It is an iconic image from one of cycling’s most evocative races. Three riders from the Mapei-GB team raise their arms in triumph as they roll over the finish line, almost three minutes ahead of their closest rivals. Winner Johan Museeuw smiles and half-turns to his teammates Gianluca Bortolami and Andrea Tafi.
Mapei’s emphatic performance at the 1996 Paris-Roubaix was a stark expression of their Spring Classics dominance during the late 1990s. After firing a 21-man group away soon after the diabolical Arenberg Forest sector, the Italian super-team tamed one of the sport’s toughest and most capricious races with a long-distance, three-man move. “We’ve performed a miracle,” sports director Fabrizio Fabbri said at the finish.
