After telling his story arrival at Team Corratec, with Fabiana Luperini we deviated a bit from the discussionFresh from themeeting with Marta Cavalli and his desire to return to the Tour to resume the discussion interrupted by the fall, The much talk about the Tourmalet in the Boucle route has reminded us that it will not be the first time. And we asked ourselves why the emphasis is being placed (rightly) on Tour Femmes, but forgetting the champions who made it great in the past. The women's Tour, in short, existed even before Christian Prudhomme and Marion Rousse. And on the Tourmalet Fabiana also won.
«I climbed it twice – smiles the Tuscan – and I won both times. In 1995 in La Mongie, the following year on the opposite sideThe first time wearing the yellow jersey, in the blizzard. I remember seeing the finish line only in the last 10 meters. And then I won there again in 1996. I had the tricolor shirt and I think I took the yellow one».
What do you remember about the Tourmalet?
It's a climb challenging because it's long. Then I remember that it's annoying anyway because you can find a storm there, as well as terrible heatI remember it was pouring with rain that time. The next time, we almost sank into the asphalt, it was so hot. It certainly doesn't have the slopes that the Alps can have., the Mortirolo, in short, our legendary climbs. But the French ones are long climbs...
Was the Tour harder than the Giro?
Sure when I did it, it was much more challenging than the Giro d'Italia, also because in that period the legendary climbs that exist in Italy, like the Mortirolo, weren't being done. We once did the Zoncolan, but we didn't get to the top: the last 2-3 kilometers were missing, which are the most challenging. For example, I have never done the Stelvio, one year I did the Pordoi, but I never did any other important climbs. Instead, at the Tour de France they all did it: in two weeks both the Pyrenees and the Alps were covered.
In fact, it was a longer Tour than the current one which has 8 stages, right?
Eight days, but what climbs did they do? Ours was hard also because of the transfers, because we doing both the Alps and the Pyrenees, we had two weeks of runningAfter the stage there was always a 3-4 hour drive. It was getting hard even from that, because It's not like you arrived at the place you left from the next dayIn short, to do the Pyrenees and the Alps, you necessarily had to make long transfers. I remember sometimes we would arrive in the evening between nine and ten. Then, since I had the anti-doping test and all the formalities, I was arriving later and later and so it became a demanding race.
Do you think they will gradually increase the difficulty of the new Tour?
Van Vleuten is good. He won the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta, but if you add together the days of the Vuelta and the Tour, maybe you make the Giro of one timeI think the Vuelta was 5 days, the Tour 8. And this year too, what climbs did they do in the Tour? They'll definitely get there. And after the Tourmalet, they'll return to Luz Ardiden or Alpe d'Huez like we used to do.. Or the Madeleine, the Glandon. In the stage that I won with 8 minutes on Longo, we did the Glandon and the Madeleine with the finish in VaujanyOf the 111 kilometers of the stage, I think there were 60 or more of them climbing.
Was the Sanson of your third Tour comparable to a WorldTour team today?
It certainly had a great team and I always trained hard. The 1997 Tour du France was the first one we rode in the club jersey., after the previous two years with Broccardo's national team. At the third Tour, Marino Amadori guided me.. And if you look at the opening photo, it was Sanson with Valeria and Alessandra Cappellotto, Roberta Bonanomi and Nada Cristofoli. Truly a squadron…
