Yevgeny Valentinovich Bersin

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Yevgeny Bersin

Evgeni Walentinowitsch Bersin ( Russian Евгений Валентинович Берзин  /  Evgeni Walentinowitsch Bersin ; also Eugeni Berzin , Eugenio Berzin , Evgeni Berzin or Evgueni Berzin ; born June 3, 1970 in Vyborg ) is a former Russian cyclist .

amateur

Bersin first went through the Soviet cyclist school in Leningrad as a train driver . As a junior he became world champion in team pursuit in 1988 (with Dmitri Neljubin , Alexander Gonchenkov and Valeri Baturo). In the same year he was Soviet junior champion in the same discipline; He was able to achieve this title success in the following year with the amateurs .

Bersin had the first high point of his career in 1990 when he won both the individual pursuit and the team pursuit at the World Track Championships (in the same line-up as the juniors two years earlier) and finished fifth in the points race .

After these successes, Bersin concentrated on road cycling and became a member of the Moscow Army Sports Club CSKA . In 1993 he moved to the Italian amateur team Cuoril led by Emanuele Bombini and won the stage races Course de la Solidarité Olympique and Ruban Granitier Breton .

professional

Bombini founded the professional cycling team Mecair-Ballan in 1993 and hired Bersin for this team as well. Bersin stayed with this team, which changed names several times, until 1997.

In his first professional season, Yevgeny Bersin drove inconspicuously and only achieved second place at the Lombardy Week and won the mountain classification at the Tour of Great Britain . He contested the Giro d'Italia in 1993 as the domestics of captains Pyotr Ugrumov and Moreno Argentin and finished the tour in 90th place.

1994 was the peak of his career. Together with his teammates Argentin and Giorgio Furlan , Bersin dominated the Flèche Wallonne , where he had to give way to the two older ones on team orders. A few days later he won the classic Liège – Bastogne – Liège after a solo journey 1:37 minutes ahead of Lance Armstrong . At the Giro d'Italia, Bersin dethroned Miguel Indurain , whom he demonstrated to be superior on the mountain and in the time trial , and won three stages in addition to the Maglia Rosa and the Maglia Bianca .

However, the superiority of the team, which was now called Gewiss-Ballan, also fueled suspected doping . It also contributed to the fact that the team was looked after by the medical doctor Michele Ferrari , who played down the use of the blood doping agent EPO in an interview in 1994 , whereupon the team separated from him. In addition, in the course of a public prosecutor's investigation, it became known that, in a blood test on May 24, 1995, many of the team's drivers, including Bersin, had hematocrit levels over 50, which is not evidence, but an indication of blood doping.

Bersin himself also contributed to bringing unrest into the team. He isolated himself in the team with his remarks that he had won the Giro in 1994 "all by himself" and "without team support". A real feud developed with Ugrumov, like at the Giro d'Italia 1995 , when Bersin and Ugrumow attacked each other instead of the overall leader Toni Rominger . Nevertheless, they still came in second and third. Then Bersin tried to get out of the contract, which ran until the end of 1996, but lost a legal dispute over this. As a result of this conflict, he drove only two races after the Giro d'Italia in 1995.

Bersin was unable to meet the expectations raised by 1994. He finished the Giro d'Italia 1996 in tenth place. In the same year he was able to take over the yellow jersey on the first mountain stage of the Tour de France and extend his lead with a time trial victory the next day. But he lost the overall lead on the next section and finally fell back to 20th place. In the next few years it played no role in the overall ranking of the "Grand Tours" or in the classics.

Bersin was part of the Mobilvetta team for the Giro d'Italia 2000 , but was not allowed to start due to an increased hematocrit value and the resulting two-week safety lock . In May 2001 he ended his cycling career.

After the sport

After finishing his sporting career, Yevgeny Bersin opened a car dealership in his new home town of Broni (Province of Pavia , Lombardy , Italy) and organizes the Criterium Internazionale di Broni every year .

successes

1988
  • Soviet UnionSoviet Union Soviet junior champion - team pursuit
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997

Grand Tours placements

Grand Tour 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
Maglia Rosa Giro d'Italia 90 1 2 10 20th - 52 DNS
Yellow jersey Tour de France - - DNF 20th DNF 25th - -
Golden jersey Vuelta a España - - - - - - - -
Legend: DNF: did not finish , abandoned or withdrawn from the race due to timeout. DNS: did not start , reported but not started.

Teams

Individual evidence

  1. a b cycling4fans.de: 1994/1995: The Gewiss-Ballan era accessed on January 18, 2014
  2. Evgeni Berzin: Russian Roulette. cyclingnews.com, January 9, 2016, accessed January 9, 2016 .
  3. sport.sky.it of May 5, 2011: Berzin: l'ex Tsar del Giro che ha preferito le quattro ruote
  4. ricerca.gelocal.it of May 22, 2005: A Broni tutti i big: il 31 la parata di stelle

Web links and sources