We Were Young and Carefree (27 page)

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Authors: Laurent Fignon

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I’m not entirely sure that everyone was happy about that. During the six day at the Bercy stadium in Paris, I was an actor in a rather pathetic media storm. The sports minister, Roger Bambuck, had just put through a new anti-doping law which permitted random, unannounced drug tests. During the six day all the riders suspected that there might well be one of the tests – there was no problem about that – but we were outraged when a camera crew from television station TF1 appeared in order to film the actions of the federation doctor, Gabriel Dollé, who had been appointed to carry out the tests. The pictures were being taken without the riders being aware of it but with the support of the minister who doubtless wanted to get the publicity. For the first time in doping history television cameras were going to be allowed into the medical room to film a drug test being carried out; it was a violation of the riders’ privacy. We were disgusted and made up our minds that something had to be done.
In passing, I should mention that I didn’t have a cosy relationship with Bambuck. It was based on what each of us had said in the press about the other. After I had tested positive at Eindhoven, the sports minister had spoken about it and referred to me as ‘the poor lad’. That hurt. And in keeping with my character I responded: ‘If you don’t know the full story, keep your mouth shut.’ Of course he should have kept his mouth shut, even though he was the minister of sport, rather than giving lectures that were barely worthy of primary schoolchildren.
I’ve never liked spite. Or voyeurism. What’s more, Jacques Goddet himself, who was the director of the Bercy Palais Omnisports, where the race was held, had protested virulently against the presence of cameras enticed by the scent of piss. Goddet had told the TF1 journalists: ‘This is a private place. With or without authorisation from the minister you will not transmit any pictures of what the cycling federation doctor is about to do. You are welcome here to take pictures of anything else. But as far as this is concerned, it’s a firm, definite, “no”. You will not make a spectacle of the riders.’ There was no getting round Goddet. His words settled the issue.
It was almost 1 a.m. On the track, the riders were still racing a Madison. I had been leading since the start of the session. Along with nine other riders including Urs Freuler (my teammate at the six), Mottet, Etienne De Wilde, Doyle and others, I was requested, the instant we got off our bikes, to go to the medical room in the basement where Gabriel Dollé had set up shop. The television cameras had decamped under the joint pressure of the cyclists, Goddet, and the French Cycling Federation president François Alaphilippe.
We were all given an hour to turn up at the test. As you can imagine, I didn’t turn up until the very last minute of the sixty. To be precise, it was 1.50 a.m. by the time I opened the medical room door. In the chamber decorated with fine old posters, Dr Dollé tried to talk but I just immersed myself in a paper I had brought along for the purpose, and kept my mouth shut. I had decided to give myself all the time in the world. And a bit more: I was prepared to drag it out to the end of the night, pretending that I was not ready to piss in the bottle.
Well after 3 a.m., Dollé began to sigh. As soon as I saw him nodding off, I yelled, ‘Stay awake or I might flick the control.’ It was very late – or very early – when I decided to fill the little flask. Dawn was breaking as I went home.
I had absolutely nothing against the random test, but it was more than I could manage to endure this pathetic media circus. It was not a matter of prevention but repression for show. The fight against doping didn’t justify absolutely anything. But we had seen nothing yet, either in terms of doping practices or ways of fighting the cheats.
CHAPTER 29
THE LEADER AND THE DOORMAT
Years of bizarre goings-on were now stretching out in front of me. I was not aware of it, or rather I didn’t want to know. I refused to allow myself to be convinced of it. I don’t have any particular memories of the process of ageing, of the gradual decline of the exceptional athlete who had just got over a sports injury which would have killed off many men’s careers. Nonetheless, the gradual descent to the ‘end of my career’ had begun. I was certainly well aware of that.
There was no great upset at the end of our partnership with Système U, who had been working with Cyrille Guimard and me for four long years. We had been fully aware that a change was on the way, and well before the start of the 1990 season the incoming sponsor, Castorama, was already part of the furniture. We knew who our new backer would be before the 1989 Tour had even started.
As for Système U, its directors had plenty to be pleased about. In 1986 the recognition figure for the firm was zero: back then, everyone had believed they were a make of glue not a supermarket. By the time our time together ended, the figure had gone up to forty per cent. The impact on the company’s image had been massive and the sponsors had no complaints about deciding to put money into cycling.
In the build-up to the 1990 season we dreamed up a jersey design together for Castorama that resembled a set of overalls and was cunningly similar to the outfits worn by the shop assistants in France’s leading DIY chainstores. The idea behind the jerseys was something that would be copied elsewhere in cycling. The Castorama head Jean-Hugues Loyez was in ecstasies: what’s more, sociologically, this was a perfect time to promote the concept of DIY among French homeowners. In a few months, Castorama had a huge breakthrough in public awareness. We were the finest team in France. I was still number one in the world rankings. And the Fignon–Guimard tandem was still drawing media fire.
However, there was one unfortunate episode which cooled our relationship – initially a fantastic one – with M. Loyez. Officially, we had sold Castorama all of the display space that was available on our racing kit. Or at least that was how they had interpreted our discussions. Cyrille Guimard decided that it wasn’t quite like that. The day when we showed them the jerseys and shorts, you should have seen the look on the Castorama representatives’ faces when they discovered that we had, of course, maintained our working relationship with Raleigh, whose name figured on the shorts. Guimard had never informed them. I’m not sure that he had dared take the risk. It was crazy. This was playing with fire.
Presented with a fait acccompli, the Castorama worthies presumably believed that we had pulled a fast one on them. It meant that from the very start, even before a wheel had turned in competition, their confidence in us was undermined. From then on the relationship was always an honest one but they were suspicious about us, and whenever they had to decide about something they would look at it twice before giving the go-ahead. Guimard’s lack of transparency perfectly reflected his state of mind at the time. Insidiously, the ties that bound us were being stretched a little more every day. The gaps between conversations became wider and – more worryingly in my view – there was a collapse of the mutual trust that we call ‘friendship’, the curious alchemy between two human beings that allows them to talk about anything at any hour of the day or night, without restraint or calculation. He and I were entering the dark tunnel of disagreement. I still had no idea how far it would go.
Another event led to more upset than might have been expected: Cyrille Guimard got rid of Guy Gallopin, Alain’s brother who had been oiling the cogs of the entire organisation for two years, showing a mix of altruism and competence no matter what arose. As soon as he left, there was a resurgence of the logistical problems that we had experienced in 1986 and 1987, in exactly the same areas. All this annoyed me hugely but as soon as I wanted to pour out my feelings to Guimard he evaded the issue and refused to listen.
We had an excellent start in our new colours, which were easily picked out in the peloton. Gérard Rué won the Tour of the Mediterranean and I finished Paris – Nice in a decent fourth place. The season looked as if it was going to be like the one before: I couldn’t hope for better. The only problem was that my grip on Milan–San Remo didn’t last, unfortunately, in spite of the care I took over my preparation. I trained in exactly the same way as I had in the previous two years but the Italians wanted my domination of the race to end and they cooked up a rather nasty surprise for us at the very start of the race. While I was lurking deep in the back of the bunch as I always did, a vast group escaped at the front of the race. It wasn’t the traditional early suicide break but a mini-peloton in its own right including several major players and race favourites. Our attempts to get back on terms were in vain. I never saw the front of the race again. Gianni Bugno, the young starlet of Italian cycling, was the winner and a whole country breathed a sigh of relief.
And so did I, because a week later I was winning again, at the two-day, three-stage Critérium International, a race I had already dominated as a new professional in 1982. It was a race full of attacks, from every side, and I owed the win to my experience and consistency, because I managed to salvage the overall title in spite of not winning a stage. It was Castorama’s second prestigious win in a few weeks, but it was to be my last victory in a major stage race: how could I have imagined at the time that such a thing could be possible?
Because something was not quite right with me. What was it? For example, at the Tour of Flanders in 1990, the weather was glorious and I was in flying form, so I made a colossal effort to get across to a breakaway group. But no sooner had I come up to them than they all immediately showed me that they had no desire to cooperate in keeping the move going. I didn’t understand their thinking and lost my temper. A few years previously I would have tried to ride them all off my wheel and it wouldn’t have made any difference apart from tiring me out a little. This time I reacted in a different way. I was disgusted by their collective lack of drive, which I perceived as having something to do with a massive change taking place in the sport, and I got off my bike. I just quit. I no longer saw any place for me among colleagues with a code of conduct in which honour and sacrifice were old-fashioned eccentricities. This little episode left its mark on me.
From that day on, there is almost nothing to write about the rest of the 1990 season, so catastrophically did it unfold. I came out of the Classics season completely washed up – twenty-seventh in Paris–Roubaix for example – I came close to coming down with pleurisy, and I set off in the Tour of Italy wearing race number I with a mindset that was nothing like what I might have hoped for. In total contrast to the same period the year before, I was desperately seeking some trace of something to cling to in my own shadow. Things were as bad as they could be. And from the first day, even though I didn’t feel in particularly bad shape – far from it – I still lost ground on the future winner, Gianni Bugno: 29sec in the prologue time trial and all of 47sec on the very first climb, Vesuvius. But worse still, the bad luck that had spared me a little in 1989 was determined to cross my path again and have its merry way with me.
On the fifth stage from Sora to Teramo, after exactly 150km as the race went through the Apennines, many of the bunch were caught by surprise as the race went through a tunnel. It was pitch dark. I could vaguely hear the noise of braking, dull thuds and crashes, then after flying though the void – I could see nothing at all – I landed on the tarmac without any idea what was going on, coming down heavily on one buttock. It was dark and there was shouting from all round me. I got up with my thigh covered in blood and I could tell from the pain that was paralysing the whole of my lower back that I had done some real damage. I got back on the bike and finished the stage but the truth was like a kick in the teeth. I had dislocated my pelvis. The pain never let up and four days later on the ninth stage, I quit in thick fog on the Tyrrhenian coast. The bunch didn’t wait for me: they were already a long way ahead of where I was.
This was a bad injury and the people around me were worried. I remember Alain Gallopin tried to reassure me when I returned to Paris. He kept the world off my back and showed the patience of a saint in trying to stop anything getting on my nerves. But my morale was low. I didn’t say much to anyone. Nothing was working out as I had wanted and after this latest crash my body refused to do what I asked of it for several weeks. Was it ever going to give me any respite after that?
When I arrived at the start of the 1990 Tour at Futuroscope, a theme park entirely devoted to modernity and new technology, that opened three years earlier, I was a tired man, physically and mentally. I had few illusions about what was coming. Thierry Marie gave the team a win in the prologue time trial of course, and I was a decent fifteenth. Then the fun began. There are cycling specialists who expound the theory that the ‘weakest’ cyclists in the Tour ‘fall more often’. They have no idea. All that I remember is that I simply wasn’t strong mentally. And when I ended up on the tarmac again, on the third stage to Nantes, with a nasty knock on the calf this time, I felt as if injustice was singling me out like lightning striking a lone tree. I said nothing. I just pondered my physical misery, and gave short shrift to anyone who wanted to feel sorry for me and expected me to bemoan my fate.
But I still had to face reality. The next day between Nantes and Mont St-Michel I couldn’t avoid getting trapped when the bunch split after a massive crash. I lost another 20sec and any chance of winning the Tour was now just a distant illusion. Then came the
coup de grâce
: I admit it was more mental than physical. Between Avranches and Rouen a dreary rain was falling, the kind that dulls all your hopes. The bunch, for some bizarre reason, was going like hell, going faster all the time, one attack after another. I wasn’t really there. The pain in my calf was getting worse and worse. My body was suffocating, my mind wandering vaguely. Why did I find it so hard to be what I had been? Why did cycling suddenly turn against me? Why did bad luck and setbacks hound me whatever I did? Yes, why did fate torment me in this way, singling me out above all the others?

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