The Giro d’Italia is currently in full swing and is quite closely contested.
While it may be hard to pick a winner, we can definitively say that last year’s winner won’t be retaining la maglia rosa – Tadej Pogačar is not involved, preferring instead to focus on trying to win the Tour de France for the fourth time.
In fact – as Cillian Kelly pointed out last week – you have to go back more than three decades for the last instance of a rider winning the Giro in consecutive years.
In 1991, Miguel Induráin of Banesto came second to Melcior Mauri in the Vuelta a España and then followed that with his first Tour de France victory. Back then, the Vuelta and the Giro both took place before the Tour and were in close proximity to each other – having not competed in the Giro before 1992, he essentially switched to that, away from his native race, in which he would not race again until a DNF in 1996.
A winner of the Giro at the first attempt as well as retaining the Tour’s maillot jaune, in 1993 Induráin was no less imperious. In fact, he only briefly wore the Banesto jersey in the Giro, as he took the leader’s pink top from Thierry Marie after the third stage and kept it all the way to a five-minute win.
The team known as Movistar since 2011 had been founded as Reynolds in 1980, with Spanish bank Banesto taking over as the main sponsor from 1990-2003. While the jersey design changed slightly each year during the 1990s, they were all similar, incorporating the bank’s patriotic colours along with blue and white.
Along with logos of manufacturer Nalini and wheel-maker Campagnolo, the 1993 jersey also featured an unusual marking – one that also appeared below the Banesto logo on Induráin’s pink jersey.
While it looks on first glance like a cartoon character, it is in fact Pelegrín, the official mascot of the Jacobean Holy Year of 1993 – a ‘holy year’ is celebrated in Santiago de Compostela when the Feast of St James falls on a Sunday. With such celestial might on their side, Banesto simply couldn’t be stopped.
Induráin would return to Italy in 1994 but couldn’t complete the three-in-a-row, finishing third, while his run of Tour de France victories extended to five, leaving him tied at the top of the roll of honour.
