GINO MÄDER THE FUN REPORT
Long before he would take a bow, clad in the white jersey, on the podium in the shadow of the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, long before he would rise in clever, frenetic fashion to fifth on GC in the Vuelta a España, Gino Mäder rolled to a halt at the foot of a different cathedral in Burgos, the evening light pooling shadows in its high-Gothic tendrils and spirals. Big disc wheel slowing, whomp, whomp, whomp, he stopped when called and coughed into his fist from the dry heat.
“You cut your hair,” I observed. We had never spoken before, and this was an easy opener, the absence of Mäder’s familiar head of afro-like curls. He laughed.
“I had to do something to help with the heat.”
“Did it help?”
He shook his head. “No.” A pause. “Though maybe I will profit on the last stage.” The time trial. Even in the beginning, Mäder was thinking about what could be wrestled from the long days of the Vuelta. But at the moment, Gino Mäder stood in the mixed zone in Burgos, complaining about the heat and insisting, with a characteristic intensity, that he was no more than a domestique for Mikel Landa. However even then, I – and I suspect many others as well – knew that the young Swiss, 24, coming off his first grand tour stage win in the Giro, and a stage in the Tour de Suisse – had something up his sleeve. Perhaps more than any of us expected.
Gino Mäder was born in Flawil, a small village in the east of Switzerland, to a family of cyclists. A middle child out of four, he started cycling in his teens, following both parents, including a father who once wanted to become a pro until life got in the way. Part
