Whither Gianni Bugno?

DECLINE - BUGNO CAN NO LONGER SUFFER

At 32, the former world champion is dragging himself along in the Giro. He has disheartened his entourage and is sliding inexorably towards retirement.

"Bugno, make us dream again!" read a supporter's banner on the climb of Monte Sirino on Saturday [Stage 7 of the Giro when the race finished at the top of this climb]. At the foot of the 14-km ascent, Gianni Bugno launched an acceleration before fading away almost immediately on the way through Lagonegro, where La Gioconda [Leonardo's Mona Lisa] died.

It was more than a sign of pride; we must see it as the reaction of a man on the run from reality, a champion on the way down who can no longer even save his seasons by winning a classic as he did two years ago with the Tour of Flanders. Arriving at the top of the climb riding like a postman, the 1990 Giro winner (he wore the pink jersey from the first day to the last) and world champion for the succeeding two years was more than eleven minutes down.

"One minute or eleven minutes, it's all the same," Bugno said. "I can't keep up with the best riders in the climbs any more -- but I'm still hopeful that I can win a flat stage." At 32, the man who wears the tricolour jersey of Italian national champion can no longer suffer, that's all!

"He's always complaining," says Pascal Richard, his Swiss team-mate at MG-Technogym, "he says that cycle racing is too hard. He's not wrong to say it, but if you keep saying it over and over again, it's the beginning of the end."

As for Giancarlo Ferretti, Bugno's directeur sportif, who tried to relaunch the Lombard's career after his positive drugs test in the summer of 1994 -- his two-year suspension was lifted -- he's definitely closed the file on Bugno. "I no longer want to hear about it," says Ferretti.

The Giro in a helicopter

"I've seen a thousand names of favourites [for the Giro] in the press,but never mine. Even [Francesco] Moser no longer considers me in the running," regretted the gloomy Gianni whose hair is close shaven and whose face has aged under the weight of past efforts and numerous torments. "His resilience was lost when he was declared positive for caffeine," says Richard. "He was sickened by a situation in which a guy could be sanctioned because of caffeine when other more powerful substances were being circulated."

Why didn't Bugno stop cycling at that time? First, he says, because that would have offered supplementary arguments to his detractors. Secondly, because of the money -- last year the Italian drew a salary of 250,000 francs a month [about US$48,600] and at that time avowed: "I want to win the Giro in 1996 and retire."

Bugno was still on his cloud. He wants to stay there...at the controls of a helicopter he's learning to pilot -- he studies his chopper textbooks each evening after the stage. "In two or three years I'll offer my services to the race organizers as a pilot," he said at the beginning of the Giro. Today, he corrects this. "The helicopter -- that will be for next year..."