The Tour de France, which ended 25 years ago in Paris, was a memorable one, a memorable one too. The Spaniard Miguel Indurain celebrated the fifth tour victory on the Champs Elysees, it was his last success on the tour. And the Italian Fabio Casartelli fell to his death on the Pyrenees descent of the 18th stage from the Col du Portet d’Aspet, he was not even 25 years old. Triumph and tragedy – these are the two poles between which professional cycling moves.
This 1995 Tour de France, can be seen as a symbol today. As a contemporary painting of a sport that has broken everything but a lot itself. This tour, it took place at a peak of doping unculture. It’s the great time of epo doping, almost everyone took part. And if you use the “almost” in the sentence here, that’s the benevolent perspective.
A glance at the list of results at the time is enough to tell the ominous story of this swamped sport. The overall classification is a single Chronique Scandaleuse, and heroes from that time have meanwhile become perpetrators.
Epo, Epo, Epo
The Swiss landed behind overall winner Indurain Alex Zülle ended up in second place. Zülle, then in the service of the Spanish Once team, later switched to the Festina team, whose name became emblematic of the doping era. In 1998 he was banned for eight months.
The Dane also placed third on the podium Bjarne Riis, a year later the great tour winner. And it wasn’t until a decade later that epo perpetrators were admitted. Which never prevented him from taking on positions of responsibility in cycling. Riis, partner of Jan Ullrich in the Telekom team for many years, is one of those who have never given the impression that they really regret their drug dealing.
Photo: AP
Fourth of the tour was one of France’s heroes at the time, Laurent Jalabert. The doping topic caught up with him in 2013 when “L’Equipe” reported on post-tests from 2004 that proved to him and others that they were taking epos on the 1998 tour. These enormous leaps in the year alone make it clear how difficult it has been to educate cyclists. Jalabert commented on the allegations with the sentence: He could not say that this was wrong. But he also could not say whether this was true.
The Italian was fifth overall Ivan Gotti, two-time winner of the Giro d’Italia. He was later sentenced to five months’ probation for holding doping drugs.
Fuentes with the cool box
The Spaniard came sixth Melchor Mauri in Paris. Mauri was a customer of the Spanish doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, for whom the notorious adjective was introduced into cycling reports. There is a story about Fuentes, among others, that he was seen on a plane in 1991 with a cool box on his knees. When asked what was in it, he is said to have answered that it contained the means to make a Vuelta winner. The 1991 Vuelta was won by Melchor Mauri.
The Spaniard finished seventh in 1995 Fernando Escartin, his name is on the customer list of the doping doctor Michele Ferrari, who later earned his “merits” for the tour success of Lance Armstrong. Before that, Ferrari was mainly concerned with the Swiss Tony Romingerwho finished eighth in 1995. Rominger was one of the top favorites for the tour title that year. SPIEGEL then dedicated a long portrait to him and his relationship with Doctor Ferrari, which managed to deal with the doping issue in a subordinate clause.
Total ninth of the 1995 tour: Richard Virenque, Climbing king, crowd favorite and key figure in the 1998 Festina doping scandal. The Colombian came in tenth Hernan Buenahora, he was also recognized as the most combative professional on the tour. The South American was still able to drive as a professional for 13 years before he was banned from doping for two years in 2008.
Triumph and tragedy
Best young professional in 1995 Marco Pantani, Triumph and tragedy, hardly anybody combines this more. Pantani drove everything in the ground on the queen stage to Alpe d’Huez. Il Elefantino, they loved him in Italy, when he won the tour in 1998, the country was at his feet. A year later, he was taken out of the Giro rating because of a too high hemocrit value, he missed the tour, his contacts with the Italian doping doc Francesco Conconi, a kind of Ferrari teacher, were revealed. In 2004 Pantani was found dead in an overdose of cocaine in the hotel room in Rimini.
The youngster celebrated stage victories in 1995 Lance Armstrong and the Belgian Johan Bruyneel, who later became the team leader responsible for the American’s touring triumphs devalued by doping. The Sprint Kings were the eccentric Mario Cippolini, he was also said to have close ties to Fuentes and Ferrari, and the wild Uzbek Jamolidin Abdushaparov, Banned in 1997 after detection of clenbuterol.
And then of course there was the German team Telekom, still without Riis, still without Ullrich, but with Rolf Aldag as a team captain. Aldag, who attended the Bonn team’s sensational doping confession press conference in 2007, like Sprinter Erik Zabel, like Udo “Torment yourself, you sow” Bölts.
You could still be the captain of the Castorama team, Armand de las Cuevas, mention another tragic figure, a drug-killer who committed suicide in 2018, you could be Italy’s hero Gianni Bugno perform, then captain of MG, sentenced in 1999 for buying and owning amphetamines, you could be the Danish captain of the TVM team, Bo Hamburger, and the Italian leader of Lampre, Maurizio Fondriest, list. The Dane confessed to systematic epo-doping in the nineties in 2007, Fondriest is one of the Conconi customers who were accused of being supplied with epo by the doctor for years, including Italy’s mountain flea Claudio Chiappucci, Second in the 1995 mountain classification. Fondriest and Chiappucci deny this. All of this could not be legally clarified because the trial against Conconi was terminated in 2003 due to formal errors.
And over all of this, Indurain, tour winner 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, was unbeatable in those years, even though he had been on the tour since the mid-1980s and had not achieved any remarkable results for years – but also because he was a helper service for his compatriot Pedro Delgado had to do. Indurain was said to be a lot, but nothing was proven. And so his successes are mainly attributed to his phenomenal lung volume and his sophisticated racing strategy.
As I said, that’s the benevolent perspective.
