Perico Delgado

Pedro Delgado Robledo (born 15 April 1960), also known as Perico, is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer. He won the 1988 Tour de France, as well as the Vuelta a España in 1985 and 1989. Delgado is 171 centimetres tall (5 ft 7-1/2 in) and used to weigh 64 kilograms (141 lb). He was a good climber, with an aggressive style, making cycling a spectacle, which gained him fans. On one hand, there were days when he was extremely successful attacking. On the other, he occasionally suffered from big losses of time due to mistakes or strokes of bad luck. He was also a good time-trialist until the nineties, when it became difficult for him to adapt to technical changes in the time-trial bicycles. The ending of the 1987 Tour de France and the 1985 Vuelta a España and the whole 1989 Tour are among his more memorable participations in major competitions. Delgado tested positive for the known masking agent Probenecid during the 1988 tour. The drug, which had been placed on the International Olympic Committee's list of banned substances in January of that year, was not banned by the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (it was a month later); as a consequence, Delgado was allowed to continue racing and was not charged with any doping offence. Delgado was such a consistently strong rider that he finished in the top 10 of eighteen Grand Tours. He works now as a sports commentator for Televisión Española during important cycling events. Delgado inspired…