2023-05-21 01:02:05
The KAS team only got rid of Fausto Coppi. The rest of the old great myths he had in front of him. To cakes with Jacques Anquetil, with Eddy Merckx and with Bernard Hinault. Bad times to win the Tour. Fifteen editions were distributed among the three. Five a head. The KAS was left with the pride of the fight, the victories in the mountains and the team classification as consolation. They got on the final podium as the best squad in 1965, 1966, 1974 and 1976. The yellow and blue ship created in Vitoria made history. There are three letters to remember with surnames such as López Carril, Jiménez, Perurena, Fuente, San Miguel, Galdos, Gabika, Gandarias, Momeñe, Linares, Nazabal, Vélez or Zubero.
During its passage through the history of the Tour, the KAS wrote pages like that of González Linares, the Cantabrian who passed over Merckx in the ‘time trial’ of Forest (Tour, 1970). Momeñe, San Miguel and Galdos were close to the podium and ended up on the edge, fourth place… KAS became the great squad and lived its best day in the third stage of the 1977 edition. Luis Knörr, skipper of the soft drink firm, he had a passion for this sport. Hence his patronage. He fought and negotiated so that one day the gala round would arrive in Vitoria, at Avenida de los Olmos where the factory was. He got it. Only the icing remained. win at home
At the start of Oloron, the runners of the Vitoria team conspired. He couldn’t pull off a break without a KAS jersey. They set out ready for battle. And there was a bomb, which exploded at the Izpegui border crossing while the publicity caravan of the gala round was circulating. The race stopped. The detonation caused a landslide. Rocks in the road and an injured child. The stoppage lasted almost an hour. Once again in the fray and after crossing Elizondo, Joxe Nazabal put his KAS jersey on a breakaway. And none of the other escapees kept up with him at the top of Ezkurra. He was running in friendly territory.
Galdos, on the brink of the podium
But there were still a hundred kilometers to go until the finish line in Vitoria. Tremendous pulse. «I chose to continue alone. I suppose the peloton relaxed”, says the Gipuzkoan runner. That allowed him to take ten minutes of advantage. The persecutors paid for their overconfidence. Nazabal was a good cyclist, off-road. He had just won a stage of the Tour of Spain in Urkiola and finished sixth in the Dauphiné against rivals like Hinault, Thévenet, Van Impe, Zoetemelk and Merckx. “That day everything went well for me. By the time they sped up for me, it was too late.” That’s how it went.
And so he arrived in Vitoria first with the yellow and blue jersey. With plenty of time to enjoy the party unleashed in the gutters. “It was impressive. Incredible. Win at the very doors of your commercial house. When you get something like that, you don’t even believe it. Awesome », he recalls with the living image of fans and KAS workers on the roof of the offices next to the finish line. Days later he suffered a bad fall on the way to Geneva. He started the next stage, with a goal in Morzine (Alps), and endured the pain in his wrist under the bandages. But after crossing the banner, an X-ray detected a fissure. Goodbye Tour. He had already done his part of the job. The rest was taken care of by Paco Galdos from Alava, the trump card in the fight for the podium. The man from Vitoria stayed close, in fourth place, one step away from the boxes occupied by Bernard Thévenet, Hennie Kuiper and Lucien van Impe.
In that edition, the KAS did not add another title as the best squad. It was his great objective since 1965, since the Tour that had proclaimed the Vitoria team for the first time as the most powerful of the Grande Boucle. The great work of Dalmacio Langarica, legendary director. That of 1965 was the Tour that Poulidor could not win despite the absence of Anquetil and that in the end was won by a young and elegant Italian, Felice Gimondi. KAS accompanied him on the podium in Paris with a stellar squad: Carlos Echeverría, Sebastián Elorza, Patxi Gabika, Joaquín Galera, Antonio Gómez Moral, Julio Jiménez, José Antonio Momeñe, Juanjo Sagarduy, Valentín Uriona and Eusebio Vélez. For another Spanish team to reach such a high point, it was necessary to wait for Banesto in 1991 and 1999. On that list are also Once (1995 and 2002), Kelme (2000 and 2001) and now Movistar (2015-16-18-19 and 2020).
When Nazabal won in Vitoria (1977), the Tour skipper, Jacques Goddet, promised to return. La Grande Boucle 2023 will fulfill that promise on July 2: the second stage will go from the capital of Álava to San Sebastián.
#KAS #enters #factory #Vitoria