Total Domination

IN 1990 GIANNI BUGNO BECAME ONLY THE FOURTH RIDER EVER TO LEAD THE GIRO D’ITALIA FROM START TO FINISH. FEW, HOWEVER, EXPECTED THE ITALIAN TO WIN. PROCYCLING UNTANGLES HOW HE DID IT

- Daniel Friebe

Having just told reporters that he had led the 1990 Giro from end-to-end, Bari to Milan, by “doing the exact opposite of what my rivals expected”, Gianni Bugno now bamboozled the same stalwarts of the press room with a similarly agnostic approach to his final enthronement.

Bugno’s modesty - almost a prudishness about the manner in which his long-dormant talent had jolted into life - had fascinated the journalists throughout the previous three weeks. Now they could hardly believe their ears or eyes as, after various other ovations and accolades including the points jersey, Bugno was called to the stage for a seventh time and he looked almost in supplication towards his Château d’Ax team boss, Gianluigi Stanga.

“Again?? Come on, that’s enough now. Let’s go home.”

Since Bugno took a breakthrough victory at Milan-San Remo in March the mainstream media had hurried to dissect the psyche and background of a rider whose quirks discreetly bent rather than broke any moulds. He owned a husky called Rebel - but anyone believing Italian cycling had found itself a new iconoclast would have been barking up the wrong tree.

Typically of Italian riders, he came from modest, blue-collar stock. Untypically, Bugno was not the fiery Italian of stereotype perhaps time north of the Italian border as a boy rubbed off on him. In the early 1960s his parents had emigrated to Brugg in Switzerland, where Bugno was born, then returned to Italy and specifically the Milanese suburb of Monza to open a laundrette when he was four. Bugno had spent the majority of his early years with his paternal grandparents in Cavaso del Tomba, at the foot of Monte Grappa. In the classroom he enjoyed maths and Latin. On the playing field, he had tried everything and excelled at nothing - until he discovered cycling at age 12.