Picture this. A fine, still but crisp Sunday morning. A typical French spring morning. It’s April 1996. The Northern European Spring Classics remain a mystery to most of the anglophones around the world, referring to their copy of English magazines that are distributed to the newspaper stalls many months after the races have come and gone. Twitter, Facebook and even for that matter Google hadn’t even been heard of in these days. Yes my friends, 1996 seems ancient times.
Squadra Mapei, lead by the Lion of Flanders himself, Johan Museeuw
With still two hours of racing to go an incredible move is made off the front of the peloton that most of us could only dream of. Three Mapei-GB teammates roll away by themselves. They would never be caught, and the finish would be one of the most talked about issues in world cycling.
The Belgian Lion of Flanders, Johan Museeuw rolled across the finishing line unchallenged with his Italian colleagues, Gianluca Bortolami and Andrea Tafi drifting in behind.
The infamous Mapei Paris-Roubaix hat-trick, 1996
There was clearly some tension amongst the Mapei-ers in the approach to the line on the Roubaix velodrome, but a dream had come true. Three Mapei men on the podium. A Mapei hatrick.
And in case that wasn’t enough to cement the legend that is, mapei repeated the effort in 1998 and again in 1999, each time with different riders at the helm.
Legendary stuff.
