In the final paragraph of his fine book on the 1978 race, Robin Magowan wrote:
“The Tour de France may not be to all tastes. Some may well prefer their
heroics more intimate; with Calypso in the cave, or the witch Circe, than
before the walls of Troy. But in a world where faces are no longer launching
their thousand ships and knights aren’t charging across cloths of gold, one
can be grateful to our press overlords for having provided us with a bona
fide 20th-century epic.”
Magowan’s book was written to commemorate a race that was then celebrating its
75th anniversary. He offered us a picture of the Tour as we wish to see it;
noble, heroic and epic: an event that transcends the ordinary and shows the
human spirit in its boundless potential. Countless times over the last 25
years, the Tour has seemed the greatest race.
It was a Saturday afternoon in July 1992. The race to Sestrière was over four
Alpine passes and was fought under a scorching sun. Soon after the start, a
number of riders accelerated away from the pack. Claudio Chiappucci was the
strongest of the breakaways and his boyish enthusiasm galvanised those
around him. That was until they hit the mountains.
Then, on the steeply rising roads, Chiappucci’s infernal pace hurt his
comrades and, fearful they would slow him down, he burnt them off. It
enlivened the normally quiet hours before lunch but with another 150km
kilometres to race before the finish, Chiappucci could have simply ridden
his bike over the edge of a cliff and got it over quickly. His was evidently
a suicide mission.
Halfway through the stage, the Banesto teammates of raceleader Miguel Indurain
coalesced near the head of the peloton and organised themselves into a
posse. They took turns at the front while Indurain sheltered behind, saving
his energy for when it was needed. Each Banesto rider gave what he had
until, lemming-like, each one dropped away.
By the time the last one surrendered, Indurain had been towed to within
striking distance of the lone leader. On the final slopes of the climb to
Sestriere, the big Spaniard could have called out and commended his rival on
his courage. Indurain didn’t need to speak, Chiappucci could feel his
wretched presence and the overwhelming sense of futility. Six and a half
hours only for it to end like this.
Then the most extraordinary thing happened. On that final climb, the tifosi
screamed and chanted. “Chiappa! Chiappa!” and “Forza! Forza!” Chiappucci had
always played to the gallery and for one last time he would do so again. His
spirit soared, he found energy where there was none and he accelerated. He
felt no pain, only the thrill of glory. Cooked, Indurain watched him go.
As the gap widened, there was a burst of sustained applause from the 500 or so
journalists who had followed Chiappucci’s every pedal-turn on the big screen
in the salle de presse. At the end there were tears in the eyes of
wrinkled men who thought they would never again cry at a sporting event. At
that moment you were part of a bona fide epic.
It is why the game is worth the candle. When the first of the 198 competitors
in this year’s race shoots down the starting ramp close to the Eiffel Tower
on Saturday, it will be an important event in the year’s sporting calendar.
The Tour is 100 years old and this year’s race is as much a celebration of
history as a battle between today’s best.
Lost sometimes in the natural preoccupation with the race’s brutality is the
intelligence that informs the strategies of those than can win. For this is
at once bloody combat and chess on wheels.
When Pedro Delgado broke away from Stephen Roche on the climb to La Plagne in
1987, the key question in Roche’s mind was when to react. Go immediately and
risk losing everything, or wait until the last moment and fly on the rush of
adrenalin? Roche did not move until a little after the last moment. There
was just 4km to go when he countered. So near to the finish, he rode
furiously until the line then dropped into unconsciousness. Oxygen and the
scent of a famous victory revived him.
Jacques Goddet, the head of the Tour, wrote of Roche’s exploit in L’Equipe:
“It was the day when he showed he had the heart and character of a true
champion: one who succeeds in going beyond himself and so reaches the zenith
of sporting performance.”
The Tour has always demanded as much from a man’s mind as his spirit. In 1986,
what made the race riveting was the callous way Bernard Hinault played with
Greg LeMond’s mind. They were teammates, and Hinault had promised he would
support the American, but as soon as the race began, the Frenchman’s
competitive streak annihilated whatever loyalty he felt towards LeMond.
It was then that the story-line twisted and turned in unimaginable directions.
Hinault dominated the race through the first 10 days, and after the first
mountainous stage, he led by four and a half minutes. The race was over
because Hinault knew how to defend an advantage and would be protected by
his natural caution. But the very next day, the Breton attacked recklessly
and before the final climb to Superbagnères in the Pyrenees, his lead was
almost nine minutes.
He realised there was nothing left; nothing except the helplessness of
exhaustion. And how he paid for the madness. LeMond and others passed him on
the climb to the finish and he lost almost his entire lead. On the next
mountain stage LeMond overtook his teammate and that should have been it:
one champion had gone, another had taken his place. Instead, the race then
took on a different character.
Though his legs were weary, Hinault’s spirit was indestructible. He talked of
fighting on, of testing his teammate’s mettle in the final time trial and,
by pressing him all the way to Paris, he would make sure LeMond was a worthy
successor.
As a justification for betrayal, it was formidable, and Hinault became more
popular in defeat than he had ever been in victory.
Unnerved by his rival’s trickery, LeMond crashed in the time trial and just
about made it to Paris. He was the first English speaker to win the Tour:
for him it had been an unnerving, almost harrowing, experience. For us, it
had been heroic. Beaten by his own crazed ambition, the old champion still
left an indelible mark on his final Tour. He retired soon afterwards. Second
place was bearable, once.
And so this epic old race gripped us. Founded by Henri Desgrange in 1903 and
interrupted only by two world wars, the vision for the race was crystallised
in the founder’s book La Tête et Les Jambes (The Head and
The Legs).
You couldn’t win the race, nor could you make it to Paris simply by brute
strength alone. An old Belgian cycling journalist, Harry Van den Bremt, once
told a story from the Tour of 1973 or ’74.
They were on the Col du Tourmalet and Van den Bremt was driving Het
Nieuwsblad’s car, weaving his way past the stragglers towards the back
of the peloton. Halfway up the climb, he was informed over the race radio
that a rider had caught the aerial at the rear of the car and was being
towed. Looking back, Van den Bremt saw that it was his compatriot, Eric
Leman, who was one of the best one-day riders of his generation.
Van den Bremt accelerated to shake Leman off but still the rider clung on. The
race referee screamed his disapproval at Van den Bremt over the race radio,
and the journalist shouted at the rider to stop, but for five or six
kilometres Leman held on. Then he had to let go. Van den Bremt waited by the
finish, determined to let the rider have the sharp edge of his tongue.
“He arrived in the boot of the autobus, you know we call it ‘the bus’, the
bunch of guys who are always behind,” explained Van den Bremt. “I said,
‘Look, you mustn’t ever do that again’. He showed me his hand from the
aerial. There was a deep wound across the palm, just like you had cut it
with a knife. I saw that and I could not say anything more.”
You may say Leman was cheating but it was understandable, almost admirable.
Unlike all that we have learnt over the past five years.
There were signposts along the way but no one fully knew what lay at the heart
of the Tour de France until customs officials stopped Willy Voet’s car near
the Franco-Belgian border in early July 1998. Along with the courage and the
endurance, there were the drugs that lessened the pain and helped you
recover. What happened in the Nineties was that the drugs improved and
became too damned good.
“The difference,” said Voet, who had helped riders to dope for more than 25
years, “was that the old drugs helped a rider to maximise his own potential.
The new drugs transformed the rider.”
The era of blood-boosting drugs had arrived and all sport, not just cycling,
suffers like it never has in the past.
The key to cycling’s difficulty is the uncertainty about what we see and who
we can trust. Riders have died in unexplained circumstances and there is a
belief that many of the dopers will experience serious health problems in
middle age. How heroic were the old exploits? Chiappucci has not enjoyed
good health since his retirement. Roche turned up in Professor Francesco
Conconi’s EPO file and Hinault admitted three years ago that he didn’t find
anything wrong with a rider correcting “a hormonal imbalance” caused by his
exertions in a race as gruelling as the Tour. LeMond, a three-time winner of
the Tour, has become disillusioned with continental professional cycling.
Into this changed world came a new champion, Lance Armstrong. Here was a man
who recovered from life-threatening cancer to win the world’s toughest race.
Not once but four consecutive times and now, on the Tour’s 100th
anniversary, Armstrong is expected to win for the fifth time and so join the
race’s most illustrious champions; Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard
Hinault and Miguel Indurain. What better for the race than the American’s
restorative powers? Except that the new champion has not convinced everyone
that he represents a complete departure from the old world.
He continues to work with Dr Michele Ferrari, an Italian sports doctor who is
currently defending himself against police charges that he has doped
cyclists. As Armstrong comfortably saw off his rivals in last year’s Tour,
he was subjected to numerous taunts of “dope, dope” from fans on the
mountainsides.
There is a greater awareness now than ever before of the damage caused by
doping. How determined the authorities are to rid cycling of its cheating
culture remains to be proven. What is certain is that the battle is far from
won.
It is a fight that must be won. In all its imperfections, the Tour remains one
of the world’s greatest races. It may now be the only sporting epic in the
21st century. Those who claim it is not possible without doping utter one of
the great lies.
Of course it is possible and, indeed, it would be a more human and more
engaging race if it was slower and the survivors got to the end on their own
steam.
Many riders have done it without drugs and some continue to do so. There is a
young French climber, David Moncoutié, in whom it is easy to believe. He
finished an outstanding 13th in last year’s race and it will be informative
to see if he can do better this time.
Whatever else, there has to be a future for talented and idealistic sportsmen
and for a race that can inspire them.
