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

Two things I learned in the past week:

1. In Utrecht, cycling is an absolute pleasure.
2. In Dublin, cycling is an absolute battle.

Prior to this week, Dublin has been the only city in which I have had the experience of cycling and having now had the pleasure of cycling in Utrecht, it is clear that Dublin is a complete disaster in comparison. While Utrecht has an infrastructure of proper two-way, unbroken cycle lanes with their own traffic light system, Dublin city council deem it sufficient to paint a red stripe on the side of roads, the refurbishment of which, apparently cost the government €800,000 last year. This is embarrassing. The cycle lanes in Dublin are just plain dangerous in plenty of places and are a result of irresponsible and uninformed planning. There is a Flickr account dedicated to documenting the appalling Irish cycle lanes, some of the photos up there are really quite disturbing.

Cycling around Utrecht, here was a photo op in front of the Dutchest scene I could find.

So having been off the radar in Utrecht for the past while (where I delivered a paper concerning Irish Traditional Music at the ISMIR conference, here’s a link to the paper if anybody is interested), I haven’t really had the chance to comment on Daniel Martin’s fine win in the Tour of Poland. It’s the biggest win of his career so far by some distance, his best result previously had been a win in the Route du Sud, a 2.1 category French stage race. But the Tour of Poland is a Pro Tour race, and is now, although hasn’t always been, far more prestigious than the Route du Sud. Former winners of the Tour of Poland include Jens Voigt, Kim Kirchen and former World Road Race Champions Alessandro Ballan, Laurent Brochard and Maurizio Fondriest.

Martin came close to winning a Pro Tour stage race last year in the Volta a Catalunya where he finished in 2nd place overall. On that occasion he was only beaten by the now suspended Alejandro Valverde. When the Spaniard’s suspension was finalised recently for his involvement in Operacion Puerto, it was decided that he would be allowed to keep all his results which were obtained before 1st January 2010, which meant sadly, that Martin remains in 2nd place in the 2009 Volta a Catalunya. His victory in the 2010 Tour of Poland is the first victory for an Irishman in a top level stage race since his uncle Stephen Roche won the 1991 Criterium International. It is also the first Irish victory in a national Tour since Seán Kelly won the 1990 Tour de Suisse.

Martin will not be racing the Vuelta a Espana which starts at the end of this month, instead his program will be focused on the remaining classic races of the season. He will be targetting the GP Ouest-France (where he finished 5th last year), and the Tour of Lombardy (where he finished 8th last year).

But fear not, for there will be an Irish presence at the third Grand Tour of the year. Nicolas Roche will be aiming to carry his great form in the Tour de France through to September. Roche last rode the Vuelta in 2008 where he narrowly missed out on a stage win, coming off second best in a two man sprint against Imanol Erviti. Roche went on to take 13th place overall in what was then only his second Grand Tour. Since then, Roche has ridden and finished two Tours de France. He is getting stronger and stronger, and if he has managed his training and form well, he could well be in contention for a stage win and another solid G.C. performance.

Roche may be joined in Spain by Philip Deignan who has made it on to Cervelo’s eleven man shortlist, from which nine riders will be picked for the race. Last year Deignan famously won Stage 18 of the Vuelta powering away from Roman Kreuziger in Avila. The 10 minutes that Deignan was allowed to gain on that stage moved him up from 18th up to 9th on the G.C., a position he would defend all the way to Madrid. This year, Deignan will be riding the Vuelta for the third time having also ridden and finished the race in 2007 when he took 71st overall. In fact, the Irish trio of Deignan, Roche and Martin have now ridden ten Grand Tours between them, and an each of those occasions they have all finished the race. Roche and Deignan, both a couple of years older than Martin, have both ridden four Grand Tours, but unusually this year’s Vuelta will be the first one that they have both ridden together.

The lineup for the Vuelta in general seems very strong. A large reason for this is the presence of the Schleck brothers who have announced they will be riding with the goal of overall victory for Frank. Their presence here is due to the fact that Frank crashed out of the Tour, otherwise the pair probably would not have signed up. In addition to the two Luxembourg riders, also expected on the startline on August 28th are former Grand Tour winners Carlos Sastre, who will be riding his third Grand Tour of the year, and Denis Menchov. With a former Tour winner in Sastre and the Giro and Vuelta previously won by Menchov, there will be previous winners of all three Grand Tours present in this year’s Vuelta. This has only occurred twice in the last 10 years. In 2007, Damiano Cunego (Giro 2004), Oscar Periero (Tour 2006) and Denis Menchov (Vuelta 2005) were all present, and in 2001, Marco Pantani (Tour & Giro 1998) and Roberto Heras (Vuelta 2000) were both there for the Vuelta.

There are plenty of other riders who are set to participate in this year’s race who have performed well  in the Vuelta before and will add plenty of intrigue to the fight for the overall. Egoi Martinez finished 9th in 2008 and won the King of the Mountains crown in 2006. Recent Tour stage winner Joaquim Rodriguez finished 6th in 2008 and 7th last year. Ezequiel Mosquera has finished in the top five in each of the past three years. Andrey Kashechkin will be something of unknown quantity as he returns from suspension and will ride for Lampre. He hasn’t raced since 2007 but he’s still only 30 and the last time he rode the Vuelta he won a stage on the way to finishing 3rd while helping his team mate and compatriot Alexander Vinokourov to the overall victory. There will also be the Liquigas pair of Roman Kreuziger, who has finished in the top 10 of the Tour in the past two years, and Vincenzo Nibai, podium finisher at this year’s Giro.

But it’s not all about the G.C. men. The fact that the World Road Race Circuit is considered sprinter-friendly this year means there are many speed merchants looking to hone their form at the Vuelta in the hopes of landing a rainbow jersey later on. The sprinting heavyweights Thor Hushovd, Tyler Farrar, Alessandro Petacchi, Daniele Bennati, Oscar Freire and Mark Cavendish should all be battling it out for stage wins although it remains to be seen how many will go on to complete the three weeks. Sadly, rider’s who are targetting the Worlds usually call it a day at the Vuelta before the third week. But, the fact that it is a relatively flat Worlds course, means the G.C. men should see the race out till the end. In addition, this could see the race with a distinct lack of sprinters in the final week which may leave the door open for stage hunters and some more unlikely stage winners. It’s set to be an exciting race, and fortunately for the Irish it is now the 7th Grand Tour in succession in which we’ll have a rider or two to be rooting for.

In the Clásica de San Sebastián last Saturday, Luis León Sánchez won a three man sprint to take top spot ahead of Alexander Vinokourov and Carlos Sastre. Sánchez’s victory means Spanish riders have now claimed six of the last seven editions of their biggest one day race of the year. It was an attack from Vinokourov, who was capitalising on good Tour de France form, about 30km from the finish which proved decisive as only ten riders managed to make the selection. These ten riders would end up populating the first ten places at the finish but it wasn’t only Vinokourov who was coming off the Tour on good form. Of the ten, eight had ridden the Tour (the exceptions were Haimar Zubeldia and Richie Porte), and all eight of them had finished the Tour in the top 20 places overall.

Nicolas Roche was one of the riders strong enough to stay with the front group when the Kazakh attacked. The 26 year old Irishman ended up in 8th place which is his best ever finish in a classic. It isn’t however the best ever placing by an Irishman in the Clásica de San Sebastián. Unsurprisingly, this was achieved by Sean Kelly in 1990 when he came third. In second place was a 21 year old Laurent Jalabert who was riding towards his best result so far in a major race. The winner that day was Miguel Indurain who soloed home almost two and a half minutes ahead of Jalabert and Kelly, completing a one day race podium full of past/future winners of Grand Tours.

Luis León Sánchez - Winner of this year's Clásica de San Sebastián

It is surprising that this classic was never won by Kelly. His calendar tended to revolve around the classics along with Spanish races like the Vuelta a Espana, Volta a Catalunya and the Tour of Pays Basque (making sure to pronounce the ’s’ at the end of ‘Pays’ like the man himself!). So one would have thought that a Spanish classic would have been right up his alley. As it happens, Kelly never even rode the race until 1989 when it became part of the inaugural UCI Road World Cup (which he won). Perhaps it is because the Clásica de San Sebastián tended to clash with two other races which Kelly was partial to, the Tour of Britain and the Tour de Limousin.

Getting back to this year’s race, the leading group of ten was shortly to become three when Sánchez attacked and only Sastre and Vinokourov could follow. Vinokourov paid for his efforts in pulling the breakaway and Sastre was never likely to win a sprint from a small group, which left Sánchez to power home for the first one-day race win of his career. Sánchez, along with his compatriot Sastre ensured a Spanish presence on the podium, a presence which has been felt since 2004.  However, Spain have also had to endure long droughts of success in their home race in the past. In the ten years between 1992 and 2001, not a single Spanish rider finished on the podium.

Even though this race is known traditionally as a race where Tour de France riders do well, there is evidence that gives hope to those who take part without having ridden the Tour. With podiums full of riders who completed the Tour, the past two editions seem to be the exceptions. Before 2009, it’s been 17 years since the Clásica de San Sebastián podium was made up entirely of riders who finished the Tour de France. In the thirty editions of this race, it has happened on only six occasions. Along with 2010, the only other year the podium was made up of riders who finished in the top 20 of the Tour was 1991 when Gianni Bugno (2nd in the Tour), Pedro Delgado (9th in the Tour), and Maurizio Fondreist (15th in the Tour) made up the top three.

Two of this year’s Tour podium finishers Alberto Contador and Denis Menchov decided to give the race a miss but runner up and white jersey winner Andy Schleck took to the startline aiming to become only the third man to finish on the podium of both the Tour and the Clásica de San Sebastián. Unfortunately, Schleck mysteriously abandoned after 120km, leaving Claudio Chiapucci who finished 2nd in both races in 1992, and the aforementioned Gianni Bugno, as the only two riders to have achieved this feat.

Marino Lejarreta - A triple winner of the Clásica de San Sebastián and the only rider to win it along with a Grand Tour in the same season.

Despite this race not going to plan, Andy Schleck has stated his intentions to ride the Vuelta in support of his brother Frank, who will be aiming to win the race overall. Plenty of the top performers in San Sebastián at the weekend are also expected to ride the third and final Grand Tour of the year. Marino Lejarreta remains the only rider to have won the Clásica de San Sebastián and the Vuelta (or indeed any Grand Tour) in the same year when he won both in 1982. Miguel Indurain managed to spread his form even further than this in 1990 when he became one of two riders to have finished on the podium in San Sebastián and managed to finish in the top 10 of both the Tour (10th) and the Vuelta (7th). In 2008, Alejandro Valverde did slightly better than Indurain when he won the Spanish classic, finished the Tour in 8th (and wore the Maillot Jaune) and took 5th place at the Vuelta.

Since 1995, when the Vuelta a Espana was moved from its traditional date in April to its current location in September, it has taken a while for riders to use the Clasicá de San Sebastián as a launch pad to extend their form over to the Vuelta. In the first ten years since the Vuelta was moved, only five of the 30 riders who finished on the podium in San Sebastián went on to race in the Tour of Spain, and only three of these riders finished. Conversely, in the subsequent five years, which brings us up to 2009, all but three riders did start the Vuelta a Espana. The best Vuelta performances by San Sebastián podium finishers in recent years have been Alejandro Valverde in 2008 (5th) and Andrey Kashechkin in 2006 (3rd).

The startlist for the Vuelta a Espana is far from clear, but Nicolas Roche confirmed today that he will definitely be riding his second Grand Tour of the season. Samuel Sánchez, Carlos Sastre, Luis León Sánchez, Joaquim Rodriguez and Robert Gesink are riders who are also very likely to partake in the Vuelta in an attempt to achieve the tricky feat of extending their form from the Tour de France and the Clásica de San sebastián over to the Vuelta.