Arnaud says that the team had developed noticeably in his absence, but more in terms of results than infrastructure or finance. ‘Reynolds still had a medium-sized budget in 1986, smaller than PDM and La Vie Claire. There was nothing fancy, but we still had everything we needed. Reynolds made me an offer so they could have a more structured squad in the Grand Tours, something I knew about from two perspectives. I’d been with one French team, La Vie Claire, where everything was built around one leader, but also with Wolber, which was much less well-organised.’
Once the Mallorca training camps were completed, Arnaud’s relationship with Indurain deepened both personally and professionally, with the Frenchman, as Reynolds’ newly incorporated capitaine de route, developing Indurain’s capabilities as a team worker. ‘I taught him a lot of what he knew, he was one of the best domestiques I’ve ever had,’ Arnaud recalls. ‘Quick to learn, and he’d do whatever he was told.’ Indeed, there was even one point where Arnaud says Indurain’s strength was such that it all but backfired on him – in his team-mates’ eyes at least: ‘The first time I came across Miguel directly was in Mallorca, in the Reynolds training camps, and we’d be doing series work in the training rides. And nobody wanted to train with Miguel because he was so strong naturally, we knew he’d show us up!’
Even before that, whilst he was with Hinault at La Vie Claire, Arnaud knew of, and was wary of, Indurain’s strength. ‘La Vie Claire once did the Tour des Midi-Pyrénées, as the Route du Sud is now called. And I remember this great big hulk of a rider who went off on a break on one of the early stages, and we didn’t see him again. We chased and chased and chased and finally we brought him back, right at the finish. It took us all day to get him. That was Miguel.’
Once the relationship grew closer, Arnaud was impressed for another reason: Indurain’s unflappability. ‘I met him as a professional and he was twenty-one and he was pretty quiet then, that was just his nature. He was always very calm, even if he did his job a bloque [full on]. The word that sums him up for me is that of tranquilo. If there were really big problems – tranquilo. If they could be solved – tranquilo. And if they couldn’t – the same. Perpetually.’
Indurain’s first overall stage race success came very early in 1986 in an event where time trialling, rather than climbing, was a key factor, and where once again his habit of building strong early-season form was an advantage. In that year’s Vuelta a Murcia, a five-day stage race in March in south-east Spain, the most serious climb was a steady, but unchallenging, three-kilometre grind up the Cresta del Gallo. Indurain, in the lead since winning the prologue time trial, was more than able to see off his main challenger, Pello Ruiz Cabestany, and lay the foundations for his first professional stage race win by a handful of seconds.
What arguably represented a greater danger was that the entire event could have disintegrated on the last day. The last stage should have consisted of 30 laps of a city centre circuit followed by a single ascent of the Cresta del Gallo climb. But that plan was jettisoned when the riders began a go-slow protest over safety following a bad crash the day before involving Indurain’s team-mate, Marc Gomez.
On the first lap two more crashes saw the peloton grind to a complete, brief halt and not even the temptation of a 20,000-peseta prime on each second lap could induce them to move at anything more than a snail’s pace. After 20 laps (ten of the original 30 were cut out in order to avoid too much of a delay) when the peloton moved off towards the Cresta del Gallo, race organiser Alfonso Guzman reportedly used the PA system on the winner’s podium to inform the public who was to blame. ‘They are doing this because I paid them a million pesetas in advance, next year I will have no professionals in the race’ and, ‘This is an insult to the people of Murcia’ were apparently some of the kinder phrases he used. ‘If anybody from the peloton had actually heard him, then the race would have been over straight away,’ claimed one local newspaper report. As it was, they didn’t – and Indurain’s first stage race win in Spain was in the bag.
That Spaniards made up nine out of ten of the top places overall and the tenth, Roland Leclerc, also rode for a Spanish team, Orbea, is one indication that Murcia was not a major competition. But even so, for a second-year professional, this represented yet another step in the right direction.
Indurain’s strong run of early time trialling success meant he was a firm favourite for the opening stage of the Vuelta a España in April, which started with a 5.5 kilometre prologue on Palma de Mallorca seafront. In the event, Indurain ran third, and his pre-race hopes that the jersey would then fall his way like in 1985 – ‘I can hold it all the way to Asturias,’ he had predicted – were dashed when team-mate Marc Gomez seized the lead with a long break on stage one. After that, Indurain’s duties were that of team worker, although a sixth place in the final time trial on the last day of the race in Jerez de la Frontera was another solid indication that he might have the physique for handling a three-week stage race.
Without any illness to trouble him in the Tour de France, Indurain was more than capable of handling Echavarri’s plan that he race up to eleven stages, the race’s half-way point, before making a planned abandon. As well as finishing just ten seconds off the pace in the opening prologue – a considerable improvement compared to the sixty-one lost to Bernard Hinault in 1985 – Indurain also made it into two breakaways in three days. Neither of the moves would have any long-term impact on the overall, and in neither case did Indurain realistically have any chance of winning. But for a second-year professional, this was not the point. Rather Indurain’s interest was in testing his limits on the hilly and flat terrain of the first week. His battles in the mountains would come later.
In the first test of strength on stage five, Indurain was involved in a two-rider counter-attack behind eventual stage winner Johan Van der Velde. Given that Indurain was shadowed by Eddy Planckaert, a ferociously talented Classics rider, he had little chance of success, and duly finished fourth.
As the Tour crossed Normandy, Indurain’s attack in a twelve-rider break on stage seven to Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët was a much more serious effort. ‘I started the move on a series of little climbs, then a big group led by [stage winner] Ludo Peeters made it across, but to tell the truth I didn’t mind, it was easier to get to the finish,’ he said afterwards. ‘Looking ahead I don’t know if it’ll be easier or harder to go for the win because I don’t know my level yet. What I do know is that Echavarri has given me the green light to go for flat stages in this first week.’ Indurain also had carte blanche to race hard in the first week’s time trial, a 61-kilometre effort, and finished an equally promising thirteenth.
These performances were all encouraging signs of growth, rather than concrete proof. However, Indurain provided the confirmation of his progress in the Tour of the CEE, which despite all the changes, remained a real showcase race for the up-and-coming generation and a hugely prestigious one: what other event, for example, at this level would have European Commission President Jacques Delors as the guest of honour at its first stage? ‘We’re here to show a united Europe,’ Delors claimed, as the riders prepared to rattle across five kilometres of heavily cobbled streets in central Oporto.
Indurain, as was almost to be expected given his track record throughout the season, won the prologue, although his margin, of over eleven seconds, on the second-placed rider was strikingly large – given that the next twenty riders were all timed within a ten-second band. It was a hugely promising start, but events two days later showed just how difficult controlling a 138-rider peloton with teams of six would be.
On stage two across the flatlands of western Spain, America’s Roy Knickman, already a multiple junior US national champion and a team-mate of Bernard Hinault´s in La Vie Claire, charged off the front. For all he was shadowed by Indurain’s team-mate Enrique Carrera and a large bandage beneath his right knee revealed he was injured, Knickman built up a lead of nearly twelve minutes. By the time he roared past the archways of Salamanca’s cen
tral avenue, the American was still eight minutes ahead. Overall, Indurain slumped to fifth, with a 7–40 disadvantage. It was a time gap in Knickman’s favour that looked more than definitive.
Although Indurain battled hard to get on equal terms – he placed second in one bunch sprint stage, in Vitoria, and led in a chase group behind some breakaways at Valladolid – Knickman initially proved more than his match. For all their prowess in the team time trial of 1985, Reynolds, whilst third in the 26.5 kilometre race against the clock in Valladolid on stage four, only regained twenty-two seconds on La Vie Claire. This minimal advantage was then knocked back by Knickman in Pamplona, when he snatched twenty seconds back on Indurain, in a day of wind and echelons – on home soil, to boot.
Albeit wihout gapping the peloton, a second place in a sprint at Pau in France showed Indurain was far from throwing in the towel, though, and on a stage finishing at Luz Ardiden, the tide began to turn in his favour. On a day of tremendously poor weather and featuring three major Pyrenean climbs, Knickman started to struggle. The American dropped back even before the race had reached the Aubisque and Col du Soulor. On the final ascent of the day, Indurain made one of his grinding, low-gear attacks, first passing Norwegian rival Janus Kuum but in turn getting overtaken by another breakaway challenger, Spain’s Laudelino Cubino. Behind, Knickman was receiving some timely support from fellow-American Guido Winterberg, but suffering from a severe stomach upset, was barely able to hold his wheel. Finally, Knickman lost nearly two minutes to Indurain, whose fourth place allowed the Spaniard to soar up the overall rankings to second.
Knickman’s advantage of 5–25 on his Spanish rival should have been sufficient, had he recovered. Instead, Indurain delivered a near knock-out blow in the race’s only long individual time trial, held at Carpentras on a day of baking heat. The Spaniard had no need for the aero-helmet Knickman used, or even the encouragement yelled at him by Unzué from the following car: on a rolling 27.4 kilometre course, Indurain had two minutes’ advantage on the American by the mid-way time check. By the finish, Indurain’s advantage for the stage win over his nearest rival Esnault was up to twenty-three seconds, and Knickman, although still in yellow, was now out of the top twenty on the stage. Plainly, he remained in trouble, whilst Indurain, now wearing the green of points competition leader, was at a little more than three minutes overall.
The next stage was a brutally hilly affair over the Mévouillon and L’Espreaux on relentlessly rough roads. Knickman was dropped as soon as the first climb. Waving a team-mate ahead and constantly staring at his handlebars, within an hour’s racing he was six minutes back. As Reynolds upped the pace on the front of the pack, after a second hour the gap had yawned to twenty minutes. Taking off his jersey and sweating heavily, the American got into his director’s car, defeated. By default but also thanks to his tenacity, all Indurain had to do was complete the stage to take over in yellow.
With a three-minute deficit for Indurain behind Knickmann suddenly switching to a 1–05 advantage over Esnault at the top of the GC classification, the Navarran was nonetheless anything but boastful of his first stage race lead outside Spain. He refused to raise his arms when he donned the jersey and only waved once at the crowd, out of respect for his vanquished American rival.
Nor, despite there only being three stages remaining, was Indurain anywhere near home and dry. On a treacherously short 110-kilometre stage from Gap to Briançon over the Izoard, Indurain began to struggle on the Alpine climb and was dropped by his closest GC pursuer, Esnault. Driving along behind, Indurain managed to limit the gap over the summit and turned in a majestic descent, tackling the downhill curves with an ability that few others of his age could match at the time. When he caught the Frenchman, he shot past as if to show him who was boss. The Spaniard lost six seconds on the final ascent to Briançon’s citadel, but with only one very short straightforward Alpine stage remaining before the final descent into Turin, outright victory was looking increasingly probable.
Unzué later argued that on that stage, the Izoard represented the first major mountain challenge of Indurain’s career where he had to defend a lead in a top international event on the climbs. The conclusions he came to were, to say the least, vital for Indurain’s future. ‘We talked to the Colombians,’ Unzué once recounted, ‘and asked them if Abelardo Rondón would lend Indurain a hand by pacing him on the climb and Indurain was able to limit the gaps on his top rivals. That was the day that I realised that at some point in the future, he would be able to battle for a Tour de France. We already knew he had it in him to do OK on the very hilly stages, but the Izoard – that was another league altogether. Getting through that without having a fully honed body, without lowering his weight, that was really important. It was like laying the first of the foundations for everything that came later.’
The last, even shorter, mountain stage consisted of a single ascent to a climb that would figure large in Indurain’s career – Sestriere in Italy. Indurain lost a further sixteen seconds to Esnault, but overall his time margin contained the bones of a minute. The final stage, a long grind out of the Alps and down long, steady descents towards Turin, held few real challenges. Four Reynolds riders controlled the peloton and for Indurain, all that remained was to make sure he stayed upright.
Finishing forty-seven seconds clear of Esnault, Indurain secured the first victory for Spain in twenty-one years – and a convincing one in terms of his future. Without Knickmann’s illness, there might well have been a different result and overall winner in Turin. But regardlesss of such speculation, in the long term, the implications of such a solid, tenacious performance by Indurain were enormous. Despite the huge time losses of the first week, he had not become demoralised, but instead had chipped away at Knickman’s advantage. That he won both the points competition and the ‘combination’ classification was indicative of Indurain’s tremendous consistency in an event which, in terms of difficulty, rivals and endurance levels, was very much at the upper limit of what a young professional could be reasonably expected to achieve. Most important of all, though, was how he had managed to defend his lead in the mountains, in what would become a carbon copy of his success in the Tour in later years. In all those senses, Indurain’s actual result – although it could not be bettered – was the least important element of the race.
The signs that Indurain was tipped for future greatness could hardly have been clearer as, grinning broadly, he tucked into a cake shaped like the European flag that night in Turin with his team-mates. ‘It was where I said, for the first time, that Miguel could win a Tour before he won a Vuelta,’ says Unzué. ‘It was partly because of the Alpine climbs which suited his style better, plus as a young rider his knees used to suffer a lot in the cold and wet, which was typical April weather. Finally his hay fever meant that there’d be limits at that time of year to how fast he could go. That’s why, for example, he could never do a good Vuelta al País Vasco, apart from it having those short, punchy hills which didn’t suit him.’
‘You could see it coming all the way from juniors, it wasn’t a sudden explosion,’ insists Juan Carlos González Salvador. ‘There were hints all the way from when he was my lead out man in the amateurs and he used to go so hard in the bunch sprints I could barely follow him. It got to the point that we’d drop the entire field. I’d win, he’d be a second behind and the bunch would be at three.’
Given Unzué’s comments about the Izoard, did Unzué and Echavarri know, at that point, that they had a future great in their ranks? Juan Carlos González Salvador is convinced they did. ‘They were very Navarran about it all, very conservative, very much “let’s keep him under wraps and make sure we don’t ruin him, not take any risks”. They would be beating around the bush a bit, approach it all from sideways on – Miguel or any subject. I remember when Eusebio came to sign me, he was so indirect about it all, I felt like telling him “Hey, it’s me, for goodness sake, what do you need, my identity card?”’
In keeping with the stron
g influence of the Catholic religion in Navarre, González Salvador describes their ultra-softly-softly approach as ‘very priest-like … you felt like saying, for Pete’s sake, Miguel’s [going to be] the best rider Spain has ever known. Can’t you see he’s God?’
CHAPTER 4
Invisible Robocop
Miguel Indurain’s time as a professional started with two-and-a-bit seasons of spectacularly promising success in the 1985 Vuelta a España and 1986 Tour de la CEE, as well as some more minor triumphs. In fact the Tour de la CEE was, together with a stage win for Julián Gorospe in the Tour and the Vuelta King of the Mountains prize for José Luis Laguía, one of the high points for Reynolds that year.
But for all this early promise, it wasn’t until the spring of 1989 that Indurain’s future as a contender, if not a winner, in top events became increasingly clear. In the years in between, it was as if Indurain’s career went into a period of suspended animation. Above all there was a lack of clear direction, a sense that although Indurain was talented enough to go in various directions, he was not actually moving forwards in any of them.
Unzué had already discussed Indurain’s potential for Grand Tours becoming clear on the Izoard in the Tour de la CEE. But what Indurain had achieved in the Vuelta prologue and flatter stages, not to mention his physique, hinted instead at a career as a rouleur or perhaps a top-level time triallist, particularly for shorter races against the clock where his technical ability could prove a great advantage. Then there was the option of developing him on the track in events like the Six Days of Madrid, which he raced in the winter of 1986, alongside Danny Clarke, one of the most experienced track racers of the era. José Miguel Echavarri would later recall that in 1984, even before Indurain had turned pro, he and Unzué, inspired by Francesco Moser’s recent Hour Record bid, had discussed the idea of Indurain tackling the same challenge.
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