I wasn’t going to betray Steve, no matter how much Fiona, Lombard, or the French press wanted me to. In fact, even coming in second place had started to seem like an outlandish possibility. We could probably contain our rivals’ assaults today, but it would be too much to ask that we do it for the four days on the Alps. Especially if Matosas, Medel, and Paniuk joined their teams and worked together again. If that was the case, I’d have to do everything to protect Steve’s yellow jersey, and that would mean finishing not in second place but in twentieth.
The bus turned out to be an oasis in the middle of the media tumult. The rest of my teammates were already rolling around on their bicycles and loosening their muscles in the parking lot, and their mechanics and assistants were readying the spare bikes that would be loaded into the three cars that follow us along the route. I thought about the 195 kilometers that lay before us and a part of me wanted to just say “screw it,” to drop back fifteen or twenty minutes behind the leader and put an end to the absurd hope the press was stirring. The more they got people worked up, the more disappointing the final collapse would be. And I knew enough about this business to understand that the very same journalists and fans now praising my name would end up punishing me for the disillusionment they’d suffer.
Still, I couldn’t resist taking a look at the copy of Libération that lay on Giraud’s seat: a headline in big red letters. “L’espoir”—“Hope”—was branded across the page, on top of an image of me from the day before, arms raised as I crossed the finish line. About a dozen other newspapers lay at the feet of the DS’s chair. I took another look at the front page of Libération and understood why Giraud had set that one aside. Under my photo there was another, smaller image of Lombard with a pull quote: “He’s better than Steve.” The article could not start in a worse way: “Colonel Lombard, Marc Moreau’s personal trainer, is confident that, pound for pound, the French racer is a better cyclist than his team leader, the North American, Steve Panata. ‘If Hannibal decides to, he could win the Tour.’ ”
I felt the world darken. Giraud would assume I was behind Lombard’s public challenge. I now understood why the reporters had been so ravenous minutes before. My old mentor’s statement had been interpreted as my declaration of war. I couldn’t even blame it on a sloppy or ill-intentioned journalist, because the article was bylined by none other than Ray Lumiere, the most famous cycling reporter with the greatest credibility in the French press.
It was only now that I noticed the distance my teammates had kept from me in the last hours. The members of the Fonar team must have taken Lombard’s comments as an act of disloyalty from me. And for Steve, they must have been like a stab in the back.
Fiona’s hurried visit to my room now made a little more sense. She assumed Lombard spoke for me, and that meant I’d be making my first assault on Steve today. She had come to ask me to be careful and to wait until we got to the decisive laps. Apparently, I was not only a traitor, but my girlfriend considered me an imbecile too.
The call to the starting line interrupted my worries. One quick glance at the peloton was all I needed to know I was the target of the day. To my surprise, most of my colleagues from other teams were giving me friendly looks. For a lot of domestiques, the possibility that one of them could win the Tour represented a vindication against the monopoly the leaders had over each team. None of them actually thought I had a chance to climb the podium in Paris, but Lombard’s statement probably struck them as stimulating and irreverent, an anomaly amid the rigid codes imposed on each team by its DS.
In fact, even our rivals were looking at me kindly. They weren’t going to let me break away again now that they considered me an aspirant to the yellow jersey, but they were delighted by the possibility of discord inside the Fonar team. Anything that could deter Steve Panata was considered good news. An uprising by his primary domestique was pure gold.
But the attitude among my Fonar teammates was the exact opposite. Their silence made it obvious they considered me a threat to the team goals: that is, their bonuses. Certainly, more than one of them was sympathetic to my cause, but today, I could blow a hole in their pockets. With gritted teeth, they let me take my place in the peloton.
I stared at the power meter screen as if I were seeing it for the first time; an observer would’ve thought I was watching a movie on that tiny gadget. Anything to avoid looking at Steve’s face. A slap on the back brought me out of my trance.
“You’re my hero, Moreau. You’re breaking everybody’s balls,” said a festive Radek. “If you need help on the mountain, count on me because these cowards aren’t going to do it.” He amused himself by looking over at my teammates with disdain. If there’d ever been a possibility to rebuild bridges with Fonar, this Polish scarecrow had just set them on fire. With his tiresome litany against the Tour, Radek had become a pariah, a bird of ill omen from which everyone fled. Well, maybe now he wasn’t alone.
I felt better once the race started and the peloton began to move. Everything’s better when you’re pedaling. As if my legs were pumping oxygen to my brain, I tried to come up with strategies to show my team I was still one of them, that everything had been just one huge misunderstanding. That evening, I would explain everything over dinner; that’s where we talked about things that mattered. But the most important thing was to show them during the race. That’s when it really counted.
There was no doubt the team would need me. The last stage on the Pyrenees was the worst of all: two ascents of the worst order and then, that brutal climb to the Plateau de Beille. According to legend, the way the summits are classified comes from the way the classic Citroen 2CV’s clutch could climb the mountain. A category four summit, the easiest, was named because the old car could climb it in fourth gear, and so on, successively, until the toughest, those in category one, which could only be climbed in first gear. Those that were hors categorie—uncategorizable—required turning off the engine and using an ox to haul up the rattletrap. In this metaphor, I was the beast of labor that allowed Steve to conquer the peaks.
That’s probably what saved me, at least for the moment, from Giraud’s revenge. On a day like today, the other two climbers on the team wouldn’t have been enough. We took it for granted that Matosas’s, Medel’s, and Paniuk’s teams would repeat their punishing rhythm during the first two parts of the race to try to burn us out. Together they had about seven or eight decent climbers, and they didn’t care about tiring out most of them if they succeeded in separating Steve and me on the final stretch. Alone, my leader would be easy prey for that trio of wolves.
So Giraud needed me. That’s why he’d left that copy of Libération folded in his seat instead of throwing it in my face at the start of the stage. But the next day, when we would take off on the first of four relatively flat days, things would be different. He’d likely condemn me to the thankless task of passing out water, bars, and gels to the rest of the Fonar racers; at eight to ten bottles per cyclist, that would be a half-dozen visits to the supply car. The problem, of course, was not having to slow down to catch up to the car but rather getting back to where my teammates would be riding. It was usually a task performed by three or four racers, but Giraud could easily leave it just to me. A couple of days of this and the DS would have effectively drained me. After that, I’d be lucky if I managed to avoid being eliminated when they cut the slowest racers.
The race transpired as predicted. The three rival teams climbed the first two ascents as if there were no tomorrow. They lost most of their domestiques but got what they were looking for. At the foot of the last ascent it was just Steve and me from Fonar, six members from the rival teams, including three leaders, and four climbers from the other teams, none of them aspirants to the podium. To my surprise, one of them was Radek, who every now and again would bring his bike up next to mine, smile, and give me a thumbs-up. I would pretend I didn’t know what was going on so I wouldn’t inadvertently become
an accomplice to any insanity the rabid Pole might be cooking up.
Whatever Steve might have been thinking about me, he put it aside for now. He attached himself to my wheel and together we did what we know how to do best on the mountain: resist. Our competition tried to get rid of us with every trick in the book: They exposed us to the wind by taking control of the curb. They pretended to break away while climbers protected the three leaders, no matter what team they were on. They even used a strategy that in any other sport would be considered the equivalent of spitting or biting: Over and over they tried to force a domestique between my wheel and that of the three rivals I was locked behind. If they’d succeeded they would have been able to block us so that the three leaders could get away without us being able to pursue. I defended my place with the desperation of a starving man in a ration line.
I’d positioned myself on Medel’s wheel. He seemed to be in the best shape and most likely to attempt a solo escape. If the Spaniard got away, I’d have to make a risky decision. To follow him in a breakaway would mean abandoning the group with which we’d climbed relatively protected, albeit under attack. To bet on Medel would be successful if the three of us managed to crown the peak—I took it for granted Steve would stay on my wheel. But if one of us collapsed, the larger group would catch up and leave us behind because they’d been saving energy by staying together. The wrong decision could cost us the Tour.
But not making a decision could have the same effect. If we didn’t follow him, Medel or whoever of the three took off, there was still the possibility the group would slow the pace to let him get away. If I made the wrong decision, my DS would think it was an intentional error on my part to cause Steve’s defeat. I realized my entire professional career depended on the decision I was going to make in the next few minutes. But, like on so many occasions all along this Tour, the killer decided for us.
As Paniuk, Matosas, and Medel faked a breakaway just to keep us on edge, Steve suffered a puncture. We all heard his cry, even though he immediately fell back. The other three pushed forward as if they’d just been whipped—nothing is more stimulating than realizing the leader has dropped out.
Steve pulled up to the curb and examined his bike. I rode up close and understood that the gods had given me a golden opportunity to redeem myself. Without hesitation, I leaped off my Pinarello and offered it to my teammate. It would be the end of my aspirations to the podium but also the end of any doubts about my loyalty. That a domestique would offer his steed to his leader is expected; but somebody in second place doing that to benefit the number one is unheard of.
Steve and I could hear Giraud screaming in our earphones, urging his golden boy to get back in the race as Steve took off on my bike. From the moment we paused, the stopwatch in my head had started counting: The escapees had already gotten 46 seconds on Steve. That distance would surely grow thanks to the teamwork they could wield against a solitary pursuer. Fonar’s only comfort was that Steve had two flat stretches before him in which he could reduce the distance lost.
I assumed Giraud’s car would come up at any moment carrying the spare bikes. With some luck, I’d be able to catch up with the leader and help mitigate the danger. Sure enough, I saw our blue-and-red vehicle coming around a curve, an enormous elk with a pair of beautiful antlers—our bikes. But that son of a bitch didn’t slow down one bit. In fact, he sped up when he saw me, and I swear he would have hit me if I hadn’t taken a step back. I lost sight of the car amid the pines. I couldn’t believe it.
I heard our DS through the earphones: “Steve needs his spare bike, Marc, yours isn’t the right height. Wait for the second car, they’ll be coming soon.” I could almost hear the taunting in his voice. Nobody would accuse him of acting deliberately against me. Giraud could say it was more urgent for him to get Steve the right bike than to stop for me.
Giraud had managed to get his revenge. The second car was about ten minutes back, according to the last report. For all practical purposes, my hopes of reaching the podium in Paris died right there. That night my name would not be in the top ten I’d recite before going to sleep.
The stopwatch in my head was still going. 1:25…1:26…1:27…Technically, I was still in second place because my time had been 1:54, better than Matosas at the beginning of the day. But in a matter of seconds I would be displaced in the general classifications by each racer who had passed me.
I had just decided to sit down when Radek pulled up out of nowhere, pedaling in a furious state, alone, wasted and faint, although as resentful as ever. I remembered we’d left him behind one or two kilometers back. He stopped by my side, glanced at Steve’s bike, and immediately understood what had happened. He scolded me without a word and then said something I didn’t quite know how to interpret.
“I’m going to give you a second chance; don’t blow it,” he huffed and did something unfathomable. He got off his bike and offered it to me. It took me two seconds to react. 1:48…1:49…I wasn’t even sure what kind of penalty there was for accepting a bike from a member of a rival team. In that moment, I just wanted to stop the clock running in my head. 1:52…1:53. I got on his bike and climbed wildly, as if with each pedal I were crushing Giraud’s face, my father’s, that of the narcos who had assassinated Carmen. I stood on the pedals and didn’t sit until I made out our team’s blue-and-red car just ahead.
I was surprised I’d caught up so quickly, but I immediately understood why. Giraud and two of the mechanics were next to the car, looking down. I got a cold chill up my spine. When I reached them, I saw my bike against a tree with the tube popped out of the tire. Then I saw Steve, trying to stand up at the bottom of a ditch three or four meters deep. He had scratches on his face and his yellow jersey was ripped. He moved one leg and then, very carefully, the other, as if he were afraid one of them wouldn’t respond. His paleness contrasted with the deep green of the forest surrounding him.
Without thinking, I slid down to where he was. I later discovered a bad cut on my butt cheek. 3:49…3:50…
“Are you all right? Can you move your arms? Your shoulders?” I asked as I checked him out like a frantic mother.
“The tube popped off your bike, and I hit the tree. These helmets are really great, aren’t they?” He made like he was going to take his off to look at it. He must have still been in a state of shock, but we weren’t in any position to worry about such things. 4:01…4:02…
“C’mon, you’re still the leader, let’s not just give away the top spot,” I said as I looked down at the bloody shreds of his jersey. The truth is, I knew as I pushed him back up to the road that we’d already lost that stage as well as the jersey, at least for the day. The two mechanics helped pull him up by the arms.
It took us another minute to compose ourselves, get on our spare bikes, and start to pedal. 5:02…5:03…At that moment, Matosas was the new Tour leader, about a minute ahead, and that distance would only grow. As much as we pushed ourselves in the last four kilometers, ten racers taking turns up front are faster than a mere pair.
I ran ahead of Steve for the rest of the climb, not asking for relief. The image of a team of oxen pulling a broken-down Citroen reentered my head. There was something wrong with Steve: He was slightly off-kilter as he pedaled, with one arm closer to his body than the other, more bruised than we’d realized when we got him on the bike; I feared he might have a broken clavicle or a fractured rib. If that was the case, it was the end of the Tour for him. Several times I forced myself to slow down the rhythm so he wouldn’t lose his way.
But I’d never admired my teammate more than in that moment. He was as pale as a cadaver and a strange grimace distorted his famous face. Yet he kept on moving his legs, like a windmill, as if he’d split the bottom part of his body from his useless torso and head. With a shiver, I imagined that once we crossed the finish line, we’d discover he was dead and it was just his legs pumping. I wasn’t exactly right in the head a
t that moment either.
I don’t know where that boy, raised in total comfort, found the strength to absorb so much suffering. With four Tours under his belt, he had nothing to prove, but there he was, ready to seriously hurt himself rather than admit defeat. A couple of times I had to shoo away the TV cameras on motorcycles, which kept trying to focus their lenses on his face to broadcast my friend’s torment. He didn’t even register when we crossed the finish line. Our assistants stopped him, grabbing the handlebars as he tried to keep pedaling, still in his trance. When he realized we’d finished, he fainted. I leaned against the fence and, without getting off the bike, vomited. What came up included thick, bright-colored substances I hoped were just food.
In the end, those three assholes took eight minutes from us and managed to reverse our roles: Now they monopolized the podium with a five-minute lead over Steve. In my case, the drop in ranking was worse because the penalty for taking the bike from another team turned out to be two minutes. Still, I hoped it had all been worth it.
The reporters who had watched our climb on the huge screen at the finish line told us they had assumed we would lose about twenty minutes against the leaders of that stage. Both the media and the fans had given a cool welcome to the ten runaways, headed by Matosas, Paniuk, and Medel, instead focusing on the images of the two hurt racers dragging themselves to the summit. When we got there, I noticed a couple of our mechanics had tears in their eyes.
Suffering is the essence of cycling and not just because of what it demands from a professional; it’s also what feeds the amateur’s passion. It’s no accident the spectators gather on the edge of the great summits, where they can be witnesses to the self-flogging their champions undergo in order to continue being their champions.
The Black Jersey Page 12
