The bike with which Miguel Induráin won the 1994 Tour is up for auction

Cycling is a great sport.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
20 April 2023 Thursday 07:00
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The bike with which Miguel Induráin won the 1994 Tour is up for auction

Cycling is a great sport. A category in which the protagonists are capable of pushing their bodies to the limit with the sole objective of beating their rivals and writing a line in the pedal history book.

Some, however, do not settle for one line and are capable of filling entire chapters with their exploits. The true myths of this sport, those that are part of the Olympus of cycling. Miguel Induráin can proudly say that he is one of those privileged and the possibility of being able to acquire one of his bicycles is to be able to acquire a little piece of his history.

Until April 23 it is possible to enter a bid to win the bicycle that Miguel Induráin himself used to win his fourth Tour de France in 1994. An opportunity that does not come every day and that will delight any collector.

That Tour was taken by the Navarrese faithful to his purest style: at the stopwatch and managing perfectly in the toughest mountains. One of the best time trial performances in memory allowed him to wear yellow on stage 9 and he did not let go of the leader's jersey until the end of the Tour.

The story of how I ended up at auction is also not lost. The bicycle was raffled by the Banesto bank, sponsor of the team in which Induráin was a member, once that Tour was finished. However, he did not abandon the box in which it was sent until 28 years later when Domingo Galarreta, son of the person who won that raffle, decided to auction off this unique item. As a curiosity, this man is the brother of Carlos Galarreta, a professional excicist... Who shared the peloton with Induráin!

The bike has the pertinent certificates of veracity and both Banesto and Pinarello confirmed that the bike at auction is the completely original one used by 'El Extraterrestre' in 1994.

At the time of writing this article, the bid is at 39,000 euros, an astronomical figure that should continue to rise as the experts at Catawiki, the portal where the auction is taking place, place its value between 50,000 and 75,000 euros. Of course, it is not a piece accessible to the vast majority, but it will surely become the jewel in the crown of the collector who acquires it.