This feature first appeared in Procycling magazine. To subscribe, click here.
The 1994 Giro d’Italia saw the emergence of a truly brilliant stage racer, Evgeni Berzin, but the Russian followed up his pink jersey by falling out with his team and never hitting those heights again. Procycling asks where it all went wrong.
Growing up close to the Finnish border in Vyborg, Evgeni Berzin hadn’t needed to look far for a cycling role model. Viatcheslav Ekimov, four years his senior, had been a world and Olympic pursuit champion for the Soviet Union and then, when the Berlin Wall fell, he became a top professional in the west.
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Berzin had been dispatched to a Leningrad sports school at 14. Placed in the ‘care’ of a despotic old-school coach named Alexandre Kuznetsov, he won multiple world titles on the track. Like Ekimov he was a pursuiter par excellence but just like Ekimov he dreamed of riding the great stage races of Italy and France.
He set his sights on the road race at the 1992 Olympics, the biggest shop window of all. Kuznetzov, though, was having none of it. He had no time for Berzin’s naked ambition, much less for his professional aspirations. His job, he informed him, was to do precisely as he was told, keep his mouth firmly shut, and to deliver Mother Russia the track gold for which he was paid.
For seven years Berzin had been obliged to submit to his will but now, with travel restrictions lifted, he was at liberty to come and go as he saw fit. He told Kuznetzov to take a running jump and booked a flight to Italy for himself and Stella, his girlfriend. It was January 1992 and his very future was on the line.
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