Three Weeks, Eight Seconds Read online

  This front group weren’t back together for long before another attack was launched. A two-man, all-French breakaway featuring a Super U rider and an RMO rider had been replaced by a two-man, all-French breakaway featuring a Super U rider and an RMO rider. Plus ça change. The leaders had simply been replaced by their domestiques. Vincent Barteau had taken on the mantle of Fignon, while Jean-Claude Colotti took the Mottet role.

  With fresh legs from sitting at the back of the chase group throughout its pursuit of their team captains, Barteau and Colotti wasted no time in establishing a decent advantage. Through the windy back streets of L’Estaque, on Marseille’s northern fringes, they were off and away. After that lengthy, flat-out chase, there was little inclination within that front bunch to do so again, certainly not now all the GC contenders were back together. These two Frenchmen were largely left to it, a Bastille Day home victory now looking increasingly likely.

  Barteau was very much the dominant rider of the two, with Colotti holding on as long as he might, before the Super U man went it alone on one of the climbs skirting Marseille. It was very much a display of redemption and resurrection for the man with the strawberry-blond hair. Five years previously, he had held yellow for a full 12 days in the ’84 Tour, before passing it on to his team-mate and eventual winner – one Laurent Patrick Fignon.

  Since then, though, Barteau had done little of note on a bike. After leaving the Renault squad, he shuffled around the pro-cycling circuit for a few years, desperately hoping for his stuttering career to find traction. Then, for the 1989 season, his former team manager Cyrille Guimard brought him back into the fold at Super U, the renamed Renault set-up. Guimard was taking a gamble, but on the roads of Marseille that afternoon, Barteau was paying him back for the faith he’d shown.

  After a sharp, fast descent towards the Mediterranean and a circuit of the old port, Barteau was home and dry. A luminous, boisterous character who took up stand-up comedy in his post-racing days, he milked the adoration of the joyful Marseille crowd, blowing kisses and saluting them several hundred yards before the finish line. He knew how to enjoy it, how to soak it up, after some darker times. In a Tour that was studded with comebacks of all descriptions, Barteau’s renaissance was another irresistible tale.

  ‘Guimard was the only team manager to have any confidence in me this season,’ said Barteau afterwards. ‘I have proved that I can still be a good rider. My attack was not planned, it just happened. Laurent put on a good show with Mottet and, after that, I felt strong.’ Barteau also found time to pay tribute to his leader’s main rival, a former team-mate at both Renault and PDM. ‘LeMond always believed in me and, without him, I would not still be riding.’ Quite what Fignon’s response to that public endorsement would have been at the team dinner that evening went unrecorded.

  Colotti held on to take second, before Toshiba’s Martial Gayant surged through to give France all three top places on the stage. Elsewhere, the officials were kept busy. Delgado received a ten-second penalty for taking a feed outside of the designated stations, while Sean Yates and Martin Earley were both penalised – 40 seconds and 20 seconds respectively – for drafting behind team cars. Earley’s team-mate Kelly received a double punishment of ten seconds and ten points for pushing another rider. Elsewhere, Erik Breukink retired from the race 20 miles from the finish, the fifth team leader to abandon. With his sprinters already out and his captain now heading home, the disciplinarian directeur sportif Peter Post must have been frustrated in the extreme.

  Laurent Fignon was anything but frustrated. ‘I always go better when it is very warm,’ explained the Parisian. ‘Even if the heat is suffocating, it seems to suit me.’ In these post-race interviews, he inferred that his aggressive riding was neither a show of strength to his main rivals nor an angry reaction to PDM’s cheeky feed-station attack. It was genuinely all about extending his time advantage over LeMond and Delgado. ‘A Tour de France can be won anywhere. Why not on a flat stage?’

  The day had seen a French 1-2-3 on the Bastille Day stage, as well as their compatriot retaining his yellow jersey. The revolutionaries of 1789 would surely be smiling with satisfaction – although even they might be a tad nervous that Fignon’s bemusing breakaway could sap him of strength in the coming days.

  Stage 13

  1. Vincent Barteau (Super U/France) 4:17:31

  2. Jean-Claude Colotti (RMO/France) +45”

  3. Martial Gayant (Toshiba/France) +1’16”

  4. Steve Bauer (Helvetia-La Suisse/Canada) +1’21”

  5. Etienne De Wilde (Histor/Belgium) +1’25”

  General classification

  1. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 60:11:11

  2. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) +7”

  3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +57”

  4. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +3’03”

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

  ***

  15 July

  Stage 14, Marseille – Gap, 148 miles

  You couldn’t say the peloton hadn’t been warned.

  As he had done 11 days previously in Wasquehal, Jelle Nijdam disappointed the sprinters, who’d been hopeful of a mass run-in on an arrow-straight finish, by striking out for the line early and holding everyone at bay to take the win by a narrow two seconds.

  If it felt to the non-partisan observer as though Nijdam had pickpocketed the stage win, then certainly the three riders who had been out in front for a large part of the day – and whom were caught in the final mile – must have felt distinctly frustrated. The most notable man in that front three was Luis Herrera who, with Fabio Parra having retired several days earlier, carried the weight of an expectant nation’s dreams on his diminutive shoulders.

  His own dreams needed attention, too. Thus far, the Colombian with the shock of jet-black hair had been unable to replicate the form that had won him the Giro mountains title little more than a month previously. He had managed 20th and 35th in Cauterets and Superbagnères respectively, simply nowhere close to where a man of his standing and pedigree should be. Herrera needed to make a move – and fast. He was 30th in the GC.

  The ride to Gap might just be the one. As the race moved inland, it took in the lavender fields of Provence before cutting north into elevated ground, into the foothills of the Alps. The second half of the stage offered quite a test, sending the 155 remaining riders over a number of high-altitude climbs, including the second-category Col du Labouret. Such terrain would suit Herrera, offering a limb-loosening appetite-sharpener ahead of the main course.

  After 80 miles on the road, Herrera made that move, in the company of Toshiba’s Marc Madiot and Jérôme Simon of Z-Peugeot. Pilloried in the Colombian press and facing calls to have his salary slashed (especially prescient as Herrera’s high salary was underwritten by the not-for-profit National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia), a good showing into Gap, even a possible stage win, would quieten his critics and perhaps secure his income.

  The trio made their break on the Côte de Châteauredon and quickly established a decent gap. Within five miles, they were more than two minutes up on the docile peloton. Laudelino Cubino, a Spanish rider with the BH team who’d placed fourth at the recent Vuelta, tried to get across to them on the Col du Labouret, more than halving the near-six-minute lead of Herrera, Madiot and Simon.

  But Cubino’s solo effort was ultimately unsuccessful; on the long descent into Gap, the peloton gobbled him up without even blinking. The front three were their chief target and their sprinters were being primed. The team bosses clearly didn’t think that the numbers stacked up, that the leaders could see out a 35-second advantage with three miles to go, not with 70 miles of leading the stage in their tired legs, nor with a revved-up peloton swooping down on them. Indeed, it was rather telling that Pascal Poisson, a team-mate of front-man Madiot, was second in line in the chasing group. The Toshiba hierarchy were among those who didn’t have faith in the break surviving.

  As the pack swallowed up the front thre
e, Poisson flew out of the slipstream of Superconfex’s Frans Maassen to stake his claim for victory. And he made a pretty persuasive case too, looking for all the world that the win was in the bag. But such thinking didn’t legislate for the enormous thighs of Jelle Nijdam, who launched a counterattack. It was an intriguing run-in along the final tree-shaded avenue, a duel between two former men of the track. And despite Poisson managing to manoeuvre himself onto Nijdam’s wheel, the Dutchman simply rode away from him and towards victory. All Poisson could do was raise his hands off his handlebars in frustration, although he did claim second place, just ahead of ADR’s Eddy Planckaert.

  The stage had crossed five significant climbs, terrain that the comparatively heavily built pursuit specialist would have been expected to suffer a little on. But he clung on and survived. ‘When I looked at the profile this morning,’ he admitted at the finish line, ‘I didn’t expect to be in the hunt for the win. If anyone had said so, I wouldn’t have believed them for a moment. I had no morale. I’ve come out of the Pyrenees very tired. Today I had the bonk, so I ate very quickly at the end of the stage, and only began to feel good in the last few kilometres.’

  Certainly Nijdam’s power and strength was unquestionable. He certainly left an enduring impression on the American ex-pro Joe Parkin, who once told Peloton magazine about an incident involving the pair. ‘Nijdam hesitated a bit too long, so I jumped in front of him, causing him to nearly fall out of the rotation. The ensuing shove was followed by a punch that was so hard I think I still have the shape of his hand imprinted on my right butt cheek.’

  This would be the last chance of a stage win by an opportunistic outlier for a good few days. Accordingly, the GC contenders kept their powder dry, submerging themselves into the safety of the peloton. No headline news today. Other days, bigger battles.

  LeMond, refreshed and lively, was in bullish mood after the stage, aware of how wafer-thin that seven-second deficit would be back in the mountains. He was more than hopeful of demolishing it – and putting Fignon’s numbers back into the red – with a sparkling performance in the following day’s individual mountain time trial. ‘I expect myself to be in the top three or top four in the time trial. If I have a good day, maybe I can win. But there are three or four days in the mountains and six days to go overall, plus another time trial, so no matter what happens tomorrow, it’s still not over.’

  After the four non-mountain stages that had linked the Pyrenees with the Alps, the upper reaches of the GC hadn’t changed since the race left Superbagnères and its spooky hotel. But the leaderboard was certain to undergo some serious revision over the course of the next few days, up on the high roads with their turns and twists and testing gradients. The Alps loomed large. Very large. Battle was about to recommence, another test of both muscle and stamina, with punches traded, albeit figuratively, even more ferociously than in the Pyrenees.

  Seconds away, round two…

  Stage 14

  1. Jelle Nijdam (Superconfex/Netherlands) 6:27:55

  2. Pascal Poisson (Toshiba/France) +2”

  3. Eddy Planckaert (ADR/Belgium) same time

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

  5. Sean Kelly (PDM/Ireland) same time

  General classification

  1. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 66:39:08

  2. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) +7”

  3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +57”

  4. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +3’03”

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

  ACT III

  THE FINAL WEEK

  TWELVE

  L’AMERICAINE JAUNE

  ‘The pendulum swings again’ – Phil Liggett

  16 July

  Stage 15, Gap – Orcières-Merlette, 24 miles, individual time trial

  A HOT SUNDAY in the Alps, but no time to laze about.

  With the Tour officials closing the road up to the ski station at Orcières-Merlette by 7am, only the all-night crew or the early birds got their ringside seat for what would prove to be a bruising encounter. And an encounter that, after days of a largely static leaderboard, would shake up the race again. Cat among the pigeons. It was time for the potentially pivotal mountain time trial.

  This annual battle against the clock at altitude had indeed proved crucial in the 1988 race, tightening Pedro Delgado’s control of the GC by converting a 25-second lead over Steve Bauer into an advantage over the new second-placed rider Steven Rooks that approached three minutes. From there on in, the distance between Delgado and everyone else only kept increasing all the way to Paris. In a somewhat different situation the following year, he now needed a similarly dynamic and decisive victory to put the squeeze on both Fignon and LeMond, to reignite the game of catch-up he’d been playing since Luxembourg.

  It was certainly a course to suit the Spaniard. Starting in Gap at 2,400 feet above sea level, the riders would gain a further 3,500 feet over the course of 70 or so minutes, during which time they would take in a pair of first-category climbs – the Col de Manse and up to the finish at Orcières-Merlette. Most tellingly, it would be the super-steep final five miles up to the ski station that favoured Delgado the most – and when he would most hope to propel himself further up the GC.

  And he knew what was coming. With the road up the climbs closed, Delgado, escorted by his team-mate Melchor Mauri, spent the morning riding the course, studying the gradients, deducing at which point he would turn the screw that afternoon. Fignon was also out on the course that morning, in the company of Super U domestique Dominic Garde and casting baneful looks at the moto that insisted it film his preparation. Fignon, having never beaten LeMond in a Tour time trial, and with only that flimsy seven-second advantage to defend, realised that he would almost certainly be out of yellow that evening. The priority was surely to limit the time that LeMond would take from him; to ensure that any new deficit was recoverable in the Alps stages coming up. As the morning sunlight hit the bends leading up to Orcières-Merlette, Fignon had homework to do.

  At the rider sign-in back down the mountain in Gap, LeMond looked relaxed. Radiant, even. A boyish smile played on his lips as he offered a shy salute to the lenses of the press. The casualness would have been a mask. Internally, he would have been focused, attentive, sharp. A man with a game plan. A man who knew how crucial the next couple of hours would be in determining whether his campaign for the yellow jersey in Paris was sustainable. He needed to regain the lead on today’s stage and then – without any team-mates to aid him – stick like a limpet to Fignon’s wheel for the next four mountain stages. It was a tall order, especially as there was the nagging spectre of Delgado to control, too. One eye on the Super U jersey in front, the other on the Reynolds jersey whenever it attacked from behind.

  By the time that the time trial, run in reverse GC order, came down to the highest-placed 20 riders, it was Delgado’s team-mate, Miguel Induráin, who put down the marker against which all other effort would be compared. Demonstrating the climbing chops he’d unexpectedly showcased back at Cauterets on the ninth stage, the man from Pamplona powered up both first-category climbs, recording a time of 1:11:25, almost a minute faster than any other rider thus far.

  It was the start of Induráin’s love affair with Tour time trials. In his five overall victories between 1991 and 1995, all of his stage wins came against the clock. He turned into a metronome; that day in Cauterets was one of just two non-time trial wins in the Tour. ‘The stereotypical Spanish cyclist,’ wrote Edward Pickering, ‘is the climber, and while Induráin could ride up mountains as fast as, or even faster than, most climbers, his body type was that of the rouleur.’ Pickering goes on to make the point that previous Spanish winners of the Tour – the likes of Federico Bahamontes, Luis Ocaña and Delgado – were ‘unpredictable and unreliable in comparison’ and that Induráin offered ‘living evidence that in cycling, as in life, imperfection is what makes things interesting’.

  The name ‘Induráin’ wasn’
t a byword for perfection that afternoon in Orcières-Merlette, though. His lead lasted less than six minutes. Back down the road, Steven Rooks was going like a rocket. After the seven-mile ascent of the opening climb of the Col de Manse, he had crested the mountain eight seconds up on the Reynolds rider. The format was one that Rooks clearly savoured. It was in the mountain time trial in 1988 that he made his move onto the final podium, his third place into Villard-de-Lans elevating him to second place overall, a position he retained all the way to Paris more than a week later. In the ’89 equivalent, Rooks improved Induráin’s leading time by a full 43 seconds.

  Between the pair came the green jersey of Sean Kelly. After his phenomenally strong ride into Superbagnères five days earlier, the big man proved that day in the Pyrenees to have been no fluke, no anomaly. He recorded the day’s fourth fastest time up the Col de Manse and was fifth fastest up those steep, steep last couple of miles to the finish. Kelly crossed the line 23 seconds down on Induráin, a time that would, by the stage’s end, give him sixth place. He delightedly faced the press afterwards. ‘I drove the course last night. I thought it would be too hard for me, but I trained halfway along the course this morning and decided I would just go as hard as I could all the way.’

  One of the several hard-climbing team-mates of Kelly’s, Gert-Jan Theunisse, was also especially strong on those last couple of miles, hinting at form yet to be shown. All Twiglet arms and hollow eyes, the effort that the Dutchman invested in getting up to the ski station (he was the quickest of the day up the final climb) gave him a sizeable haul of King of the Mountains points. He was accelerating away from his nearest rival, Robert Millar, in that competition. The Scot’s superb form in the Pyrenees was, as in other years, not being replicated in the Alps and he finished nearly four minutes down on Rooks. Clearly duelling with other riders, rather than pacing himself against the clock, got the best out of him. It would now need something special to grab the polka-dot jersey off Theunisse’s back.