For many of us, it is hard to imagine cycling without coffee. What would cycling be, after all, without the ever popular coffee stop. In fact, many of us would struggle to identify whether they cycle or drink coffee first.
“There is no cycling without coffee,” says Italian cycling legend Antonio Colombo, the longtime leader of both Columbus steel tubes and Cinelli cycles. “The link between coffee and cycling is firstly about brotherhood.”
Be it from a commercial perspective or a social one, coffee and cycling represent nothing short of a long love affair.
Image credit: Tutto Bici
Already in the late 1950s coffee manufacturers were attracted to the sport from a sponsoring perspective. There was of course the iconic Faema team, promoting the revolutionary espresso machines like the E 61. In the early 1960s riders like Classics specialist Rik Van Looy carried the team colors to glory winning the World Championships in 1960 and 1961. And then of course, a certain Eddy Merckx stormed to his first Tour de France victory at the end of the decade in 1969.
Other teams were less successful, but still left their mark. There was the Café de Colombia in the mid-1980’s, who gave the first generation of Colombian cyclists a taste of European racing. Led by gifted climbers like Lucho Herrera and Fabio Parra, the team had immense talent, although their rag-tag organisation often compromised their chances to shine.
“Café de Colombia got on board for a number of reasons. First they wanted to show the world that coffee was the country’s number one export and not some illicit drug,” Raphael Geminini says with a laugh. Geminiani, now 96, was the one-time teammate to Fausto Coppi, Louison Bobet and Jacques Anquetil, but he was also Café de Colombia’s first sports director back in 1986.
“I’ll never forget the way Herrera climbed. He reminded me of Coppi,” Geminiani remembers. “But the problem was that the Colombian’s had never raced in Europe. I’ll never forget the Tour de France that year. I rented a big house by the finish of the team time trial because the Colombians had no experience in that discipline and I wanted to give them a couple days to prepare. But they never showed up. And when the TTT came, well they finished dead last and three of Herrera’s teammates finished outside of the time cut. Herrera may have been a great climber but without a team he had no chance.”
Despite the disarray in the beginning, Café de…