Rough Ride

by Paul Kimmage

  Plumelec is a five and a half hour race. It was a foul day, raining and miserable. Tired from the Armorique stage race, I was never going well. Half-way through, on one of the small back roads of the circuit, we were strung out in one long line. I was second to last and Dede last. I knew he was getting it rough so I looked around to see how he was. His body and face were wet and mucky from the spray from the back wheels. He had something between his teeth – a needle. He bit the plastic cap off and I immediately understood what he was going to do next. I dropped behind him to push him as he injected himself with the white liquid, most probably amphetamine. This was to help him to get it over as quickly as possible so no one would see him.

  To see him dirty, suffering and with that needle between his teeth turned my stomach. I wanted to get off and just leave the bike there and then. I abandoned the race and rode straight to the showers. I was disgusted. Not at Dede, he was simply playing by their rules, another innocent victim. No, I blamed the system. The race organisers, the directeurs sportifs, the sponsors – the men in power who knew what was going on but turned a blind eye to it. And when his career ended the system would spit him out – a penniless ex-pro. The incident strengthened my conviction never to enter the drugs stadium. I would go as far as I could for as long as possible, but if it wasn't good enough then it was just too bad. If someone had offered me a decent job that Sunday in Plumelec I'd have taken it, there and then. But I had to keep trying. There were bills to be paid, responsibilities to be met – and a little flicker of hope about riding the Tour.

  I believed right up until the last minute that I could still make the Tour team. It became almost an obsession. I used to take out this team poster and with a pen place crosses on the heads of those I felt had blown it. The heads of the fellows still in with a chance were marked with a question. With two weeks to go there were eight ticks on the poster. I was one of three question marks fighting for the last place. The other two were Frank Pineau and the German Hartmut Bolts.

  The Midi Libre stage race was my last chance to prove myself. I worked like a Trojan for the others for the week and finished it off with third place on the final stage – a mountain stage. I was sure I had done enough. The decision was Vallet's. He said he'd make up his mind after the national championships a week before the start of the Tour. All the European and Scandinavian countries hold their professional championships on the same date. Ireland does not hold a professional championship as we are only a handful of pros. I spent the day at home, hoping against hope that neither Pineau nor Bolts would ride well. Pineau didn't. Bolts became the professional champion of Germany. On Monday I drove to a meeting with Vallet to hear the decision. I don't know why I bothered. In the morning's L'Equipe, Vallet had lavished glowing praise on the new German champion. I should have read between the lines and realised that I hadn't made it. But I wanted the waiting to end. I wanted to be told. And I was.

  It was to be a month's holiday at the Cafe de la Gare.

  Vallet told me to have a short break and to prepare myself for a good end of season. I was shattered. I cried on my way back to Vizille and the depth of my disappointment surprised me. I phoned the news home to my parents and also to David Walsh at the Sunday Tribune. We had planned to write a book on the Tour together, a 'from the saddle' account of the three-week race; but with my non-selection the project went out the window. David asked me if I'd consider writing a short column for the Tribune on the four Sundays of the Tour. I had been writing on and off for Irish Cycling Review for two years, but had never written for a newspaper before. David was taking a bit of a chance in getting me to write the column and stressed that I keep it short, about 500 words. If it was rubbish, then it would be just 500 words of rubbish and no one would notice too much. It was still a big responsibility, and on the morning I wrote the piece I regretted ever having agreed. I was unbearable. I ordered Ann out of the house and the slightest noise drove me nuts. But writing it was only half the battle. I then had to read the piece over the phone to a copy-taker at the paper. Evelyn Bracken was very patient and understanding but even then I hated it. I kept waiting for her to say, 'Now, hold on a minute, son, this is rubbish.' But she never did and my pieces got a good response. The first one was about being left out of the Tour. The second week I wrote about my hopes for Kelly doing well. And on the third week I did a piece which the Sunday Tribune entitled 'A picnicker's view of the Alpe d'Huez':

  Alpe d'Huez. Thirteen kilometres of strength-sapping ascensions. Twenty-one hairpin bends that climb to almost 6,000 feet. The blue riband of the Tour, a monument to its glorious history.

  Driving up the Romanche Valley, or the Valley of the Dead as it is better known, I was filled with remorse. For this morning I was going to that famous battleground, not as rider but as spectator. My wife Ann and I set out at nine, convinced that the thirty-two kilometres from our house to the foot of the Alpe would take no more than an hour to drive. I had forgotten it was Bastille Day.

  All of France was on holiday and we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam fifteen kilometres from Bourg d'Oisans, the town at the bottom of the climb. For twenty-five minutes we sat there without budging. Word came filtering back that the Gendarmes had closed the road early because of the huge volume of traffic.

  We abandoned the car and walked the four kilometres to the police roadblock. It was too far to walk to the Alpe so we set up camp on a boring 300-metre flat stretch of road, a kilometre from the town of Rochatailee.

  Sitting by the side of the road I soon realised that as a tour spectator I was a bit of a greenhorn. We had no fold-up chairs to sit on. No white cotton caps to keep the sun off our heads and no transistor to keep us informed on how the race was going.

  We did however remember the picnic basket. It soon became evident to me that many other people had lost hope of getting to the Alpe, as little by little our anonymous piece of road started to fill with picnicking families.

  The hours passed slowly and I found myself becoming more and more frustrated at the lack of race information. I spotted a veteran Tour spectator across the road. He had the vital equipment and I decided to ask him if he had heard anything. He told me that Fignon had not started the stage and that Jean-François Bernard had lost contact on the Col de la Madeleine and was trailing the leaders by five minutes.

  I was amazed. Bernard had been my Tour favourite. The old spectator had no news of Kelly. I went back to Ann and we began eating lunch. I dropped my baguette when the old man raised his arm to me. Kelly was four minutes down. Merde! I was really disappointed.

  Kelly had lost the Tour, for I knew that those four minutes would soon double and maybe even triple for they had not yet crossed the Glandon and there was still the Alpe to come. I thanked the old man for the last time. I had no more interest in crossing the road.

  The publicity caravan arrived. I recognised the co-directeur sportif that I had had in 1986, Jean-Claude Valaeys. He was throwing plastic bags and paper hats out of the window of his brightly coloured Peugeot. Never liked the guy.

  The roadside nicely littered, we waited for the main act. Rooks and Delgado duly obliged and for fifteen seconds we watched as the two heroes battled their way up the road, dwarfed by the swarm of TV cameras and photographers and race organisation vehicles. Group after group the shattered faces rolled by.

  I shouted encouragement at Claveyrolat and Colotti, the two team-mates I regarded as friends. But as my other team-mates passed I held my breath in disrespectful silence.

  Another group appeared. Three yellow and blue jerseys riding at the front. I knew immediately this was the Kelly group. I looked at my watch. Fifteen minutes had ticked past since Delgado and Rooks had gone by. Martin Earley was riding at the front of the group. I was pleased, for it was his place. It is ungraceful and unjust that the giants of the road be left isolated on the days they are ordinary men.

  Sean was in the middle of the group. In our best Irish accents we shouted at the two of them but they did not look up.r />
  Ann had seen what she had come to see and she started the long walk back to the car. Strangely, I found myself not wanting to leave. Two years previously I had ridden along this very stretch of road on this very same stage of the race. I was thirty-five minutes down and alone.

  I can remember the encouragement that I received from those spectators who had waited. I felt duty bound to wait a while. If I had been riding I would have been in one of these groups. On a good day I might have been with the Kelly group. A bad day and I would have been in one of the groups that were now passing before my eyes, forty-two minutes down.

  I watched in silent homage. Still no sign of the last rider. I decided I would have to go as Ann would be waiting for me and I thought I felt a drop of rain. I felt guilty. I should not have left. The cock crowed three times as I walked back to my car.

  I liked the Alpe piece. I was starting to relax a bit more and was even managing to sleep a little on the night before writing an article. But a day after the Alpe stage something happened that put an abrupt end to my series of articles on the race. The race leader Pedro Delgado was found positive at dope control.

  18

  RESCUED

  The scandal rocked all France. Pedro Delgado, maillot jaune – positif. Riders testing positive was a not uncommon event in the Tour, but it was rare that the 'big fish' were caught. Delgado was the biggest fish in the pond. He had taken control of the race in the Alps, was second to Rooks on the Alpe D'Huez and he smashed all his rivals in the following day's 38-kilometre mountain time trial to Villard de Lans. Few doubted he would win the race when they entered the Pyrenees, no one did when they left. He was untouchable in the mountains – the tour had found its new champion. Or so we thought.

  At Bordeaux, with just four stages to go before arriving on the Champs Elysées the bomb dropped. Jacques Chancel, a television journalist working on Antenne 2's nightly review of the race, screwed up his face at the end of the Bordeaux emission. He had something serious to tell us. He had heard, from a good source, of a positive dope test involving race leader Pedro Delgado. When a rider is called to dope control, the sample of urine he gives is put into two separate sealed bottles. The bottles are sent to a laboratory, where one is tested. If traces of illegal substances are found, the rider is informed. The rider has the right to either accept the analysis or appeal. If he appeals, then the second bottle of urine is tested. If this second testing confirms the initial results, then, and only then, can news of the positive test be released to the press.

  This was not how it happened in the Delgado affair. Someone leaked news to Chancel that Delgado's first bottle had been positive before Delgado himself had even been told. Perhaps Chancel thought he was honouring his profession, but even so in my opinion it was still a despicable thing to do. Half the world knew of the findings of the first bottle before Delgado did. Journalists descended on him like vultures, but he professed total innocence in the affair.

  Next day, the race commissaires were forced to clarify matters. They denied having leaked anything to Chancel, but confirmed that traces of Probenacide, a masking drug for steroids, had been found in Delgado's urine after the Villard de Lans time-trial stage. Delgado immediately appealed, and the second bottle was examined. For two days Delgado raced under tremendous pressure. The second bottle was opened and traces of Probenacide were again found, but the race leader was cleared. Incredibly, no one had consulted the UCI's (Union des Cyclistes Internationals) list of proscribed substances. They had consulted the IOC's (International Olympic Committee's) list. Probenacide was on the IOC list but was not due to enter the UCI list till August, a month after the race ended. Delgado could not be found positive for taking a medicament that wasn't yet proscribed – he was blanchi, cleared.

  It was a most unsavoury affair, and the race was ruined. Even though Delgado had been cleared, the presence of Probenacide in his urine was still unexplained. He had escaped on a technicality, but for many he was still guilty. It was a difficult time to be a professional cyclist. In the cafe in Vizille I was bombarded by the bar's clientele with demands for information. When I sat down for coffee the jokes would start.

  'Hey Polo, you are used to something stronger than coffee for riding your bike.'

  And they would all laugh. Few of them held any grudge against Delgado: 'Poor Pedro', that's what they all said, 'Poor Pedro'. The consensus among the pastis drinkers of the Cafe de la Gare was that it was humanly impossible to ride a race like the Tour without taking stuff. Most ordinary people in France were of the same opinion. Delgado was encouraged like never before from the roadside: 'Poor Pedro'.

  He is one of the most likeable 'leaders' in the peloton, and I was greatly surprised when news of his positive testing broke – surprised he had been caught, that is. The affair left me in an awkward situation. How could I possibly write another Tour article for the Tribune without mentioning the Delgado affair? Oh, I could have done it all right. A piece on my shock and horror that a fine rider like Delgado would do such a despicable thing and 'cheat' by taking drugs would probably have fitted in quite nicely. But I wasn't shocked, I knew what went on, and as soon as I picked up my pen I would have to be honest. I was not ready to write about the drug problems in the sport. They could not be explained in five hundred words. I talked it over with David and we decided that the best way out was to abandon the column. I forgot about journalism and went back to being a cyclist.

  I got terribly depressed watching the Tour on television. I loved the race. Riding it, being part of the glorious circus, made the hardship and sacrifice of the pro life worthwhile. But watching it from an armchair was an act of self-destruction. Always the same old questions. What future have I in the game? I am not good enough to ride the Tour. Will they sack me at the end of the year? Will anyone else give me a job? What else can I do but cycle? The conclusion was always the same – I had no choice. Bills had to be paid and riding my bike was the only way of paying them. I dragged myself out training, and tried to get back into some sort of physical shape. Mentally it was very difficult and on the weekend that the Tour finished I hit rock bottom. I had arranged with Kelly to stay with him for a week to ride some kermesse races in Belgium. I stopped for lunch at a motorway cafe near Lille which was half an hour's drive from the border. It was an awful hole, really grotty, and I didn't eat too much. While eating I suddenly felt terribly alone. I started to think about the race. I hated racing in Belgium and knew I was going to get a terrible stuffing. This depressed me, and the more I thought about it the more it annoyed me that I had to go. I was desperately short of racing practice and without competition there was no way I was going to have a good end of season. But I still didn't want to go. I even started to feel physically sick about it. I needed time to think, to work it all out. I went to a near-by shopping centre to try and get myself together. No, there was no way I could go to Belgium. I needed to talk to someone, I felt so terribly alone. Who could I ring? Ann was out. My parents in Dublin would not understand. I tried to ring David, but he wasn't at home. I rang Frank Quinn in Dublin and talked to his assistant Margaret. I don't know if anything I said to her made sense but I remember asking her to phone Kelly and to inform him I wouldn't be coming. I put down the phone and got into the car. I turned down the motorway and drove 300 kilometres back to my friends in Paris. It was as near as I have ever come to a nervous breakdown.

  Frank phoned me later that night. He persuaded me to keep at it, and convinced me I should drive to Kelly's house in Brussels next day. I felt like a right idiot, knocking on Kelly's door, but I was welcomed as if nothing had happened. Sean and Linda were very kind and I raced next day and was back on the rails. During my stay, I made some interesting discoveries about the 'iron man'. One night we went for a sauna in a health club in Volvoorde. I never liked saunas, and Kelly insisted on raising the temperature by throwing water on the stones. We lasted fifteen minutes but had to get out. It had been incredibly hot and we were both so drained that we could hardly st
and.

  'Jaysus, Kelly, you look like death warmed up.'

  And he laughed, but then said, 'Did you never feel this tired after finishing a race?'

  I thought about it. Yes I had, but only once. It was in a prologue time trial of the Coors Classic in Boulder, Colorado a few weeks before the Olympic road race in Los Angeles. The finish was at the top of a hard climb, and I remember losing consciousness about fifty metres before the line and waking up with a blanket around me five minutes later. It was the only time in my life I ever pushed myself beyond my limits.