Saronni’s sprinting legs were ready to race. He won the first three road stages, all in mass romps. While they were competing on the road, Saronni and Moser also fought a verbal battle in the press accusing each other of nothing of any particular importance, making an excellent polemica.
Again the weather turned wet in time for a time trial. Jørgen Marcussen, one of Battaglin’s gregari, won the stage five time trial in Pisa. But Hinault, at second, performed a vivisection on the rest of the contenders over the flat, 36-kilometer route finishing in Pisa. Hinault was now in pink.
The General Classification stood thus: 1. Bernard Hinault
2. Knut Knudsen @ 32 seconds
3. Francesco Moser @ 54 seconds
4. Jørgen Marcussen @ 1 minute 1 second
5. Roberto Visentini @ 1 minute 20 seconds
7. Giuseppe Saronni @ 2 minutes 3 seconds
The next day Moser announced that he and Saronni should ally themselves against Hinault. The surprise isn’t that riders would join forces against a dangerous rider, especially a powerful foreigner. Moser’s request was odd in that it was made so openly.
After a day of racing on the island of Elba, stage seven headed south to Umbria with a finish in ancient Orvieto. As the peloton raced over the Apennines, all the contenders took turns attacking Hinault. Having brought a weak team to Italy, Hinault was forced to do a lot of the neutralizing himself. He made sure Saronni and Moser were in sight or behind him the entire stage. Eventually a break with Visentini, Panizza and Battaglin got away, beating the Hinault group by 3 minutes 14 seconds. Visentini took over the lead and Hinault was now eighth, almost three minutes back. There were several able men sitting between Hinault and the maglia rosa, yet Hinault swore that even with the Italians combining against him, he would triumph in Milan.
The next day’s stage ending in Fiuggi showed that Hinault would have to dig deep if he wanted to defend himself against the combined efforts of the Italian riders. Six of his gregari were unable to finish with the leading group, the only rider on his team who had the strength to help him when the peloton was under severe stress was Jean-René Bernaudeau.
As the race headed for Italy’s instep with a hilltop finish in Campotenese, the façade of Italian unity against Hinault broke down and the Giro became a more open race. During this eleventh stage, a dangerous escape that included Baronchelli and Panizza scared the contenders enough to work together, the break being caught just at the line, resulting in no significant changes to the standings.
The next day’s racing was complicated enough to require a book of its own to tell the story completely. Halfway through the stage, as a result of an intermediate sprint, a break formed containing most of the big guns, but lacking race leader Visentini as well as Contini and Prim. Hoping to extract more than a pound of flesh from the three important missing riders, the break got itself organized and started motoring down the road. Contini buried himself and was able to claw his way up to the front group, but Saronni punctured. The sympathetic judges let one of the cars in the caravan motorpace Saronni back up to the peloton. Visentini and Prim finally made it up to the hard-charging Moser/Hinault break before the stage ended.
Contini crashed just 200 meters before the one-kilometer-to-go sign, meaning he would have to accept the time loss. The judges did some re-measuring and amazingly found that the sign had been placed 200 meters too close to the finish, allowing Contini to get the same time as the Moser/Hinault group and thus keep his second place in the General Classification. Finishing with the pack, Saronni lost 1 minute 16 seconds, dimming any hope of his gaining the maglia rosa.
During stage fourteen, Hinault decided to assert his sovereignty over the others. The stage had several major climbs including the final ascent to Roccaraso. Bernaudeau was sent off on the second climb, the Macerone. A racer of his ability could not be ignored, so the peloton was shredded trying to bring back the fast-moving Frenchman. After sitting in on the chase for a while, Hinault blasted off and only nine riders made it to the top of the Macerone with him. On the penultimate climb, the Rionero Sannitico, Hinault again hit hard and by the top he had Moser, Saronni, Prim, Baronchelli and Panizza for company. As the small lead group climbed to Roccaraso, Hinault was generous enough in handing out pain that all were dropped but Panizza. Hinault took the stage, and the surprising Panizza, a member of Saronni’s Gis team, found himself in pink. The day was a disaster for Visentini and Contini who both lost over lost six minutes.
The new General Classification: 1. Wladimiro Panizza
2. Bernard Hinault @ 1 minute 5 seconds
3. Faustino Rupérez @ 1 minute 49 seconds
4. Giambattista Baronchelli @ 2 minutes 35 seconds
5. Giovanni Battaglin @ 2 minutes 40 seconds
The standings stayed just that way during the flat stages that took the Giro to Sirmione, a city on a spit of land that protrudes about four kilometers into Lake Garda.
Next came the stages that would decide the Giro. Stage eighteen was the first, going over the Duran and landing at Pecól in the Val Zoldana.
Part way up the Duran, Battaglin did a testing attack to see what sort of stuff the others were made of. Whatever it was, it was not the stuff of chasers. With no one along for company, Battaglin decided to continue, the others probably thinking it was too early in the hilly, 239-kilometer stage to make a successful move. He maintained his lead on the descent and managed to grow it to a minute as he continued to Pecól.
Back in the peloton, everyone seemed frozen, afraid working might help a rival. Prim and then Panizza finally decided to bring back the fleeing and dangerous Battaglin, but it was too little, too late. Battaglin won the stage by 1 minute 15 seconds over Panizza and had done himself a world of good, moving up to third place at 1 minute 25 seconds. It was a magnificent ride.
The day’s hard racing ruined the hopes for two more contenders. Rupérez, exhausted after winning the Vuelta a few weeks earlier, struggled in eight and a half minutes after Battaglin. Moser, who had been looking tired during the last few stages, lost 2 minutes 34 seconds to Panizza. He announced his intention to quit the Giro and rest up for the coming Tour in July. Neither Moser nor his team were in Frankfurt for the Tour’s start in July.
Even though Battaglin tried his disappearing act again the next day with the Tre Croci and Mendola passes, the pack finished together. Status quo ante bellum.
Hinault’s director Cyrille Guimard had planned his set-piece assault on the Giro for the twentieth stage with the Passo Palade followed by an ascent of the north face of the Stelvio. The pack went over the Palade together. At Merano, 50 kilometers east of the start of the Stelvio climb, several riders escaped after an intermediate sprint, three of them from Hinault’s Renault team. Why the pack let them go when everyone had to know Guimard would try something is a mystery, but escape they did and it was game on. At Spondigna the route turned left for the road that would become the Stelvio pass. The break was still away, now by six and a half minutes.
The Stelvio climb proper is generally considered to start at Prato allo Stelvio and here Bernaudeau was able to ride away from the others in the break. Back in the pack, Hinault was chasing down any escape attempts, keeping things together. The six-man break, less Bernaudeau, was soon caught by the fast moving peloton.
When his group arrived at Prato allo Stelvio, Hinault just about ripped the bars out of the stem in an attack that dropped everyone but Panizza, Prim and Battaglin. As the four raced up the mountain, Hinault put in three more hard attacks. The third was more than Prim and Battaglin could take, but pink-clad Panizza, 37 and in the twilight of his career, hung on like grim death.
Again, Hinault was out of the saddle attacking the maglia rosa. The last hammer blow was too much for even Panizza, and Hinault took off to catch Bernaudeau, now only three minutes up the pass. The catch was made and they raced for the finish.
The new General Classification: 1. Bernard Hinault
2. Wladimiro Panizza @ 3 minutes 14 seconds
3. Giovanni Battaglin @ 4 minutes 39 seconds
4. Tommy Prim @ 7 minutes 28 seconds
5. Giambattista Baronchelli @ 8 minutes 25 seconds
The 50.4-kilometer time trial at Saronno on the outskirts of Milan was the penultimate stage and the last one that could affect the outcome. Normally Hinault was almost unbeatable in a time trial and he was certainly superior to any of the riders close to him in the General Classification.
Hinault didn’t win the time trial. But he didn’t have to. Saronni, Gregor Braun and Knut Knudsen were the day’s podium while those high in the standings lost still more time to the Badger.
Hinault became the second Frenchman after Anquetil to win the Giro, and the first racer in history to win all three Grand Tours on the first attempt. Partial credit has to be given to Hinault’s director, Guimard, who might be cycling’s greatest-ever tactician. As Lucien van Impe, whom Guimard directed to victory in 1976 Tour said, “Cyrille was one of the best directeurs sportifs that I ever met…he always knew when to go after a break or to let it go. And everything he predicted at the morning briefing came true later in the race.”
Final 1980 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Bernard Hinault (Renault-Gitane) 112 hours 8 minutes 20 seconds
2. Wladimiro Panizza (Gis Gelati) @ 5 minutes 43 seconds
3. Giovanni Battaglin (Inoxpran) @ 6 minutes 3 seconds
4. Tommy Prim (Bianchi-Piaggio) @ 7 minutes 53 seconds
5. Giambattista Baronchelli (Bianchi-Piaggio) @ 11 minutes 49 seconds
Climbers’ Competition: 1. Claudio Bortolotto (Mobilificio San Giacomo-Benotto): 670 points
2. Wladimiro Panizza (Gis Gelati): 400
3. Bernard Hinault (Renault-Gitane): 350
Points Competition: 1. Giuseppe Saronni (Gis Gelati): 301 points
2. Giovanni Mantovani (Hoonved-Bottecchia): 215
3. Tommy Prim (Bianchi-Piaggio): 179
Hinault had planned to make 1980 the year of his Giro/Tour double. As the Tour progressed he began to suffer terrible knee pain and after stage twelve, abandoned, allowing Joop Zoetemelk to win the Tour on his tenth attempt. Hinault recovered from his bout of tendinitis in time to win the World Road Championship that fall.
1981. Giovanni Battaglin had been knocking on the door of greatness for almost a decade. Winner of the Girobio in 1972, he turned pro in 1973. In his first year as a pro he was third in the Giro; only Merckx and Gimondi could beat him. The next year he spent a couple of days in pink, but his promise dwarfed his results. Luciano Pezzi (Gimondi’s old director) is given a lot of the credit for reviving Battaglin’s career when Pezzi formed the Inoxpran team in 1979. That year Battaglin won the climbers’ prize in the Tour as well as several important late-season single-day races in Italy. By the end of the season his form still held as he raced the World Championship road race in Valkenburg, Netherlands. He remains emphatic that he would have won the rainbow jersey if Jan Raas had not run him into the barriers in the sprint, a belief far from universally held among those who watched the race that day. In 1980 he came in third in the Giro and again won several significant single-day races.
In 1981 it all seemed to come together. Feeling that Saronni was the likely winner of the Giro, the Inoxpran team targeted the Vuelta, held in April at that time, which Battaglin won. Then, with only three days between the Vuelta’s end and the Giro’s prologue, he recalled, “The Vuelta ended on the Sunday and then the Giro started with a prologue time trial three days later. I came home from Spain, changed my suitcase and saw my wife and then we set off for the Giro. Can you imagine doing that today?”
Bianchi considered the Giro the core of its season and brought a lot of firepower to the race, including Baronchelli, Contini and Prim. Like the Petterssons a decade before, Prim had an extended career as a top amateur before turning pro late in 1979. He started his professional career with a bang, coming in fourth and winning the young rider’s jersey in the 1980 Giro, and just before the start of the 1981 Giro he won the Tour of Romandie.
Bianchi team director Giancarlo Ferretti decided to make all three riders protected team leaders, bringing to mind Frederick the Great’s aphorism, “He who defends everything defends nothing.”
If the 1979 Giro had been designed to create a Saronni/Moser dogfight, the 1981 edition with more good, hard climbing, but with three individual time trials (plus a prologue time trial), had Saronni written all over it. Battaglin and many other riders agreed that with all the time bonuses (30 seconds to the stage winners, even those of the time trials) skewing the race towards the rider who could mix it up in the sprints, the Giro organization had built a race for Saronni.
When the dust had cleared after the first two days of racing—a short prologue in Trieste, a 100-kilometer half-stage and a fifteen-kilometer team time trial—Moser was in pink by four seconds over Famcucine teammate Gregor Braun. Almost immediately Moser and Saronni were scrapping in the press. The dispute turned almost pathological when the judges took hours to decide who came in second in stage five, Moser or Swiss rider Serge Demierre. If Moser were second, he would gain the bonus time and keep the lead. Otherwise, the maglia rosa would migrate to, gulp, Saronni. Since the television cameras were waiting, both were awarded pink jerseys without waiting for the judges. The two had to share the podium and, of course, both bellowed and filed protests. Eventually Moser was awarded the second place and kept his lead. Nothing freshens up a Giro like a good polemica.
As the Giro raced down the eastern side of the peninsula, Battaglin’s criticism seemed to be validated. By the end of stage six in Bari, Saronni had won three stages, snarfing up a minute and a half of bonus time, putting him in the maglia rosa 24 seconds ahead of Moser.
The riders arrived in Reggio Calabria at the toe of Italy after three more days of racing, the standings more or less unchanged, even though the roads were hilly with no shortage of good, but less than epic climbs.
Stage ten, though, shook things up. After a transfer to Rome the race went over the Terminillo and then the less difficult Forca di Chiavano, a few kilometers from the finish in the remote Umbrian hill town of Cascia. Moser crashed descending the Chiavano, losing more than five minutes, while up ahead Baronchelli was winning the stage. Battaglin and Prim finished only a few seconds behind him but too far back to get any time bonuses. Saronni lost almost a minute on a day the climbers had taken control of the race.
The General Classification now: 1. Giuseppe Saronni
2. Claudio Bortolotto @ 12 seconds
3. Giambattista Baronchelli @ 31 seconds
4. Alfio Vandi and Silvano Contini @ 49 seconds
6. Giovanni Battaglin @ 50 seconds
7. Tommy Prim @ 1 minute 4 seconds
9. Roberto Visentini @ 1 minute 32 seconds
Knut Knudsen won the stage thirteen time trial in the Tuscan spa town of Montecatini, but the second-place rider who came in a full minute behind Knudsen became the Pink Jersey. Sammontana rider Roberto Visentini had enjoyed a scintillating amateur career before turning pro in 1978. Now he had the maglia rosa by seven seconds over Contini with Prim just 22 seconds behind and Saronni 23 seconds back. La Gazzetta thought Bianchi had the ra
ce firmly in its fist.
Moser blew the race up the next day when it went over the Apennines to another spa town, Salsomaggiore. After being away for 173 kilometers, he soloed across the line more than a minute ahead of the Contini-led chase group containing Prim and Battaglin. Visentini’s group came in twelve seconds later but the remaining time bonuses were long gone, and gone to two of his main threats, Contini and Battaglin. Contini was back in pink with Visentini second, 25 seconds down.
Coming just before the Dolomites, stage seventeen was a transition stage with four rated climbs that broke things up. Prim squeezed out a half-minute from Saronni, Visentini, Contini and Battaglin, putting the Swede within 10 seconds of the Pink Jersey before stage eighteen’s ascents of the Vivione and Tonale.
Instead of losing his lead to the hungry sharks, Contini came in to the finish at Dimaro a half-minute ahead of the other contenders with a second place that also gave him a 20-second time bonus. Contini had nearly a full minute’s breathing room with two more brutal Dolomite stages to go.
The Palade was stage nineteen’s appetizer for the Furcia Pass, where Battaglin successfully attacked. First over the top, he held his lead for the five kilometers into San Vigilio di Marrebe. Saronni and Prim were only 10 seconds behind and Visentini another 7 seconds back. But Contini was getting ragged. He still held the lead, but after losing a minute he was in trouble. Battaglin had closed to within 3 seconds and Prim was just 8 seconds behind.
The race was a virtual tie going into the tappone (a Giro’s hardest stage), a crossing of the Tre Croci and a finish atop the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. Battaglin wasn’t going to mess around with mountains like these; he had his mechanic fit a triple crankset on his Pinarello for the Tre Cime ascent.
The Story of the Giro d'Italia: A Year-by-Year History of the Tour of Italy, Volume 2: 1971-2011 Page 8
