In 1986, four teams rode the Tour in Etxeondo kit: Orbea, Fagor, Kas and Reynolds — two based in Gipuzkoa, one in Álava and one in Navarra.

“Marketing has changed now,” says Paco Rodrigo. “Back then the most important thing was putting jerseys on pro teams’ backs and winning races. We had everything here: strong riders, strong companies willing to invest, big signings… We had so many cyclists winning it was hard to keep track. I remember Jean-Luc Vandenbroucke. He was riding for Kas — at first I barely knew who he was — and suddenly he was winning time trial after time trial, even taking the leader’s jersey in the Vuelta prologue.”

In 1988, Etxeondo would win the Tour with Pedro Delgado and the Vuelta with Sean Kelly, but those victories didn’t come easily. Paco devoted endless hours to perfecting Kelly’s shorts. The Irishman suffered recurrent boils — more accurately, abscesses — and in 1987 he had abandoned the Vuelta while leading with four stages to go, the pain of sitting on the saddle having become too much to bear.

“People say boils, but it was an abscess,” explains Mendiburu. An abscess is a gland infection that produces pus, swelling and fever. When it occurs in the perineum, sitting on a bike saddle becomes agony.

Kelly had the 1987 Vuelta all but wrapped up, Mendiburu recalls. He was half a minute behind the climber Lucho Herrera and seemed certain to take the lead in the Valladolid time trial. The day before, his perineal sores worsened and he endured 220 kilometres of torture. The papers reported that Kelly rode up to the race doctors’ car asking for a steak filet to place on the inflamed area, but it was Sunday and no butcher was open.

“It wasn’t a filet,” Mendiburu says firmly. “Kelly put on a chunk of sirloin that I bought myself in Ponferrada.”

That night the Vuelta doctors lanced the infection to drain it and reduce the swelling, but it wasn’t enough.

“It was hugely swollen, bright red — awful. The next day he rode the time trial with a steak in his shorts. He suffered terribly. He finished second and took the leader’s jersey. But we knew he couldn’t go on. I called Don Luis Knörr, the Kas owner, and told him we had the Vuelta in our hands but Kelly would abandon the next day. I told Kelly to start the stage as normal to avoid the swarm of journalists, and after ten kilometres he climbed into my car.”

Paco remembers Kelly always had trouble in exactly the same spot.

“I made him special shorts. I built chamois pads with slightly thicker cushioning around the area that flared up, so there was no direct pressure. In the 1988 Vuelta he had some issues again, but thanks to those chamois it didn’t get worse — and he won.”

Paco knew Kelly’s, ahem, perineum down to the millimetre.

“Of course,” he laughs. “I even kept the pattern. Somewhere I’ve still got the template of Kelly’s backside.”

That forensic attention to detail wasn’t reserved for only team leaders.

“If a rider came to me with a problem, I’d put in whatever hours were needed to fix it. Didn’t matter if he was a captain or a domestique. Shorts are delicate. One tiny imperfection can ruin a race. Everyone has their issues and their quirks. Some wanted huge chamois they didn’t really need, and I had to convince them otherwise. It’s personal. Each rider needs the right solution for him.”

And that meant a lot of work.

“Imagine the year we had four teams at the Tour. We had to fine-tune the shorts of forty riders for the biggest race of the season, make sure none of them had problems over three weeks — in the heat, with the punishment they took…”

Txomin Perurena jokes that Kelly’s problems came from clenching harder than anyone.

“I was his director at Lotus-Festina in 1992. At Tirreno–Adriatico, Kelly would finish a stage, get a quick massage, then go back out to ride extra kilometres to build endurance for Milan–Sanremo the following Saturday. And he won it — at nearly 36.”

“I remember a Critérium International,” Paco adds. “In the morning stage Kelly came in with a group of five or six — Roche, Fignon, Bernard, the very best — and beat them in the sprint. While he was getting a massage in the car he told Mendiburu, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve saved energy for this afternoon’s time trial. You’ll see.’ That confidence impressed me. Think of the guys he was up against. But he was certain. And he delivered.”

“He was extremely professional,” Mendiburu confirms. “Quiet. Humble. Attentive.”

In that remarkable 1988 season — with the Tour and Vuelta winners both wearing Etxeondo — the Giro d’Italia encountered an epic, infamous snowstorm on the Gavia Pass. Pedro Delgado, tenth that day, doesn’t believe the clothing was inadequate. The problem was the extreme conditions: 2,621 metres above sea level, five degrees below zero, heavy snowfall blanketing the road, followed by a 25-kilometre descent with wind-chill close to minus thirty.

“We knew it might snow,” Delgado recalls. “Early on there was talk of neutralising the stage, but we carried on. I started the Gavia with neoprene gloves — new at the time, very good — but they were too warm, so I put them in my pocket. Higher up it got colder and colder. I reached the top shaking. I stopped. The Reynolds staff gave me a bottle of hot tea and one of those Etxeondo thermal jackets with a hood — very good jackets. I tried to put the gloves back on but couldn’t. My hands were frozen, I couldn’t get my fingers in. So I went down without gloves. I don’t even know how I managed to brake into the corners. We already had good winter clothing then — neoprene, thermal garments — but you can’t prepare for conditions like that. Maybe you learn that soigneurs should bring bigger gloves so you can slide frozen hands inside. But that wasn’t normal.”

“We were already making thermal shorts and base layers then,” Paco explains. “We used a special hollow-fibre fabric — an advance in thermoregulation. I always made friends with textile engineers. I found the only people producing those fibres and bought from them. When they stopped and were about to dismantle the machines, I’d buy them myself so we could keep making the fabric. We also used water-repellent fabrics. We sold huge numbers of cold- and wet-weather garments. We were always alive to technical advances.”