Happy Birthday Big Mig. – 16.07.1964
- TdF Winner – 1991, ’92, ’93, ’94, ’95
- Giro d’Italia Winner – 1992, ’93
- World Time Trial Champion – 1995
- Hour Record Holder – 1994
- Olympic Gold Medallist – Time Trial – 1996
A monster of a man compared to most Grand Tour winners, Miguel ‘Big Mig’ Indurain won five Tours on the bounce, hardly pausing for a breather whilst also collecting 2 Giro d’Italia’s, an Hour Record and an Olympic gold medal in a career that utterly dominated the first half of the 1990’s. At 6’2″ (188cm) and 80+kg he was a freakish sight in the mountains where he would capably defend the positions his unsurpassable time-trialling ability had won him. Chastised for making the sport ‘boring’ and dodging the inevitable accusations of doping, Indurain remains a quixotic character within the sport. Not the clear-cut villain that many of his Tour-winning followers would become but never revered like so many of those who had gone before him. Dammed by his own success, his image nonetheless still has the power to stop you in your tracks and just marvel at the magnitude of man.
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