The Amstel Gold Race signals the start of the Ardennes Classics, and the first signs of who’s looking good for the Giro. Raced over the hills, dales, and forests of south eastern Holland, the course selects its own worthy winner. Twenty years ago it was Mauro Gianetti who was making the news.Gianetti rode for Polti back then and had just pulled-off the biggest win of his career, in the 1995 Liege-Bastogne-Liege – LBL was the week before the Amstel in those days. Some said that his win owed more to craftiness and luck than talent; Gianetti would soon dispel that notion.PEZ: Tell us about the Amstel, Mauro.Mauro: It’s a special race, the climbs aren’t so hard but there are a lot of them, the roads are small and the route constantly changes direction. It’s a very difficult parcours to take-in if you haven’t ridden it before, it demands 100% concentration.There’s no one place, like La Redoute in Liege or Arenberg in Roubaix where you know that a decisive move will be made; it could go anywhere.The final selection came down to Cassani and Gianetti.PEZ: That was a real purple patch, winning Liege and Amstel in the same week.Mauro: I knew both of the races very well; I had several top ten finishes in both of them prior to winning. It was a special period in my life; I had great form and the experience it takes to win races over these distances. Over 200 kilometres and especially 250, it tends...
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