'The Road Would Decide'

by Barry Ryan
The Ascent: Sean Kellty, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling's Golden Generation
Gill Books

‘When you win the Giro d’Italia, you can spend the money any way you want,’ Roberto Visentini says, his voice rasping with indignation over the phone from his home above Lake Garda. The charge levelled at him through his career, by both the press and his peers, was that he would have won a lot more had his devotion to the austere life of professional cycling matched his reported enthusiasm for la bella vita. It is, understandably, characterisation Visentini resents to this day. ‘The people who say that are ignorant, basta. But then again, there weren’t a lot of correct people in cycling. Sons of bitches. 

Given that his family’s considerable wealth was derived from the gloomy business of funeral direction, it was perhaps only fitting that Visentini would be a rather morose kind of playboy. Handsome, talented, moneyed and with a penchant for fast cars, Visentini had all the trappings of a would-be superstar, but for much of his career, his light was obscured. His greatest failing was perhaps the simple fact that he was neither Francesco Moser nor Giuseppe Saronni, the men whose running battle for hearts and minds defined Italian cycling in the early 1980s. The tifosi have long inclined towards a binary view of the world – Binda and Guerra, Coppi and Bartali – and Visentini didn’t fit into the equation. For all his prodigious talent, Visentini’s exploits were met with curiosity rather than affection.

Much of the coolness towards Visentini from his fellow riders, meanwhile, stemmed from his background. Cycling is historically a working-class sport, and a man without a visceral need to make his money from racing bikes tended to be viewed with suspicion. ‘He came from a rich family,’ says Valerio Piva, a contemporary in the Italian gruppo in the 1980s. ‘Clearly he had talent but he didn’t have the same desire to make his living from cycling. He always seemed to have this attitude that cycling wasn’t the most important thing in his life. He was a great athlete, but maybe he could have won more if he really had the desire.’

A native of Gardone Riviera, near Salò, Visentini’s natural gifts were evident as a schoolboy racer, and underscored when he won the inaugural junior World Championship in Lausanne in 1975. He turned professional in 1978, but only truly began to deliver on his promise when he placed 2nd to Saronni at the 1983 Giro. The following year, however, the same race exposed the demons of Visentini’s more brittle nature. When the organisers controversially cut mountain passes from the race in the final week, ostensibly due to snow., Visentini complained loudly, and justifiably, that they had done so only to favour the pink jersey Moser, a noted non-climber. His challenge collapsed in the closing days after he became discommoded by continuous abuse from Moser’s fans on the roadside. Two days after that Giro, at least according to lore, an indignant Visentini took a saw to his bike and hacked it into pieces. ‘I brought the pieces to Boifava in a plastic bag,’ Visentini says now. ‘I said, “Here’s your bike. I’ve had enough.”’ In later years, the same incident came to be erroneously attached to the aftermath of the 1987 Giro, and Visentini did little dispel that impression when he spoke to La Gazzetta dello Sport about it in 2012. Some stories are so good they bear repurposing.

Boifava talked Visentini out of thoughts of premature retirement and he returned to wear the maglia rosa for nine days in 1985 before being forced out by illness, but the stars aligned in 1986. For once, Visentini’s health and morale made it around Italy intact, and he saw off both Saronni and Moser to win the Giro on his 29th birthday. Finally, he was at the summit, though he remained lumbered with the reputation as a figlio di papà – a spoilt daddy’s boy. Reading between the lines of contemporary reports, it’s not hard to detect a strain of tacit disapproval towards the ever more bouffant, George Michael-esque hairstyle, or his undimmed passion for motors. ‘He always treated cycling like it was a game rather than a job,’ tuts Giuseppe Martinelli, who raced against Visentini and joined Carrera’s management in 1988.

There were the faintest murmurs, too, about the part Giovanni Grazzi, Carrera’s team doctor, had played in Visentini’s success. Grazzi was a close associate of Dr Francesco Conconi, who, from his base at the University of Ferrara, had built a reputation as a guru by masterminding Francesco Moser’s startling late-career renaissance that saw him smash the Hour Record and win the Giro in 1984. It was heavily suspected – and later confirmed by the rider himself – that Moser had been given blood transfusions to boost performance, a practice that was not illegal at the time. By 1986, however, the IOC had outlawed blood doping, and Visentini was careful when explaining his and Grazzi’s links to Conconi immediately after his Giro victory. ‘Conconi? Yes, he’s given us a hand, but I don’t practise blood transfusions. I’d rather lose an extra race,’ Visentini said at the time.

‘Grazzi was the doctor for everybody on the team,’ Visentini says now. ‘He wasn’t a personal doctor, he was there for everybody, Roche included. Regardless of whether you were one of the stronger riders or one of the weaker riders, he was the doctor.’

In winning the 1986 Giro, Visentini had proved himself the strongest rider on the team, and, unlike Roche, had lived up to the lofty expectations of the Tacchella brothers who owned Carrera and signed his paycheques. He proceeded to emphasise his status as the team’s alpha male during the Trofeo Baracchi two-up time trial at the end of the 1986 season, where he was paired with a struggling Roche. As Roche saw it, Visentini seemed to revel in putting him into difficulty. Even before their antipathy came to a head in 1987, Roche would grumble publicly about the episode to Vélo Magazine, though he insists now that he and Visentini were never at odds prior to that year’s fateful Giro. ‘We had a good relationship other than that,’ Roche says. ‘We were both very much into cars. I remember he had a big Mercedes 190 Turbo, and we tore around Brescia in it one night.’

‘We had a normal relationship, like regular teammates, with no problems,’ agrees Visentini, dismissing the notion that he had felt even remotely threatened when Carrera had swooped to sign Roche ahead of the 1986 season. Through the early part of 1987, they followed largely separate programmes, with Roche racing in France, while Visentini stayed steadfastly south of the Alps. When they finally rode together at the Tour de Romandie, Visentini shrugged off his stablemate’s victory. ‘I should be the captain for the Giro and Roche for the Tour. These have always been the plans,’ he told La Stampa. ‘In any case, if I realise I can’t win, I’ll be the first to help Stephen, even at the Giro.’

The consensus as the Giro began was that the final overall winner would come from within Carrera team, a state of affairs which perhaps only compounded Boifava’s reticence to anoint a team leader in public. At the start in San Remo, he avoided the question by stating that the road would decide.

‘They set out equal, on the same level,’ Boifava says now. ‘We decided whoever took the maglia rosa in the San Marino time trial would be helped by the other.’ Nobody was especially convinced, not least within Carrera. 'The team went in with two leaders but two leaders never works,’ Valcke says. ‘Never!’

Roche and Visentini’s markedly similar characteristics as riders only exacerbated the situation. Both strong time triallist who could climb with the best, it was difficult to envisage precisely when and where they might be separated in the general classification. Visentini won the short prologue in San Remo to claim the first maglia rosa, before Roche responded by landing the novel – and dangerous – downhill time trial the following afternoon, which sent the riders scrambling down the twisting descent of the Poggio. When Carrera, inspired rather than impeded by the posturing of their leaders, won the team time trial to Camaiore on stage 3, Roche took possession of the pink jersey, while Visentini moved back up to 2nd overall.

Visentini carelessly coughed up seconds to Roche when he was caught napping in the finale at Montalcino, but he scored a psychological victory when the Irishman’s solo attack on the climb of the Terminillo came to naught two days later. They remained locked in their positions atop the overall standings as the Giro reached its southernmost point at Bari, and the phony war continued as the race travelled back up the sun-kissed Adriatic coast in the second week. By the time they reached Rimini, Roche had spent 10 days as race leader, but the pink jerseys taking up room in his suitcase counted for little when Visentini still only trailed him by a mere 25 seconds ahead of the uphill time trial to San Marino on stage 13.

A couple of days beforehand, Tuttosport journalist Beppe Conti asked Boifava which raider he would drive behind during the time trial. ‘The weaker,’ came the gnomic response. Boifava was true to his word. He opted to follow Roche, while his number two Sandro Quintarelli accompanied Visentini. In the space of 46 kilometres, Visentini seemed to put an end to two weeks of shadowboxing with one knock-out blow. He hadn’t sparkled like Roche ahead of the Giro, nor had he accelerated for show on a mountaintop finish, but he seemed on another plane to his teammate in San Marino. Roche, for his part, complained he was still feeling the effects of a crash in Termoli five days previously. Visentini beat Roche by 2:47 to divest him of the maglia rosa, and in the overall standings, he now led by 2:42. The road had spoken. Visentini was leader of Carrera. The Giro was as good as his.