?’

DB: ‘There are values in sport, as in life, which must be defended at all costs. I tried to do it, but I didn’t manage.’

BS: ‘Why?’

DB: ‘Because at the end the one who won didn’t respect those values and the one who suffered was obliged to indulge him, out of respect for the jersey he was wearing…’

BS: ‘When did you next see Roche?’

DB: ‘That night at about 11 o’clock, in the hotel. He started to tell me that he hadn’t attacked, that his actions had been for the benefit of the team, but I cut him short immediately. I told him that I didn’t want to hear his stories. We’d had the jersey by over three minutes from Rominger, who was third. Now, because of his actions, we were not only a laughing stock, but we had only five seconds.’

BS: ‘And Visentini?’

DB: ‘He was really hurt...He hadn’t expected such an incredible attack. I tried to cheer him up but neither of us managed to come up with a plausible explanation for what he’d done…

‘The morning after Schepers went to each of the Carrera riders to ask that they confirm the commitment they’d made the night before, to ride for whoever was leading. The response was normal; everybody said “We are honest and we respect the promises we made in the first place…”’

Roche, ably supported by Panasonic’s Millar, and by Schepers, would win the Giro, and would prove himself conclusively the best rider in the race. In so doing he would withstand a barrage of abuse from Italy’s cycling fans and media alike. For all his excellence as a cyclist, many believed that attacking a teammate wearing the maglia rosa, regardless of his nationality, was unforgivable.

Italian cycling journalist Simone Basso described the Sappada affair as ‘…one of the saddest days in the history of the Giro’, though sagacious old Torriani, interviewed after the race, said that Roche had been correct in taking the fight to the Italians. For Visentini, beaten anyway, things would go from bad to worse as he fell, fractured his wrist, abandoned. That July Roche won again, superbly and famously, at the Tour de France, besting Pedro Delgado with a legendary ride to Le Plagne. He rounded off an incredible season by winning the World Championship in Austria, thus emulating Eddy Merckx. For 1988 he signed a contract with… Fagor.

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A supremely elegant, hugely gifted rider, Roberto Visentini remains one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of Italian cycling. When he retired from professional racing in 1991 he walked away, quite literally, from the sport. He began working as a funeral director in the family business, and in twenty years since has never been seen at a bike race. In his temperament, and latterly his total refusal to communicate, he has been likened to Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American grandmaster. Prior to our meeting at his home last summer he had given precisely one interview, back in 1997. I’d always wanted to meet with him, and when I mentioned to his wife Betty that I was enormously grateful for her help in arranging it, she said he was a very private man, and that he has zero interest in re-invoking about his cycling career. When he retired he simply closed the book on that part of his life, she added, and I was the first journalist ever to have been invited into their home.

Visentini told me he’s not at all bothered about bike racing; he doesn’t watch it on TV or follow it in any way, and many of the people within it are crooks and hypocrites. Very occasionally he rides his bike, he told me, but always alone, for a bit of peace and quiet. Though he has no contact with the people he rode with, he still gets “a lot of letters from fans asking for autographs” and replies to every one of them; “If they are prepared to take the time and trouble to write, the least I can do is to respond…”

Visentini spoke briefly about his career as a cyclist, albeit without enthusiasm. He confirmed to me that he’d always much preferred skiing to bike racing, and that cycling was “the last sport I’d wanted to do”. When I offered that this was a strange response for a former World junior champion and winner of the Giro, he told me that it had just happened to him. He kept winning, he said, and every time he won he felt under more pressure to carry on. Though he claims to have been “a good rider, not a champion”, many who saw him race maintain that he was a more talented stage racer than either Saronni and Moser, the standard-bearers of Italian cycling in the eighties. One very famous former Italian champion said he was the worst trainer he’d ever known, but “probably a genius”.

Many of his contemporaries felt that he was simply unknowable, but most all agree he was 100% honest, often to his own detriment. Incapable of the platitudes of diplomacy which inevitably attach themselves to top sportspeople, he was in many ways the victim of himself. Stories of his fragile state of mind are legion in Italian cycling, but one in particular is illustrative. Following the 1984 Giro, engineered to facilitate a win for Francesco Moser, he put his bike in a vice and took a saw to it. He then crushed all of the pieces, put them in refuse sacks, and posted them to his direttore sportivo.

When I asked him about Stephen Roche he answered thus;

“What he did was dangerous, because really bad things can happen to you if you do pull stunts like that; you risk being shot. What did Roche do? Everybody knows what he did, and he knows what he did. The problem is that I can’t do anything about it because I’d end up in prison…”

It was one of the shortest interviews I’ve ever done with a cyclist, and in truth we barely scratched the surface. In many ways, however, it was one of the most rewarding. To say that he was uncomfortable being interviewed would be a huge understatement. It was an ordeal for him but he was big enough, and brave enough, to endure it, and for that I was thankful. I’d have loved to have got to the bottom of Roberto Visentini, but by the same token I’m quite glad I didn’t. He gave me a brief window on his world and, though he wouldn’t let me in, I took my leave feeling that it was better that way. It’s his world, not mine, and some things are best left as they are.