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Authors: Daniel Friebe
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agrees, ‘the moment when the penny dropped and we started to think “Oh dear”’. Fortunately by that time he already knew that he would be riding with and not against Merckx in 1968. After Nino Defilippis’s ‘electrocution’, Vincenzo Giacotto’s final meetings with Faema about budgets, and Merckx’s committal to a three-year deal worth 400,000 Belgian francs a year, Adorni had been identified and recruited as Faema’s in-race
éminence grise
. He was now 30 years old; it was time to think less about personal glory than putting ‘
fieno in cascina
’ – literally putting hay in the barn. Saving. Thinking about his future. Adorni’s father had been a bricklayer; Vittorio could scarcely have aspired to anything more glamorous before the day, aged 18, he and some mates rode from their homes in Parma out into the Apennines. A few hours and one ascent of the 1,041-metre Passo della Cisa later, he had been hooked.
He had been a pro for over seven years, but never had he seen anything quite like Merckx. At Faema’s first get together of the winter in Reggio Calabria, Merckx had astonished his new teammates first with his efforts to learn Italian, then with his attitude to training sessions. A spot of good-natured jousting wasn’t and indeed still isn’t unusual between teammates in this setting, and normally Adorni would relish the impromptu races which often crackled into life on the climbs. But not here. Not with Merckx. ‘He just wanted to race all the time,’ the Italian says, still sounding exasperated. Whenever the road angled skywards, Adorni would hear that deadly whirr at his back, then within seconds, Merckx would appear and vanish in the same flourish of flesh and metal. ‘There would be riders all over the road, absolute carnage,’ Adorni remembers. And the worst – or best – of it: ‘In spite of all the energy he seemed to be wasting on silly races in training, the kid was never, ever tired.’
There were still rough edges to smooth – but then that was why Giacotto had recruited Adorni. He and Marino Vigna, the former Peugeot rider who had been plucked straight out the peloton to become Faema’s Italian directeur sportif, had set immediately to work. The first weakness that needed addressing was Merckx’s tendency to stiffen up going downhill. Adorni had come up with a novel solution: he would ride directly in front of or behind Merckx calling out instructions, like a primitive GPS robot. ‘Brake now!’ ‘Stay wide!’ ‘Accelerate!’ Whereas, a year earlier, Merckx’s screeching tyres provided the sound effects, within weeks, Adorni’s voice was the only audible accompaniment to poetry in motion.
Having failed to impress Giancarlo Ferretti with his bike-handling at the 1967 Giro di Sardegna, now Merckx and his new troupe offered a masterclass at the same race in February 1968. Merckx didn’t even wait to cross over the Med and into Sardinia, winning the first stage on the Italian mainland by over six minutes to make overall victory a formality.
That had been his first stage-race win of his pro career, to be followed by an equally emphatic one in the Tour of Romandy in Switzerland in April. Adorni says that Faema were becoming a ‘super-team, everyone could see it’. In Adorni and the Belgians Roger Swerts, Vic Van Schil, Martin Van Den Bossche and Joseph Spruyt, Merckx suddenly had a Red Guard of his own, arguably even stronger and more versatile than Rik Van Looy’s equivalent in the Faema team’s previous incarnation.
At the Giro, though, Merckx and Adorni both knew that they were about to face their biggest test. It hadn’t even been a year since Bruno Raschi’s affirmation on the pages of Italy’s most authoritative sports newspaper,
La Gazzetta dello Sport
, that Merckx would never win a major stage race. Franco Bitossi had laughed, but there were others who still harboured the same, serious doubts. For all that Merckx was the reigning world champion and had
éminence grise
. He was now 30 years old; it was time to think less about personal glory than putting ‘
fieno in cascina
’ – literally putting hay in the barn. Saving. Thinking about his future. Adorni’s father had been a bricklayer; Vittorio could scarcely have aspired to anything more glamorous before the day, aged 18, he and some mates rode from their homes in Parma out into the Apennines. A few hours and one ascent of the 1,041-metre Passo della Cisa later, he had been hooked.
He had been a pro for over seven years, but never had he seen anything quite like Merckx. At Faema’s first get together of the winter in Reggio Calabria, Merckx had astonished his new teammates first with his efforts to learn Italian, then with his attitude to training sessions. A spot of good-natured jousting wasn’t and indeed still isn’t unusual between teammates in this setting, and normally Adorni would relish the impromptu races which often crackled into life on the climbs. But not here. Not with Merckx. ‘He just wanted to race all the time,’ the Italian says, still sounding exasperated. Whenever the road angled skywards, Adorni would hear that deadly whirr at his back, then within seconds, Merckx would appear and vanish in the same flourish of flesh and metal. ‘There would be riders all over the road, absolute carnage,’ Adorni remembers. And the worst – or best – of it: ‘In spite of all the energy he seemed to be wasting on silly races in training, the kid was never, ever tired.’
There were still rough edges to smooth – but then that was why Giacotto had recruited Adorni. He and Marino Vigna, the former Peugeot rider who had been plucked straight out the peloton to become Faema’s Italian directeur sportif, had set immediately to work. The first weakness that needed addressing was Merckx’s tendency to stiffen up going downhill. Adorni had come up with a novel solution: he would ride directly in front of or behind Merckx calling out instructions, like a primitive GPS robot. ‘Brake now!’ ‘Stay wide!’ ‘Accelerate!’ Whereas, a year earlier, Merckx’s screeching tyres provided the sound effects, within weeks, Adorni’s voice was the only audible accompaniment to poetry in motion.
Having failed to impress Giancarlo Ferretti with his bike-handling at the 1967 Giro di Sardegna, now Merckx and his new troupe offered a masterclass at the same race in February 1968. Merckx didn’t even wait to cross over the Med and into Sardinia, winning the first stage on the Italian mainland by over six minutes to make overall victory a formality.
That had been his first stage-race win of his pro career, to be followed by an equally emphatic one in the Tour of Romandy in Switzerland in April. Adorni says that Faema were becoming a ‘super-team, everyone could see it’. In Adorni and the Belgians Roger Swerts, Vic Van Schil, Martin Van Den Bossche and Joseph Spruyt, Merckx suddenly had a Red Guard of his own, arguably even stronger and more versatile than Rik Van Looy’s equivalent in the Faema team’s previous incarnation.
At the Giro, though, Merckx and Adorni both knew that they were about to face their biggest test. It hadn’t even been a year since Bruno Raschi’s affirmation on the pages of Italy’s most authoritative sports newspaper,
La Gazzetta dello Sport
, that Merckx would never win a major stage race. Franco Bitossi had laughed, but there were others who still harboured the same, serious doubts. For all that Merckx was the reigning world champion and had
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