Giovanni Battaglin

Giovanni Battaglin (born July 22, 1951 in Marostica ) is a former Italian cyclist . His greatest career success was the double victory at the Vuelta a España and the Giro d'Italia in 1981.

Career

Battaglin didn't start cycling until he was 18. Within a short time he was racing for one of the best Italian amateur teams and in 1972 he won the Giro d'Italia Dilettanti . Battaglin turned down offers from well-known professional teams in order to switch to the professional paddock together with his previous team in 1973 under the name Jolly Ceramica for a quarter of the salary he would have received from other racing teams.

On his Giro debut in 1973 , he drew attention to himself on stage eight, when he was the last to follow an attack by Eddy Merckx . He finished his first Grand Tour in third overall. After 1974 finished sixth overall, he was wearing at the 1975 Giro d'Italia in the meantime the pink jersey of leader, however, it lost twice, once after a defect and a second time after a break in a mountain time trial . Left on his own, he lost another ten minutes on a stage in the Ligurian coastal mountains and was only 18th in the overall standings, while his team-mate Fausto Bertoglio was the overall winner.

He had to give up the subsequent Tour de France in 1975 , was often ill in the following years and was therefore unable to build on his earlier results. After the Jolly team was closed, Battaglin switched to Inoxpran in 1978 . Although he had to give up the Giro d'Italia 1978 after a bronchitis , he won three mountain stages in a row in the following Tour de Suisse . He finished the Tour de France 1979 as a mountain classification winner and sixth overall. At the UCI Road World Championships in 1979 he was brought down in the top group in the finish sprint.

After a successful year in 1980, in which he was third overall in the Giro d'Italia , he planned to contest the Vuelta a España in 1981 in preparation for the Giro d'Italia , which was immediately following at that time , which meant 7,300 kilometers of competition in less than seven weeks drive. In the sparsely occupied Tour of Spain, he got increasingly in shape and took over the overall lead after a time trial victory. So he won the race intended as a preparation. After a victory on the 19th stage, he took over the overall lead of the Giro d'Italia on the extremely difficult 20th stage, using the prototype of a triple chainring. He won the Tour of Italy after the Spain tour.

At the end of the 1984 season, Battaglin ended his active cycling career and founded the Battaglin Cicli bicycle manufacturer .

Cyclist Enrico Battaglin , who is not related to Giovanni Battaglin, is also born in Marostica .