Tour of Lombardy 1981
The changed training setup leads to Hennie Kuiper having to settle for a very modest supporting role in his beloved Tour de France of 1981. He ultimately finishes in the anonymous thirtieth place, far below the level he had reached in the past years. After the Tour, he once again pushes himself. He uses criterium races to reach a new peak. Just like in 1975, the year of his world championship, he cycles tens of kilometers to a race, participates in the criterium, and then gets back to training afterwards. In the Tour of the Netherlands, he follows the same routine: after the stages, which are already good training, he adds on a significant number of kilometers. He frequently rides behind a motorbike to gain speed. Hennie does all this together with his team and fellow Brabant native Adrie van der Poel. He is determined to shine even more in the last months of the racing season.
In addition to personal success, team success also matters. The DAF Trucks formation is so successful that year that the team secures a stronger position in the team World Cup standings. The DAF management – especially director Van Doorne – places great value on this, so team managers De Bruyne and De Cauwer push their men to their limits. On the eve of the 1981 Tour of Lombardy, DAF Trucks is leading in the World Cup standings. It’s all hands on deck because the team from Belgian IJsboerke has been attacking in the past week. The DAF team flies together to Italy. Roger De Vlaeminck will arrive on a later flight, but when DAF personnel go to pick him up at the airport, they find De Vlaeminck’s bike on the conveyor belt, but discover that the rider himself has decided to stay home. Typical Roger. Sports director De Bruyne sees his chances of winning the World Cup disappear. What will they do without Roger? Hennie Kuiper tries to reassure him, but De Bruyne remains unconvinced.
The beautiful Tour of Lombardy, where breathtaking nature provides a heavenly backdrop every year, is marked in red on Hennie’s calendar. This race, which until 2011 served as the culmination of the cycling season, carries the poetic nickname La corsa delle foglie morte or ‘The race of falling leaves’. Only one Dutchman is listed on the honor roll for the 1981 edition: Zeeland’s Jo de Roo, who crossed the finish line first in Como in both 1962 and 1963. Initially, things don’t seem to be going so well for Kuiper at the start of the race. Adrie van der Poel guides the team leader to his wheel and moves him up front. Hennie himself is not worried at all. Afterwards, he hears that Dutch team manager Jan Gisbers from the Van Erp team had predicted: ‘Kuiper won’t do well today. He’s all the way at the back.’ No one needs to worry about Hennie that day. ‘Because I did it intentionally, racing at the back. First sit comfortably for a while and later, when the race really heats up, move up front.’
The pace is very high right from the start. The breakaway group that forms does not include any riders from the DAF team, but it does have riders from their main rival IJsboerke. Team manager Fred De Bruyne is beside himself. Hennie urges him to stay calm. ‘Stay calm, Fred.’ ‘I knew this race and didn’t stress about it too much. Sometimes I was nervous, but there were also moments when I could stay calm in the peloton and wait for my moment.’ At 80 kilometers from the finish, Gibi Baronchelli makes his move during the climbs of Intelvi and Schignano. The Italian quickly builds a lead of more than three minutes. The breakaway group falls apart. One rider after another drops back into the peloton. Kuiper contacts the team car. ‘Do you see what’s happening? I predicted it and I’ll tell you something else, Fred: I’m going to win this race.’
The DAF team leader attacks during the second climb of the cobblestone-paved Intelvi, about 45 kilometers from the finish. He quickly distances himself from the peloton and catches up with the leader at record speed, who had been delayed by a flat tire. ‘I passed him and he immediately latched onto my wheel.’ This happens 27 kilometers from the finish line. Baronchelli is exhausted. This becomes evident when Hennie increases his pace on the final climb, San Fermo della Battaglia, causing the Italian to immediately fall behind. De Bruyne, still nervous, drives alongside his leader in the team car and warns: ‘Oh oh, they’re coming.’
But they don’t.
After the final climb comes a beautiful descent and then continues along Lake Como. There, teams like Roberto Visentini’s, Francesco Moser’s and Beppe Saronni’s try to close in on the Dutchman. They occasionally get closer, but Kuiper doesn’t give up. ‘I thought: as long as they haven’t reached my bracket yet, I’ll keep going.’ Kuiper proves irresistible. In Como’s streets, he secures his second Monument victory, his second classic win within a year. He is glad he won without Roger De Vlaeminck being present. ‘After Tour of Flanders everyone said Roger helped me win. But now I could prove that I could do it alone.’
It’s double joy for DAF. Besides Kuiper’s triumph as team leader, there is more cause for celebration: winning in prestigious World Cup standings for teams. The entire team travels to Verona next day where a large truck fair is being held. Naturally, DAF Trucks has a prominent presence there too. It’s an ideal moment for maximum publicity with their World Cup victory. The whole team proudly gathers around the World Cup trophy at DAF Trucks’ stand. They receive ample attention from all media outlets. The sponsor couldn’t ask for more publicity than this. Kuiper: ‘The director of DAF Italy was as happy as a child.’ ‘That’s no wonder,’ explains Van Doorne. ‘Italy was a market that was very difficult for us to enter. Everything was Fiat and maybe some German brands like Mercedes too. Hennie’s victory in Tour of Lombardy and winning in World Cup standings for brand teams brought about a change in dealers’ thinking. From that moment on there was interest in becoming a dealer for DAF Trucks too thanks to those cycling successes.’
Despite these successes, DAF’s cycling team is disbanded a season later. The main advocate of this cycling project, Willy van Doorne leaves the company to start his own venture - Willy van Doorne International. The Board of Directors at DAF Trucks decides to allocate funds invested in cycling elsewhere. Van Doorne handles this project carefully; he assists in finding a new sponsor and ensures that riders find new teams if needed. When cyclocross rider Hennie Stamsnijder faces being left without a contract, Van Doorne signs him individually under his wing as well - marking it as a final act in an exemplary cycling project.
It takes Hennie Kuiper hardly any effort to drop Gibi Baronchelli
Hennie Kuiper remains in the final of the 1981 Tour of Lombardy with Gibi Baronchelli
In 1983, Hennie Kuiper is once again very close to victory in the Tour of Lombardy. However, he is beaten in the sprint by (from left to right) Adrie van der Poel (third), Sean Kelly (first), and world champion Greg LeMond (second). Behind Van der Poel, the Swiss Gilbert Glaus rides to sixth place and behind Kelly, Francesco Moser to fifth place.
Hennie Kuiper is honored on the podium in Como for his second victory within a year in one of the five Monuments
Almost there again
Two years after his victory in the Tour of Lombardy, Kuiper is once again close to a win in the ‘Race of the Falling Leaves.’ The finale of that Tour of Lombardy is closely related to the Tour of Spain 1983. Kuiper, who as a stage racer is past his prime, sees opportunities for Bernard Hinault in a stage with strong winds. He tells the Frenchman: ‘If you want to win, you need to split the peloton now. We’ll join.’ ‘Non, ce n’est pas le moment,’ replies Hinault, who moments later realizes that Kuiper is right. He seeks out Kuiper and says, ‘Allez.’
The teams move up front and before the Spaniards realize what’s happening, the peloton shatters. Racing intensifies. Only one Spaniard has managed to get into the split: Marino Lejarreta. The others are hopeless for a top position in the standings. Anger among the Spaniards. They swear revenge.
In the Tour of Lombardy, Hennie is the target of that revenge exercise. From the start, Lejarreta sticks to his wheel. Only in the final kilometers, when sprinters are already positioning themselves, does Lejarreta lose Kuiper’s wheel, who reacts lightning fast. He shifts to the 12th gear - the heaviest - and accelerates past the peloton that is not yet at full speed. The sprinters are caught off guard. If Swiss Gilbert Glaus hadn’t given everything to get close to Hennie, he would have won Lombardy for the second time. Now he is outdone by Irishman Sean Kelly, who wins his first classic, by American Greg LeMond, and by disappointed Adrie van der Poel. Kuiper’s move disrupts Van der Poel’s plans, dashes his sprint tactics. ‘I would have definitely won otherwise,’ he recalls 34 years later. But for Adrie as well: ‘ifs’ don’t count in elite sports.
The gap year
The year between his second Monument, the Tour of Lombardy (1981) and his grand triumph in the third Monument, Paris-Roubaix (1983), is not the most glorious in Hennie’s career. He finishes ninth in the Tour de France standings. He shines one more time in a mountain stage, in the fifteenth stage from Manosque to Orcières Merlette. Time and time again he struggles in the battle with Bernard Hinault and Joop Zoetemelk. Just as many times he comes back. In the final meters, he once again catches up with the illustrious duo. The three of them cross the finish line together. Kuiper surpasses himself that day. He will never again deliver such a performance in a mountain stage. Hennie has never been a true climber, but there were days when he could challenge the absolute top. Those days are definitively over after the fifteenth stage of the 1982 Tour.
There have been decades in Dutch cycling where a top ten placement would have been celebrated as a great achievement, but Kuiper finds that ninth place beneath him. ‘Adrie van der Poel helped me to finish so high.’ In the penultimate stage, from Sens to Aulnay-sous-Bois over 161 kilometers, thanks in part to Van der Poel, an escape is formed, in which Hennie manages to join, but some competitors for a high placement are missing. Belgian Daniel Willems achieves his second stage victory in this Tour, but what is more important for Kuiper: he gains time. ‘That’s how I managed to chip away enough of my deficit to climb to ninth place. But I was no longer racing the Tour to win. I had done that until 1980. After that, the priority was on the classics.’
One performance stands out in 1982: his victory in the Grand Prix Wallonia. This race is relatively unknown in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, it is a race with an extremely selective course, perfect for Hennie Kuiper when he is in good form. He is in top shape that day, shreds the entire field and wins gloriously after a long solo in the finale. In the streets of the finish town Charleroi, Hennie manages to stay ahead of neo-pro Gerard Veldscholten from Peter Post’s team by just a few meters. Unfortunately for him, the race outside Belgium, especially outside Wallonia, lacks the prestige to be seen as special.
DAF Trucks withdraws from professional cycling much to Hennie’s sorrow. Sponsor boss Willy van Doorne fails to convince enough branches of the company elsewhere in Europe to invest millions again in financing a professional cycling team. Team manager Fred De Bruyne asks his riders to hold off on signing with another team. ‘Stay together now, guys. The staff also remains loyal to the team. Take responsibility.’ Kuiper, who could easily find shelter elsewhere, waits. De Bruyne searches and eventually convinces furniture giant Jacky Aernoudt to put enough money on the table for a new cycling year. The start is promising. ‘In a formation with six amateurs, Aernoudt wins the team time trial in Paris-Nice. With guys like Frits van Bindsbergen, Nico Emonds, Henri Manders, Eric Vanderaerden, Willem Van Eynde and Rudy Rogiers we performed excellently,’ Kuiper observes contentedly. He is ready for the new season.
With two Monuments in one year, Hennie Kuiper contributes everything to the overall victory in the World Cup for teams, a trophy that DAF director Willy van Doorne in particular can greatly appreciate.