Cycling Team Mapei
Mapei was a hugely popular and successful Italian based road bicycle racing team that was active between 1993 and 2002. Named after sponsoring firm Mapei who were an industrial company in Italy. From 2003 Mapei dropped their sponsorship and a new team was built on top of the old structure called Quick Step-Davitamon.Mapei was one of the strongest teams during the late 1990s, and ranked as the strongest UCI team for the whole period between 1994-2000 and during 2002.
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Dominant during the early season classics the team had the great Belgian and Italian classic specialists of the 1990s such as Andrea Tafi, Johan Museeuw, Michele Bartoli, Franco Ballerini under the guidance of Patrick Lefevre as directeur sportif and then manager. The team won Paris-Roubaix five times. Three times the team even had three riders in the first three places. In the 1996 edition, the sprint for the line was decided 10 miles from the finish when Directeur sportif Patrick Lefevere who was following the race in the team car talked with the owner of Mapei, Giorgio Squinzi, in Milan who said that Museeuw was to win the race. Gianluca Bortolami was second while Andrea Tafi was third. In 1998 Franco Ballerini won the race with over four minutes ahead of his two teammates Tafi and Wilfried Peeters and in 1999 Tafi won with an advantage of two minutes over teammates Peeters and Tom Steels. In the summer of 2000, Lefevre announced that the Belgian part of the Mapei team would be leaving the team to form a new team called Domo-Farm Frites which had Museeuw as team captain. As a result, there was an intense rivalry between the two teams.
The official names of the team changed depending as to what other co -sponsors were onboard. The team was known under the following names: Mapei (1993) Mapei-Clas , Mapei-GB (Not related to the united kingdom!), Mapei-Bricobi and finally Mapei-Quickstep.
Mapei was less dominating in the Grand Tours such as France, Spain and Italy. The only true stage race specialist was Tony Rominger, who won the 1994 Vuelta a España and the 1995 Giro d'Italia for the team. As Rominger focused on the Tour de France in 1996, Abraham Olano was given the leadership role at the Giro d'Italia in 1996. Olano took the maglia rosa but lost it in the mountains and during the Tour, Rominger lost time in the mountains. In latter years Paolo Bettini was Lefevre's most notable rider but in the end he had to settle as a one day specialist as well.
