Following his tragic death in the Tour de Suisse, Gino Mäder was remembered for once adopting a stray dog on the streets of Bilbao city and naming it Pello, after his Bahrain Victorious teammate Pello Bilbao. The story reverberated across the media.
But if Bilbao himself has his dream Tour de France scenario come true on Saturday, there’ll be another chapter added to that particular narrative about Mäder, very shortly.
“It was a nice story about Gino’s dog,” the Basque rider told reporters on Friday afternoon in the countdown to the start of the Tour de France. “I think he had this small connection to the Basque Country and it would be great to continue with this connection if we can give him a nice victory in the home stages.”
On the Tour de Suisse when Mäder died, Bilbao recognised that it had been incredibly difficult for him and his Bahrain Victorious teammates to continue to focus on the races, even one as big as the Tour de France, in the light of what happened on the descent of the Albulapass.
“Obviously the race comes at a difficult moment for me,” Bilbao said. “When all of this happened, I thought it was not going to be possible to get to the Tour in the best condition possible.
“At a moment like that, everything loses sense, continuing in the race makes no sense for us and for two or three days, I was not motivated or optimistic about the Tour.
“But I came home, spent some time with my family and I realised that this [the Tour start] was going to be a unique day in my life and [if I didn’t go] it wouldn’t have been possible to show all the work I’d put in up until then. So the only way to change these difficult feelings, these sad emotions and turn them into energy to create something special,” he added.
“So now I’m at that point, just trying to do my best, absorb all the good vibrations from our fans and try to do something special in the first stages here in the Basque Country."
Mäder's Bahrain Victorious teammates will wear numbers from 62 to 69 at the race, with the team leader's number, 61, not used as a sign of mourning and remembrance.
During Thursday’s team presentation, a minute's silence was held to remember Mäder when the Bahrain Victorious' riders were on stage, with fans also showing signs to remember him.
The stage route
Born and bred in the nearby town of Gernika, through which stage 1 of the Tour will be passing after roughly 70 kilometres, Bilbao says he knows all of the roads that the race will be covering in the next three days.
“Stages 1, 2 and 3 all use my regular training routes. It makes ofr a very different kind of terrain to the usual Tour de France start, but it’s also got the right proportion of difficulty,” Bilbao, for whom the 2023 race will be his 15th Grand Tour, observed.
“The real battle on stage 1 will come on the final climb, the Pike, or maybe go right down to the finish line.
“The Pike’s certainly not as hard as the Mur de Hûy, but the last part of the climb has segments of 16 or 18 percent. And after a nervous stage with a lot of vertical metres of climbing like on Saturday, it could well cause a few breakaways and it’s close enough from the finish to stick.
“That said, all the way down to Bilbao and the finish there are wide roads, not at all technical and it’ll be easy to chase.”
Bilbao was adamant that the options of a breakaway getting ahead before the final climb were minimal. “That’s not going to happen,” he said.
“There’ll be a big fight for the break but with the option of taking yellow on top of the stage win on the table, too, I think the race will be very tightly controlled.
“I think there’s a possibility of getting a win if you go on the Pike, but very few riders will be able to do that and I think the race will have to be very hard to be able to do that. Assuming there isn’t a really, really tight organisation in the group behind, one or two or three riders, a small group, can make it to the finish.”
The goal, he says, is to win stage 1 - pure and simple, and with one person in mind.
“During the year you maybe aim to try to win 20 races, and this is one of them, even if finally you only end up winning a couple a season," Bilbao said.
“But me and my team - we believe in our possibilities. There are riders who are better at this kind of climb than me, but none of them know it as well as I do and none of them will have the special motivation I have.
“I am going to try and use that and wring out every last drop of whatever chance I get and if I do do my race without making any mistakes, then I could end up raising my arms at the end of the stage. I want to believe in that possibility.”
Actually getting the win on Saturday, he said, was something he could not even imagine in his wildest dreams.
“But after everything that has happened with Gino - the situation has made us all want to win more than ever and we’ve got an even more special level of motivation than we thought we could have," he pointed out.
"It would be amazing to be able to dedicate that win to him and for me this would be the best scenario possible to able to win for him.”
However, as Bilbao pointed out, the memories of Mäder would continue long after the Tour’s start in the Basque Country had faded in the race’s rear-view mirror.
“Obviously as we are going to have the logo ‘Ride for Gino’, it’s not going to be just about these first stages, he is going to be with us during the whole Tour. The race number [61 - Ed.] is going to be for him and after the Tour we’ll always remember him as well.
“He was a special guy, not just as a cyclist. He was a very nice person and we could learn many good things from him. These kinds of guys leave something more than just a good palmares.”
And on Saturday, on his home roads, Bilbao will do his utmost to honour that.
