In what year did Bono stand atop the winner’s podium at what was a great day for Ireland at the Vuelta a Espana?

The answer is 1962. Bono, Paul Hewson, of U2 fame, was but a 2 year old drawing on the walls in his house in Glasnevin in 1962. But, the Bono who made it on to the winner’s podium of the Vuelta 48 years ago was the little known Italian rider Ernesto Bono who claimed the biggest victory of his career by winning Stage 12 of that year’s race into the city of Logrono. The reason Ireland had cause to celebrate was that Seamus Elliott had retained the Vuelta race leader’s jersey. Elliott would go on to wear the jersey for a total of nine days that year only losing the jersey three stages from the end to eventual winner Rudi Altig of Germany.

Ernesto Bono, winner of a stage in the 1962 Vuelta a Espana.

In that 1962 Vuelta a Espana Seamus Elliott marked a number of milestones for Irish cycling. He won Ireland’s first ever stage of the Vuelta a Espana, he was the first Irishman to lead any of the three Grand Tours and he also finished the race in 3rd place, which meant he was the first Irishman to finish on the podium of a Grand Tour. This Irish presence at the Vuelta, established by Elliott, faded (as did the Irish presence in professional cycling in general) until Seán Kelly arrived on the scene in the late seventies.

Kelly won the race overall in 1988 taking the leader’s jersey from the Spaniard Anselmo Fuerte in the final time trial. But Kelly’s success at the Vuelta spanned much further than the year of his overall success. In total, Kelly won 16 stages of the Vuelta, the 5th highest tally of any rider, winning the points classification four times along the way, a record shared with Laurent Jalabert that still stands. Kelly is one of six riders who have won two Grand Tour points jerseys in the one year, the others are Rudi Altig (in that 1962 race), Jan Janssen, Eddy Merckx, Djamolidin Abdoujaparov and Laurent Jalabert. Kelly is also the only man to have won the points jersey four times in two of the Grand Tours, as he also won the Tour de France green jersey four times.

Kelly would have won the Vuelta in 1987 too if it weren’t for a saddle boil which forced him out of the race with three stages to go, whilst wearing the leader’s jersey. This would have led to the remarkable feat of Irish riders winning all three of cycling’s Grand Tours in 1987, as Stephen Roche went on to win the Giro and the Tour that year. Alas, it wasn’t to be, however, because the Vuelta took place in April back then, Kelly’s Vuelta victory the following year ensured Irish riders were indeed the reigning champions of all three Grand Tours.

Seán Kelly en route to taking over the leader's jersey in the 1988 Vuelta

Roche for his part, never focused on the Vuelta a Espana, usually preferring to ride the Giro d’Italia if a 2nd Grand Tour was in his race plans for the year. He only rode the Spanish Grand Tour once towards the end of his career in 1992 where he to took a top 20 placing by finishing 14th. Martin Earley finished the Vuelta twice during his career, also taking a top 20 place when he finished 19th whilst riding in support of his victorious team mate Seán Kelly in 1988.

Again, the Irish presence at the Vuelta was put on hiatus for a number of years until the current crop of Irish riders emerged. Dan Martin, Nicolas Roche and Philip Deignan have all completed the Vuelta at least once. The most successful of which has of course been Deignan who brilliantly won a stage and finished 9th in the 2009 edition. The year previous, in 2008, Roche also managed a fantastic 13th place overall in what was only his 2nd ever Grand Tour.

Roche and Deignan are currently competing at this year’s Vuelta. Deignan is recovering from an injury stricken season and is riding in support of his team leader Carlos Sastre. With the break up of team Cervelo, Deignan now finds himself without a team for next year and he will be hoping to prove his worth as a valuable team mate for the remainder of this year’s race in order to impress potential suitors. Roche on the other hand has been handed the leadership role of his AG2R team. So far, he has not shied away from the responsibility. Before the mountainous eighth stage he lies in 11th place on G.C. less than a minute behind race leader Philippe Gilbert.

While Roche is putting in a great performance he still finds himself in that G.C. purgatory of not being quite capable of pushing for a podium place, but also considered too much of a threat to be allowed up the road to battle for a stage win. Today will be a true test of his form and a gauge of his ability to challenge for the podium or even the top 10. Come this evening, if he has slipped down the G.C., I feel he should allow himself slip a little further. In two weeks time, would he prefer a 15th place on G.C. or a 45th place along with a stage win? His recent comments about his frustrations about his lack of wins in his career so far suggest he would prefer the latter, as would most Irish cycling fans I would imagine!

The recent death of Laurent Fignon has come as a blow to the whole cycling community. I have only recently finished reading his autobiography which was hugely entertaining, but scarcely revealing. The entire book is a narrative of his cycling career with barely a whisper of his personal life and relationships. From the many obituaries I have read it seems that he was indeed a thoroughly private man, but an animal of a competitor. As Jean-Marie Leblanc described him “Fignon was the precursor of the modern champions with…panache and impertinence”. He’ll be sorely missed.

There is no escaping the infamy of the eight seconds by which Fignon lost the Tour de France to Greg LeMond in 1989. But if I was to ask you, which is the smallest ever overall winning margin in any of the three Grand Tours? The answer, surprisingly is not eight seconds in the 1989 Tour de France, it is six seconds in the 1984 Vuelta a Espana, when the Frenchman Eric Caritoux beat the Spaniard Alberto Fernández by the slenderest of margins. Fernández entered the final time trial in the 1984 Vuelta with a 32 second deficit to make up on Caritoux over 33 kilometres. LeMond’s task was twice as difficult with only 25 kilometres to make up 50 seconds. The ‘real’ Bono once said ’sometimes you can’t make it on your own’. Fernández as it turned out, couldn’t. Unfortunately for Fignon, LeMond could. However, influenced by the cover of his own book, I for one will choose not to remember Fignon as the rider who lost the Tour by eight seconds, but as the rider who won the Tour twice.

Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond during the 1989 Tour de France

Luxembourg only have five riders currently racing on Pro Tour teams. Of these five, three of them are among the best in the world, Andy Schleck, Frank Schleck and Kim Kirchen. They have each won one of cycling’s classics, they have each won a stage of the Tour de France and they have each worn the yellow jersey. The fact that they have managed to produce such riders is made all the more remarkable due to the fact that the country has a population of  only half a million people with a land mass comparable to that of County Meath.

Frank Schleck had the misfortune of crashing out on the cobbled Stage 3 of this year’s Tour and has recently released a picture of his devastated shoulder. One of Kim Kirchen’s major goals for the year was to be the Tour de France, but he was unable to take part for a very sobering reason. He suffered a heart attack on the 18th June and as a result was placed in an induced coma. He was released from hospital last week and it is not clear when or if Kirchen will return to professional cycling. This leaves Andy Schleck as the sole representative of Luxembourg in this year’s Tour de France which he is hoping to win. He is currently the leader of the race and should he wear the yellow jersey all the way to Paris he will become the 4th Luxembourg rider to do so after François Faber (1909), Nicolas Frantz (1927,1928) and most recently Charly Gaul (1958). It is a very rich Tour history for such a small nation.

As a small country on the outskirts of the cycling stronghold of mainland Europe, Ireland can be equally as proud of its own history in the Tour de France. Only eight Irish riders have ridden the Tour in the past, but half of whom have won a stage in the race. Ireland’s first ever Tour competitor was Séamus Elliott in 1956, a race which he did not finish. However he was to return again in 1958 when he took 48th overall bagging five top 10 stage placings along the way, including a 2nd place finish behind the Dutch rider Gerrit Voorting. Elliott went on to take part in six Tours de France altogether, finishing three of them. His career defining moment came in the 1963 Tour when he won the 3rd Stage which finished in Roubaix. By winning the stage he also took over the race leader’s yellow jersey, becoming only the second rider outside of mainland Europe to do so, after the British Tom Simpson had achieved the feat the year before. Elliott went on that year to help his team mate Jacques Anquetil win his 4th Tour de France.

After Seamus Elliott rode his last Tour in 1964 there was a gap of 14 years before another Irishman entered the race. This was the formidable Sean Kelly who burst on to the scene in 1978 by winning a stage in his first Tour de France. Kelly was best known for his classics victories but he also had an immense record in the Tour. He finished the race in 7th place in 1983, 5th in 1984 and 4th in 1985. He also won five stages of the Tour, surprisingly his last came as far back as 1982.

But five stage wins doesn’t adequately illustrate the prominence with which Kelly presented himself at the Tour. He finished in the top 10 of a Tour stage on more than 100 occasions. In 1985 he finished 2nd on an agonising five stages, and finished 3rd on a further four. In 1984 he racked up a remarkable 16 top 10 placings and yet unbelievably he was pipped for the Green Jersey competition on the final day by the Belgian Frank Hoste.

However he did win the Green Jersey as the winner of the points classification four times, which was a Tour record until Erik Zabel went one better in 2000. He also won the intermediate sprints competition on a record three occasions. A record which is likely to stand forever as this contest was rendered defunct after 1989. In 1983 he wore the yellow jersey for one day. A day which he claims to be one of the proudest of his career despite the fact he suffered terribly over the Pyreneean climbs of the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde.

Sean Kelly sparked off a golden era for Irish cycling. For the ten years between 1983 and 1992, Ireland had at least two riders competing in every Tour de France. One of the riders present in all but one of these years was of course Stephen Roche. The man from Dublin won the Tour in 1987 beating off the challenge of Pedro Delgado and Jean-François Bernard. He also finished on the podium in 1985 only four and a half minutes behind the winner Bernard Hinault and less than three minutes behind second placed Greg LeMond. He won four individual stages over the years, along with a team time trial win in his triumphant Tour in 1987. His last stage win, and Ireland’s last, came 18 years ago in 1992. Roche also finished in 9th place overall that year.

Throughout these wonderful years for Kelly and Roche, three other Irishmen also rode in the Tour de France. The most successful was undoubtedly the bespectacled Martin Earley who, whilst riding for Sean Kelly’s PDM team in 1989 became the fourth man from Ireland to win a stage in the Tour. The pair of them also helped PDM win the team classification that year. In total Earley rode eight Tours de France, finishing five of them. Paul Kimmage, now a famous journalist rode the Tour in 1986, 1987 and 1989. He finished the race at his first attempt taking two top 10 stage placings along the way.

In 1991, Stephen Roche started the Tour with his brother Lawrence in his team alongside him. Kelly and Earley also started the Tour that year. Of the four, Lawrence Roche was the only one of them to make it to Paris. After Stephen Roche rode his last Tour de France in 1993 there was another lull in terms of an Irish presence in the race. It wasn’t until 2003 that national interest returned when former Junior World Champion Mark Scanlon took to the startline for the French AG2R team. He finished in a creditable 89th place.

Then last year the third Roche to ride the Tour, Nicolas, revived the Irish presence in the race once again. He rode strongly throughout, defending the yellow jersey of his team mate Rinaldo Nocentini for over a week and he even took 2nd place on the stage to Besançon. Despite not riding specifically for the G.C. he finished his first Tour de France in an impressive 23rd position. This year however, Roche has expressed his desire to put in a strong G.C. performance. Until the race reached the high mountains, Roche had maneuvered himself into 8th place overall. A couple of tough days in the Alps saw him drop to 17th place, but a cheeky breakaway toward the end of Stage 10 allowed him to claw back over a minute and he moved up again in the G.C.

It would have been marvelous to have had Roche, Deignan and Martin all competing in the Tour this July. But Roche, like Andy Schleck, is doing a fine job of flying the flag solo for a country which has had a vast influence on this grandest of Grand Tours. He currently sits in 13th place overall, the same position his father finished in his last Tour 17 years ago. If he was to stay in 13th until Paris he will have achieved his goal of a top 15 place and he will have written another line in the proud history of Irish riders in the Tour de France.

The Vuelta a España will be coming to a close in Madrid this Sunday. All going well, there will be two Irish riders completing the race with Dan Martin  finishing his first ever Grand Tour. There is also Philip Deignan, who fantastically for him, and for Ireland, won today’s 18th stage of the Vuelta.

Philip Deignan celebrating the biggest victory of his career to date and Ireland's first Grand Tour stage win for 17 years.

That’s the first Grand Tour stage win by an Irishman since 1992 when Stephen Roche won a stage in the Tour de France, and the first stage win in the Vuelta since 1988 when Seán Kelly took two stage victories. Deignan will now be completing his fourth Grand Tour having previously ridden two editions of the Giro d’Italia and one other edition of the Vuelta. Deignan, after today’s brilliant ride, currently lies in an excellent 9th place.

Undoubtedly, things are looking up for Irish cycling. Three Irish riders will have completed a Grand Tour this year. Along with Deignan and Martin at the Vuelta, Nicolas Roche finished an excellent 23rd place at the Tour de France. Deignan also completed the Giro back in May.

Three Irish riders finishing a Grand Tour in one year hasn’t happened since 1992 when Seán Kelly, Stephen Roche and Martin Earley all finished the Tour de France. It’s even further back in 1987 that Irish cyclists between them finished all three Grand Tours in one year. That year, Martin Earley took 22nd place at the Vuelta while Roche won both the Giro and the Tour during that magical year of his. Ireland would have completed a clean sweep of the Grand Tours that year had Seán Kelly not been forced to abandon the Vuelta while leading the race with three stages left to race.

It was 1992 when my interest in professional cycling began. Unfortunately for me, the three prominent Irish cyclists of that era were all coming to the end of their careers. I would never know what it felt like to experience Roche out-classing Delgado in the Tour in ‘87, or to watch Kelly showing his hard-man strength time after time in the spring classics. It was my Dad who got me into cycling. He had become a huge fan of the sport during the domination of Roche and Kelly, when the two of them won every major race between them (except the Tour of Flanders).

But it wasn’t until 1992 that my Dad’s enthusiasm passed on to me. At which time the evidence for the Irish infiltration of the sport was sadly waning. The only clues I had indicating this Irish presence were my Dad’s old Winning magazines and a pile of old VHS tapes of various Nissan Classics and Tour de France highlights taped off Channel 4. I still have those VHS tapes, I watched them so often back then that I know the commentary of Phil Liggett on most of them off by heart.

Since Kelly finally retired in 1994, there has been an unquestionable lull in the participation of Irish cyclists at the top of the sport. There have been notable exceptions such as Ciarán Power who rode for the ill-fated Linda McCartney team at the Giro in 2000. Also, no overview of Irish professional cyclists would be complete without mentioning the wasted talent of former  World Junior Road Race Champion Mark Scanlon, who finished 89th in the 2004 Tour de France.

With Deignan’s Vuelta stage victory today, Irish cycling is certainly on the up, and we finally have a new trio that we can be proud of. Perhaps over the next few years I’ll finally experience the excitement I narrowly missed out on in the 80’s when Irish cyclists were a real force to be reckoned with in world cycling.