Salad Days. The Battle Royale of the 1996 Tour de France

When you see the starting field of the 1996 Tour today, it is striking how good it was. I was never the biggest fan of Bjarne Riis, even though I am Danish, and I believe his relative collapse in the final time trial of '96 somewhat tainted his win (I'm not even going to go there on the PED issues!). He should have never allowed for discussions about whether or not Jan Ullrich could have beaten him in '96. Riis was the strongest man in this race which included some strange waiting days early on with horrible weather, strategic traps against race favorites, one very historic stage (at Les Arcs, where Indurain cracked), one greatly entertaining mountain sprint (at Sestrieres), and several dramatic events, with the overall result not being totally nailed down before the final time trial.

The thing that was remarkable about the 1996 Tour was actually the number of legendary riders starting in it. I have talked about the volatile nature of sprint earlier in this blog, so I'm not talking about them - but rather the stage race stars participating in this race. Of all riders who won Grand Tours from 1991 through 2001, only three (2000 Giro winner Stefano Garzelli and 1991 Giro winner Franco Chioccoli, as well as '98 Tour and Giro victor Pantani) did not start the '96 Tour. I will admit that this is at least in part due to multiple winners of both the Tour and the Vuelta - and the fact that Lance Armstrong back then did not play a lead role in the Tour - but the peloton of the '96 Tour was impressive. If the injured Pantani had indeed been in this peloton, only three podium-finishers from all Tours from '91 through 2001 were not at the start in s'Hertoogenbosch, Holland (the at this point semi-retired Gianni Bugno, Zenon Jaskula, who was riding for the lower ranked AKI team in '96, and Joseba Beloki, who had yet to turn pro).
Case and point - one of the interesting things to watch again from this Tour was actually the prologue. Notice how 8 of the top 9 riders of this prologue won at least one Grand Tour during their careers. And the ninth rider (second-placed Chris Boardman) was a prologue specialist, who set multiple Hour Records and was a time-trial World Champion! That's not even counting 12th-placed Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich, who rolled his way into 37th, clearly not yet knowning what kind of rider he was. To be fair, no one probably knew at the time what kind of riders Ullrich and Armstrong would become.

The 1996 Tour was actually a bizarre experience. For the first week, everyone thought this was another case of Miguel Indurain having it all under control. It certainly looked like it, and after his incredible display of power in 1995, who would imagine that Indurain could be beat? And who would imagine that the awesome ONCE squad had any real weaknesses when the Tour would begin?
So the first week was waiting. As I remember it, it would be rather frustrating from time to time, not least when the peloton decided to pull an impromptu strike at 28 km/h in rainy and windy conditions. And the strong field would fade over the course of the race, to the point where Bjarne Riis, asked after his strong win at Hautacam who would be his hardest competition, answered 'I don't know. Maybe Olano'. He was wrong, of course, as Jan Ullrich almost made it exciting with an Indurain-esque performance in the Saint-Emilion time trial.
But that fall-off of the competitors was not really Riis' fault - of course you can even say it was to his credit. Indurain suffered a very sudden fall from Les Arcs on, and he had few strong moments in the entire race, but he also suffered from Riis' very intelligent race management through his Telekom troops. Rominger was getting on, actually doing his last good season as a rider, and his less than stellar riding might have held back Olano in some phases of the race. But Olano was never that good anyway, although this particular Tour might have been the strongest we ever saw him. No matter how this Tour wound up unfolding in the mountains, there is no denying the strong field of pretenders to the crown, also including mountain specialists Virenque, Leblanc, Dufaux and one-year wonder Luttenberger. It was just a more interesting bunch to watch than today's protagonists, Wiggins, Schleck and Contador.

On the whole, the Tour of 1996 was an exciting experience, where the weather unfortunately wound up adding at least one dimension to the drama. But the fact remains that after the Alps, even though Bjarne Riis looked very strong, no one knew for sure yet who would be the boss of the race (I'm sure Rominger still thought he could be), nor who would challenge Riis (after the Alps, Berzin was still in the picture, though he would fade badly in the Pyrenees). And to me, this particular edition of the race, though neither the most historic one in terms of its winner nor the performances it saw, remains the Battle Royale that defined cycling's apex in the mid-90's.