Perico Delgado

Pedro Delgado Robledo (born 15 April 1960), also known as Perico, is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer. He won the 1988 Tour de France, as well as the Vuelta a España in 1985 and 1989. Delgado is 171 centimetres tall (5 ft 7-1/2 in) and used to weigh 64 kilograms (141 lb). He was a good climber, with an aggressive style, making cycling a spectacle, which gained him fans.

On one hand, there were days when he was extremely successful attacking. On the other, he occasionally suffered from big losses of time due to mistakes or strokes of bad luck. He was also a good time-trialist until the nineties, when it became difficult for him to adapt to technical changes in the time-trial bicycles. The ending of the 1987 Tour de France and the 1985 Vuelta a España and the whole 1989 Tour are among his more memorable participations in major competitions.

Delgado tested positive for the known masking agent Probenecid during the 1988 tour. The drug, which had been placed on the International Olympic Committee's list of banned substances in January of that year, was not banned by the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (it was a month later); as a consequence, Delgado was allowed to continue racing and was not charged with any doping offence.

Delgado was such a consistently strong rider that he finished in the top 10 of eighteen Grand Tours. He works now as a sports commentator for Televisión Española during important cycling events. Delgado inspired the name of the Scottish indie-rock band The Delgados. Delgado took part in the Tour de France eleven times. During his first participation, when he was 23, he rose to second place in the overall classification after the 17th stage, before falling back later in the event.

From then on, Delgado was determined to achieve victory in this competition. In 1983, the Reynolds team participated in the Tour for the first time. Delgado was a young rider, and Ángel Arroyo was the star of the team. That year the Tour had four individual time trials (ITT), plus the prologue, and six mountainous stages, so Delgado had enough opportunities to show his talent.

After the 17th stage Delgado was second in the overall classification, 1´08" behind Laurent Fignon, another 23-year-old rider competing in the Tour for the first time. Unfortunately, Delgado drank a spoilt milk shake that caused him a stomach cramp during the next stage, ending in Morzine. He lost 25 minutes 34 seconds that day, and his first chance of winning the Tour.

Delgado ended that Tour in 15th position, 25 minutes 44 seconds behind Fignon. It was not the only setback he had in this race. On the contrary, in different years he suffered the fracture of a clavicle, the death of his mother during a stage, the communication of a "positive" result in a dope test that finally proved false (but after it was filtered to the media), gastroenteritis, and a tremendous mistake that led him to lose seven minutes in the first two days of the tour of 1989.

... Source: Article "Pedro Delgado" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.