Three Weeks, Eight Seconds Read online

  As it was, at Superbagnères the recriminations carried on into the evening, with the post-stage war of words now seemingly a daily fixture. The intensity was tightening, especially when it came to the issue of chasing down breakaways, such as that day’s Delgado/Millar/Mottet manoeuvre. ‘LeMond never wanted to work to bring them back,’ griped Fignon to the massed microphones of the European media. ‘It’s not the way the race leader should behave. I think if we had worked together, Delgado would never have opened such a gap. It’s annoying for all of us.’

  Fignon’s annoyance at LeMond’s tactics hadn’t subsided by the time he wrote his autobiography 20-odd years later. ‘He was incapable of attacking, as the climb to Superbagnères proved. To this day, I don’t know if he managed to come alongside me once, and that’s saying something. It wound me up. And when I got frustrated, when I began boiling inside, it had to come out somehow.’

  Knowing he didn’t have enough in himself to nullify the attack by Rooks and Theunisse, Fignon had looked across at LeMond to see if he intended to chase down the flying Dutchmen. There was no response. Allowing LeMond to stay on my wheel all the way to the top would have driven me mad. In the final kilometre, I did enough to get rid of him, in other words, enough for me to take the yellow jersey by seven seconds. Our hand-to-hand combat had begun.’

  For LeMond, that incident on the Tourmalet, when Fignon hitched a ride from the moto, was still exasperating him. He had seen it exactly as Hampsten had; their stories matched. ‘He [Fignon] was getting dropped,’ LeMond would tell the author Guy Andrews. ‘I turned back and he’s sitting there holding on. So we get to the end of the stage and he beats me by 12 seconds. Then he’s saying to the press that I’m not riding like a true leader for the yellow jersey!’

  Even a good night’s sleep didn’t cool LeMond’s blood. As told to Richard Moore, the next morning he confronted Fignon. ‘I said, “Listen, you’d better shut up. I saw it. You were holding on to that motorcycle. That means you’re out of the race. It’s not like you’re a guy in the gruppetto [the last group of riders on a particular stage] trying to get over a mountain. You’re in the front and trying to win the Tour.”’

  While Fignon was indeed in yellow, and while Millar had taken arguably the most impressive of his three Tour stage wins, the day’s real winner came with a Spanish accent. Over the course of four hours in the saddle, Pedro Delgado had retrieved more than three-quarters of the time he had conceded to Fignon after the team time trial and was now up to fourth place. His revival was irresistible. He had always been a fascinating rider to watch, jittery and instinctive, with talent to burn and a never-shrinking work ethic. As he attempted to claw back whatever seconds he could on each stage, he resembled, in the words of Induráin biographer Javier García Sánchez, ‘some workaholic ant’.

  ‘That day,’ Delgado remembers, ‘I started to dream that maybe I could win the Tour de France. I recovered a lot of time from Fignon and more from LeMond. I now knew I could beat them. “OK, three and a half minutes today. Maybe it’s a possibility…” The main attention was on Fignon and LeMond. But it was better that all the pressure was on them so I could come along quietly. But after this day, Fignon and LeMond understood they needed to pay attention to me because I was stronger in the mountains.

  ‘And I started taking LeMond seriously at Superbagnères. That day, he understood he could win the Tour, because his levels were not far from the specialist Fignon. He showed he could stay with us in the mountains. Fignon was aggressive. He wanted to compete. LeMond was the opposite. He was a fox. He waited and waited. He didn’t move. He shifted the pressure to the rest of the riders and benefited.’

  Taking three and a half minutes out of most of his main rivals for the GC was mightily impressive, even if Delgado may have been cut some slack due to the size of his time deficit at the start of the day. ‘The tactics are always played out based on the situation,’ LeMond confirmed. ‘If Delgado is five minutes behind, you give him some time.’

  Whether cut some slack or not, Millar was certainly impressed by Delgado’s work-rate and speed, as he told Channel 4’s Paul Sherwen: ‘If he keeps going like that, we won’t have to look for the winner of this year’s Tour much longer.’ Even a post-stage Fignon had to doff his cap in the Spaniard’s direction after such a masterclass in aggressive climbing. ‘I was convinced in Luxembourg, when the Tour began, that Delgado was out of the hunt for overall victory. I must admit I was wrong.’

  That early goading of Delgado about his lowly position in the GC standings was now surely a source of embarrassment for Fignon. The distance between them was narrowing by the day. He might have emerged from the first instalment of mountain stages in yellow, but the Frenchman still had LeMond right on his shoulder, with only a handful of seconds continuing to separate them. And his problem was two-fold. The speeding Delgado was increasingly visible in the rear-view mirror.

  Stage 10

  1. Robert Millar (Z-Peugeot/UK) 4:22:19

  2. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) same time

  3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +19”

  4. Steven Rooks (PDM/Netherlands) +3’04”

  5. Gert-Jan Theunisse (PDM/Netherlands) same time

  General classification

  1. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 46:11:49

  2. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) +7”

  3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +57”

  4. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +2’53”

  5. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven/USA) +5’18”

  TEN

  DEFENCE OF THE REALM

  ‘He was mad about the crash. Really, really mad.

  He was angry all day and all week’ – Raúl Alcalá

  12 July

  Stage 11, Luchon – Blagnac, 96 miles

  RUDY DHAENENS HAD it in the bag. The scent of victory was in his nostrils. But, in an instant, it was all about the taste of tarmac on his tongue.

  His fate was a harsh way to involuntarily surrender a certain stage win. Dhaenens had timed it so perfectly, after all. With just around a mile and a half to go in this eleventh stage – the first flat one after the high drama of the Pyrenees – the PDM rider had given everyone else the slip. Part of a six-man breakaway heading towards the Toulouse suburb of Blagnac, at the precise moment that the Fignon-led peloton bridged the gap and dissolved the break, Dhaenens attacked again. It was a textbook manoeuvre. Sharp tactical nous and immaculate timing.

  With a solid posture that any time trialist would have coveted – a perfectly still upper body but legs firing like well-oiled pistons – he was eating up Blagnac’s residential back streets, the layout of which suited a solo break. There was no lengthy, dead-straight finish to negotiate in full view of the marauding brigade of sprinters behind. Instead, there were plenty of bends to disappear around, to stay out of sight. And with those chasing sprinters starting to slow up and play a game of bluff back down the road, only a few hundred metres remained for Dhaenens. Just a matter of seconds. He looked unstoppable.

  That was until he reached the penultimate bend. The second of two closely located left-handers, the Belgian simply misjudged his speed and, in trying to adjust in order to achieve safe passage around this second bend, his back wheel slipped out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. In one movement, he scrambled over to his bike, before slightly stumbling and having to rebalance. And that stumble did for him. By the time he was back on his feet and pulled the bike upright, the peloton swung past at high speed. There was nothing left for Dhaenens to do, except express his frustration, raising the bike a few inches off the ground before slamming it in anger back into the tarmac.

  As the stage climaxed in a rare bunch sprint, Dhaenens remained at the scene of his misfortune, spinning around in bemusement, wondering if what had just happened really happened. The team cars were zooming past now, their drivers gazing across to see who the unfortunate soul was and second-guessing the fate that had befallen him. Dhaenens was too angry to dissect the crash, to consider an
on-the-road autopsy. He slammed his bike back down into the tarmac again. Exasperated, incredulous.

  Interviewed the following spring, he still didn’t seem to have made sense of what happened that July afternoon in Blagnac. ‘I took the corner too fast, maybe, or something happened with my bike, maybe, and I slipped. I still don’t know.’

  His then PDM team-mate Raúl Alcalá thinks he knows. While Dhaenens’ final attack was cool, calm and calculated, Alcalá believes that wouldn’t have been how he was feeling internally going into that final mile. ‘He was mad about the crash,’ says the Mexican. ‘Really, really mad. He was angry all day and all week. But it was his fault because he was nervous all the time. I know riders are nervous, but he was one of the most nervous riders around.

  ‘He was a good rider, but he was nervous, nervous, nervous. He always went full gas all the time. I told him plenty of times: ‘Rudy, go calm. Relax.’ Maybe if he controlled his nerves, he could have been a huge rider. Many things happened in his head…’

  Alcalá’s assessment of Dhaenens’ potential wasn’t necessarily shared by all. The New York Times cycling correspondent Samuel Abt described him as ‘a dependable, unselfish rider of moderate talent, not a star’. This seems a little harsh, bearing in mind the Belgian’s palmàres. In 1986, as the Tour reached Bordeaux, Dhaenens had struck out in a similar fashion to his attack in Blagnac. That time, however, he stayed on two wheels to take the stage victory. But his crowning glory came in 1990 when he won the world championships in Japan.

  Winning the ultimate one-day title didn’t seem to completely cure Dhaenens of his nervousness or insecurity, as later reported by Abt. ‘Usually he looked like a small boy who asked Santa for a set of trains for Christmas and got instead underwear and a book, but his plain face could light up when he discussed the few races he had won. The world championship was the peak, of course.’

  Prior to that success, Dhaenens had always believed his fate was written in the stars. ‘I’m always in the top group, usually in the front, but I never win. And that’s what’s important in cycling races. To win, you need luck.’

  And that luck would desert him in future years. In 1998, while en route to commentate on the Tour of Flanders for Belgian television, his car left the road and collided with an electricity pylon. He died the following night from head injuries. He was 36.

  ***

  The sprinters were at least happy with the opportunity that Rudy Dhaenens’ bike crash offered them. Pickings had been slim for them in the Tour until that point and to a man they were itching to duel it out on the home straight in Blagnac.

  Steve Bauer had been rather anonymous in the Tour thus far, certainly in comparison to his extended ownership of the yellow jersey the previous year, not to mention his fourth place overall. But it was the Helvetia-La Suisse leader who made the first bolt for the line, presumably concerned that ADR’s Eddy Planckaert, last year’s green jersey winner, was not only lurking but pretty much unbeatable in a straight dash for the line.

  In the end, though, it was a Dutchman – Mathieu Hermans – who snatched the victory, repaying the efforts that his Paternina team had put in during the last few miles to get him into a favourable position for the stage win. Hermans was clearly a man in form and no doubt frustrated by the lack of sprinting action so far in the race; he had taken no fewer than nine stage victories in the Vuelta over the last two years.

  Another rider at the top of his game – the Italian Giovanni Fidanza, winner of the points competition in the Giro the previous month – took second, with an out-of-sorts Planckaert only able to bag third. Sean Kelly took another fifth place, having presumably held back in the final run-in as his man Dhaenens looked to have the victory all sewn up. While truly Mr Consistent whatever the terrain, the Irishman was still looking for that elusive stage win. Remarkably for a rider almost always in the mix at the finish, he’d not won a Tour stage since way back in 1982. This day he did, however, take possession of the red catch sprints jersey from Søren Lilholt. Another for the collection.

  After the leg-sapping tumult of the Pyrenees, this stage had been a surprisingly lively one, especially in view of the high temperatures toasting the south of France. And the day wasn’t without its casualties; there was one high-profile abandonment in particular. Fabio Parra, the Colombian initially fancied by many to at least repeat his podium finish in 1988, was one of only two riders from the Spanish Kelme team left in the race. He hadn’t made his mark in the Pyrenees on the previous two days. Far from it. He had lost more than nine minutes in the mountains, his home territory.

  Parra had already been dropped within 12 miles of leaving Luchon that morning and, after struggling over two comparatively tame climbs, he called time on the ’89 Tour, citing tendonitis. That left just one Kelme rider, a young Colombian called José Roncancio. Whether performing an act of solidarity with his leader, or simply too embarrassed that the team would need to continue with only this rookie domestique on the road, Roncancio also abandoned. This was particularly harsh on the 23-year-old. It was to be his one and only stab at the Tour de France.

  For every yin, there’s a yang. And for every suffering Fabio Parra, there was a buoyant Laurent Fignon. On a day when he could justifiably have chosen to relax and recuperate within the safety of the peloton, Fignon elected to play an active part in the stage, along with his Super U team-mate Christophe Lavainne. It had been their twin motors that had driven the peloton to bring the race back together, moments before Rudy Dhaenens made his break.

  As rookie domestiques fared, Bjarne Riis was in a somewhat better place than José Roncancio. He was the personal bodyguard of the yellow jersey, of the man who was now the overwhelming favourite to taste victory in Paris, to collect his third Tour title.

  ‘Yes, there was no doubt about that,’ agrees Riis. ‘We all believed in him. There was a great bond between all of us. Quite a few of us had done the Giro too. We’d spent a lot of time together, building up to this. We had huge focus. We were very committed and motivated. Fignon was a guy who gave a lot of confidence to his team. He took care of us. There was a lot of respect around him because he treated his people in a good way.

  ‘Of course, he was an introvert, but that’s OK. There’s a lot of pressure on a guy like that. He didn’t jump around among everybody. He was very private. He was a little bit like myself, to be honest.’

  However, on stage after stage, Fignon’s riding style was anything but introverted. He was the dominant rider, the agenda setter. And his team were following the script. But, as hard and fast as the Super U leader rode across to Blagnac, another man was riding just as hard and fast – and he was right on his back wheel. Greg LeMond wasn’t easily shaken off. Just seven seconds away.

  Stage 11

  1. Mathieu Hermans (Paternina/Netherlands) 3:37:47

  2. Giovanni Fidanza (Chateau d’Ax/Italy) same time

  3. Eddy Planckaert (ADR/Belgium) same time

  4. Teun van Vliet (Panasonic/Netherlands) same time

  5. Sean Kelly (PDM/Ireland) same time

  General classification

  1. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 49:49:36

  2. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) +7”

  3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +57”

  4. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +2’53”

  5. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven/USA) +5’18”

  ***

  13 July

  Stage 12, Toulouse – Montpellier, 150 miles

  On the eve of the 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, in the warm haze of late morning, Martin Kettle, a non-sport feature writer for the Guardian, found himself on assignment in the small town of Puylaurens, 30 miles east of Toulouse. He was on the trail of the Tour de France. But his brief wasn’t to dissect tactical strategy or interrogate the riders or sniff out the latest gossip from behind the scenes.

  Instead, Kettle was charged with sampling the Tour through the eyes of those on the roadside, those who arrive at their vantage points with hou
rs and hours to spare, but who would be left behind by the speeding train of a peloton within seconds.

  Filling the time and keeping the interest was the seemingly endless procession of trade vehicles offering promotional items to anyone with an outstretched hand. The first van reached the town at 9.30am; it bore the livery of Reader’s Digest and handed out kitchen whisks. What followed were vehicles of all shapes and sizes. One had been made to resemble a cigarette lighter, another was disguised as a loaf of bread. All were touting their various wares, offering freebies to a grateful public happy to fill its boots. ‘Two hundred years ago,’ Kettle observed, ‘the French stretched their hands for bread. Today, they strain for free plastic bags advertising the World Cycling Championship.’

  The best part of two hours later, the main event was approaching, the point at which the marketing caravan would disappear and a palpable buzz would fall on Puylaurens. There would even be a small degree of competition, with a catch sprint being held in the middle of town.

  Kettle painted a vivid landscape for his readers. ‘“Five kilometres away,” a voice over the Tannoy announces and the vans hastily clear out. Police motorcyclists come through the square at speed. At 11.17, there is cheering down the hill and two emaciated riders come into the square, one in blue and one in red. Number 175 crosses the line first, snatches a drink from his cycle bottle and both ease off.

  ‘No one in the crowd knows who they are.’

  To be fair to the crowd, even cycling’s most knowledgeable commentators and reporters would have been scratching their heads when trying to identify these two riders, almost certainly having to reach for the start list for assistance. GC contenders they were not. The man in blue was Dominique Arnaud, a Frenchman riding for Pedro Delgado’s Reynolds team. The rider in red, number 175, was the Chateau d’Ax domestique Valerio Tebaldi, an Italian.

  Their early lead grew and grew and grew, soon aided by a second Italian, the Carrera rider Giancarlo Perini. Riding through the impossibly scenic Haut Languedoc national park, their advantage rose to 29 minutes over the peloton. The unconcerned peloton, that is. None of the three were placing Laurent Fignon’s jersey in jeopardy. The main field bided their time.