It is an iconic picture from certainly one of biking’s most evocative races. Three riders from the Mapei-GB staff elevate their arms in triumph as they roll over the end line, virtually three minutes forward of their closest rivals. Winner Johan Museeuw smiles and half-turns to his teammates Gianluca Bortolami and Andrea Tafi.
Mapei’s emphatic efficiency on the 1996 Paris-Roubaix was a stark expression of their Spring Classics dominance throughout the late Nineties. After firing a 21-man group away quickly after the diabolical Arenberg Forest sector, the Italian super-team tamed one of many sport’s hardest and most capricious races with a long-distance, three-man transfer. “We’ve carried out a miracle,” sports activities director Fabrizio Fabbri mentioned on the end.
The consequence was not fairly as harmonious because the end line image urged. It is lore that throughout the race’s closing levels, Mapei proprietor Giorgio Squinzi instructed staff supervisor Patrick Lefevere over the cellphone that the Belgian staff chief needed to win. Not so, based on the person himself.
“Lefevere took the choice,” Squinzi instructed me in 2018, a 12 months earlier than his demise, for Rouleur. “This didn’t correspond to my expressed need, which was to have all of them collectively in Roubaix combating it out within the dash,” Lefevere urged that Museeuw was the staff’s pre-agreed chief.
Mapei repeated the distinctive 1-2-3 feat in 1998 and 1999, however it was the final event that three riders from the identical staff crossed the road in Roubaix collectively. It might effectively by no means occur once more.
Here is what the star-studded Mapei-GB staff have been doing since that fateful rout of the opposition in Roubaix.
Johan Museeuw, 1st
On a dry, dusty day in northern France, Museeuw was in masterful type over the cobblestones. Even earlier than the sudden decisive transfer, he had linked up with teammate Wilfried Peeters, Erik Zabel (Telekom) and Laurent Desbiens (Gan) in a transfer with 150km to go.
Once caught by the decreased lead group, the Mapei-GB trio went for broke at Tilloy-les-Marchiennes, turning the race’s final two hours right into a staff time trial. A puncture at Orchies for Museeuw did little to gradual them down.
The Belgian was lacking turns within the final hour because the accepted frontman. “People thought there was commotion over victory. No, I used to be the chief. The downside was second or third,” Museeuw instructed me years later.
Footage from the race, with the eventual winner solely carrying a casquette for cover and racing a Colnago C40 with 28mm tyres and rim brakes, belonging to a different period. (Some rival groups’ bikes had Rock Shox entrance forks, too.)
It was a special time all proper: Tafi, Bortolami and Ballerini all examined constructive for banned substances throughout their careers, whereas Museeuw was suspended within the Landuyt affair for breaching anti-doping legal guidelines and admitted post-career to buying EPO and Aranesp.
After struggling one other puncture on the race’s last sector at Hem, contained in the closing ten kilometres, Bortolami and Tafi waited. Museeuw hit the entrance within the streets of Roubaix to take his first Paris-Roubaix title.
After a career-threatening crash within the 1998 race, he returned to win two extra editions, pointing to his injured leg as he crossed the road in 2000.
After wrapping up his profession within the spring of 2004, Museeuw has been an energetic determine within the biking neighborhood. He had an eponymous bike model and is an envoy for Wahoo Benelux, Specialized, Ekoi and Le Col.
As effectively as pedalling in Belgium and Spain this winter, the “Lion of Flanders” sometimes pops up in south-eastern England, using within the lanes the place his companion relies. According to his Strava profile, Museeuw logged virtually 13,000 kilometres in 2024 – not dangerous for somebody approaching his sixtieth birthday.
Gianluca Bortolami, 2nd
For a World Cup winner who received the Tour of Flanders and a Tour de France stage, in addition to a number of different prestigious one-day races, Bortolami has stored a low profile since bowing out of professional biking on the finish of 2005 with myocarditis.
Based within the north Italian area of Piemonte, he’s the staff supervisor of Pool Cantù 1999 – GB Junior Team, typically driving the automotive at junior races.
His 17-year-old son Julian received silver within the factors race on the 2024 Junior European Track Championships, so the household title could also be returning to the bunch quickly.
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Andrea Tafi, third
The Italian was sad on the orders from the staff automotive to complete third. “In that second, I used to be upset. More than upset,” he recalled years later.
Still, it suits with their staff motto of vincere insieme – profitable collectively. “That was the energy, the true level of Mapei. We knew that if Museeuw received right now, another person would win the subsequent day,” Tafi mentioned.
He would get his personal Paris-Roubaix triumph in 1999, using 30 kilometres solo to victory.
After retiring in 2005, Tafi stayed match, competing in granfondo and master-category races. At 52, he talked about making an attention grabbing comeback for the 2019 Paris-Roubaix and even registered with the UCI as knowledgeable. However, a damaged collarbone in a crash at an area occasion scuppered his return.
He runs an eponymous borghetto within the Tuscany hills near Lamporecchio, surrounded by olive timber. Many of the obtainable vacation residences are named after bike races he received – biking followers can keep within the Paris-Tours one, for example, full with a lined out of doors veranda.
Franco Ballerini, fifth
The defending champion punctured in the intervening time of his teammates’ decisive transfer and two extra instances throughout the 1996 race.
Nevertheless, he used his energy to return to the chasing group and powered away with Gewiss rider Stefano Zanini, decreasing the deficit to his Mapei teammates to 60 seconds at one level. Post-race, the Italian claimed that some roadside followers have been abusing and spitting at him for chasing Museeuw.
However, Ballerini made Zanini do the work within the last 25 kilometres, and solely his compatriot’s highly effective dash prevented a Mapei 1-2-3-4.
The towering Tuscan received the GP des Amériques, Omloop Het Volk and a Giro d’Italia stage throughout his lengthy profession, however Paris-Roubaix was his obsession. He completed 13 successive editions between 1989 and 2001, profitable in 1995 and 1999. “This race must be earned; it’s a lesson in life,” he as soon as mentioned. “All 12 months lengthy, the rider chooses his goals, however Paris-Roubaix chooses you.”
It was solely becoming that the cobbled Monument be Ballerini’s last race as a professional. As he circled the Vélodrome André-Petrieux for the final time, he revealed an under-vest with the phrases “Merci Roubaix.”
Post-career, it was typically a case of “grazie Franco” from his prices. As a long-time Italian nationwide biking coach and selector, the Tuscan oversaw the squadra azzurra to Worlds and Olympic highway race success for the likes of Mario Cipollini, Paolo Bettini and Alessandro Ballan.“Ballero” was a well-liked determine in his native biking scene.
A motor racing fanatic, he died in February 2010, aged 45, whereas navigating in a rally occasion when the automotive he was racing in left the highway. A biking faculty for younger riders bearing his title lives on, whereas the Team Franco Ballerini Juniores, based mostly in his hometown of Pistoia, is run by his former Mapei teammate Luca Scinto.
Wilfried Peeters, eleventh
A tough-riding flahute, Peeters is the central determine of a permanent biking {photograph} from the mud-spattered 2001 version of Paris-Roubaix. In it, he resembles a bike-riding Texas Chainsaw Massacre assassin as he rides out of the Arenberg Forest, clad in a balaclava and lined in muck.
Aside from two years racing after which DS’ing with Domo, “Fitte” Peeters has been with Soudal-QuickStep and its previous iterations for 30 years, getting into the staff automotive in 2003. The man from Mol is a key managerial presence for the spring Classics, along with his information of each hill, nook and cobblestone and the way the Flemish crosswinds can form a race.
In a 2024 Het Nieuwsblad interview, Peeters entertained the concept of changing into coach of the coaches, spending much less time within the staff automotive. “I’m fifty-nine now, and Patrick all the time comes along with his nonsense about sixty years [being the maximum age for a DS],” he mentioned.
“Then I say: ‘Patrick, have a look within the mirror.’ … I wish to proceed doing what I’m doing now for just a few extra years. I nonetheless have my place.”
Ludwig Willems, fortieth
A protracted-time right-hand man to Johan Museeuw, Willems supported his Mapei teammates to quite a few Classics wins, ending eighth at Paris-Roubaix himself again in 1998.
Since retirement, Willems labored on the Vlaamse Wielerschool (Flemish Cycling School) as a coach and coordinator, a decades-old initiative that was began by Rik Van Looy within the Nineteen Sixties. He ended that position in 2016 to deal with his work teaching the Belgian nationwide ladies’s and junior ladies’s highway groups.
Willems has steered them at quite a few world championships and Olympic Games. The 58-year-old described the mixture of Lotte Kopecky’s current Olympic highway race bronze medal in Paris and the 2023 Worlds highway title in Glasgow because the “icing on the cake” of his profession.
Bart Leysen, forty ninth
Leysen loved one of the best years of his profession after shifting to Mapei in 1995, profitable the E3 Prijs Harelbeke and Schaal Sels that season. In the 1996 Paris-Roubaix, he gave his wheel to Ballerini after the Italian punctured.
Predominantly a employee on a staff with immense strength-in-depth, Leysen reckoned that the mercurial Frank Vandenbroucke was one of the best pure expertise he noticed at Mapei.
“The actually good leaders we had possessed lots of expertise, however in addition they labored actually laborious,” he instructed me in 2018. “Museeuw was actually gifted too, but when you know the way a lot he educated.”
Leysen retired from professional biking in 2002 and is presently a sports activities director at Tudor Pro Cycling, having beforehand labored at Lotto Soudal and Alpecin-Deceuninck prior to now.
His son Senne can be a professional bicycle owner, racing for the squad captained by Mathieu van der Poel between 2020 and 2024.
Tom Steels, DNF
Steels was the staff’s solely rider who didn’t end the 1996 Paris-Roubaix. However, no rider received extra races within the multi-coloured Mapei jersey than the Belgian. Most notably, the sprinter received 9 Tour de France levels, eight Vuelta a España levels and two editions of Ghent-Weveglem.
The ice to Wilfried Peeters’ hearth behind the scenes on Soudal-QuickStep, the sports activities director and coach has grow to be a trusted supervisor and dash prepare guru, working intently with the likes of Mark Cavendish, Marcel Kittel and Tim Merlier.
“The sport evolves over time, however we will educate riders quite a bit on tactical expertise,” he says in his profile on Soudal-Quick Step’s web site. “The extra you realized year-by-year, the extra you can provide them a head begin based mostly on what you expertise.”
In 2014, Steels was a co-founder of vzw Bijs alongside along with his spouse and different dad and mom, a non-profit organisation and home facility for kids with bodily and psychological disabilities. His daughter Lobke has a uncommon abnormality within the ALG13 gene.
Patrick Lefevere
December noticed a seismic altering of the guard, as Patrick Lefevere stepped down as CEO of Soudal-QuickStep after 22 years within the sizzling seat.
For half that interval, his staff have been essentially the most prolific within the sport and earlier than that within the Nineties, he had risen to the highest of the managerial ranks at Mapei.
On a sporting stage, his longevity and pedigree as a sports activities director has few comparisons. Tactically, Lefevere learn races deftly and had a knack for getting one of the best out of his prices, whereas maintaining collective egos, ambitions and tight staff budgets in test.
Lefevere usually made headlines, mixing straight-talking with occasional crass feedback or disrespectful remarks, reminiscent of likening Sam Bennett’s return to Bora in 2021 to “ladies who return house after abuse”.
As the construction of contemporary biking groups has mushroomed, Soudal-QuickStep advanced and grew too, whereas resuming a squad in his picture.
The main Belgian staff with out Lefevere is a bit like Manchester United within the wake of epochal supervisor Alex Ferguson’s departure. There are huge footwear (and a quick swimsuit) for brand new CEO Jurgen Foré to fill.
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