by Paul Kimmage
Thierry Claveyrolat seemed better equipped than most to face the challenge. To watch this tiny Frenchman in his prime was to marvel at the power of spirit and determination. He was one of the great climbers of his generation and twice a stage winner of the Tour.
In May 1994, after twelve years as a professional cyclist he announced his retirement. He had just turned thirty five. He bought the Cafe de la Gare in Vizille, changed the name on the door to 'L'Etape' and began a new life as a proprietaire. Four years later, on New Year's Day, 1998, he bought a lottery scratch card from a newsagent and won 160,000 euros. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold – among his friends and former team-mates there was a perception that Clavet could do no wrong . . . But the reality was different.
In the early hours of a Tuesday morning in September, 1999, he pulled down the shutters on the bar and began the journey home. The route out of the village, across the bridge and up the Cote de Laffrey, was one he had made on his bike a thousand times before. The Laffrey is one of the region's steepest and most celebrated climbs. In the 1987 Tour, his supporters had sprayed his name from top to bottom, transforming the ascension into a venerable shrine. Twelve years later, the paint was faded but still legible on the large stone wall before the right turn to his home at Notre-Dame-de-Message: 'Allez Claveyrolat, L'Aigle de Vizille.' His wife, Myriam, and their two children were sleeping when he entered the house. He sat alone in the kitchen for a while to compose his thoughts, placed a letter on the kitchen table and made the short walk to the cellar. The rifle was sitting where he had placed it in the cupboard. He bolted the door and put the gun to the side of his head. It was three o'clock in the morning. Nobody heard the shot.
I was in Malta with the Irish football team on the eve of a European Championship qualifying game when I heard the news. Stunned, I ordered a stiff brandy from the hotel bar and tried to make sense of it all. The good times we had shared flooded my head . . . His first big win at the Dauphine in 1986 and the celebrations afterwards when he had invited me to join his family for cake and champagne . . . Our daily rendezvous before training at the Cafe de la Gare when I'd watch him joke and swap gossip with the locals before bringing Myriam her croissants. Myriam was his darling but so was the Cafe de la Gare; he loved the ambience of the brasserie and I never doubted he would buy it one day if he earned enough money.
Over the next four years the bond between us grew into a firm, if not bosom, friendship. It wasn't possible to be bosom pals with Thierry, only Myriam got that close. I would often try to get 'deep' with him during our daily training rides but it was one-way traffic; Clavet always kept you guessing about the things he felt inside.
I do remember one brief, yet revealing insight. We were returning from training one afternoon on a small, narrow road when this absolute bloody maniac in a car almost knocked us off our bikes. We both reacted angrily and began waving fists when, to our shock and amazement, the guy slammed on his brakes in the middle of the road. From the moment he stepped out of the car I knew we were in trouble – he had eyes like a psychopath and was absolutely huge.
'What's your problem?' he asked, swatting at Thierry like a fly. 'I'll break both of your fucking legs if you don't shut your mouth.' I reached for my pump and thought about smashing him across the head but I was absolutely shitting myself. He could have murdered us both without breaking sweat.
I noted' the registration as he returned to his car and suggested that we go straight to the police station and report him. Thierry wouldn't hear of it. 'What are we going to tell them?' he fumed. 'That we stood there like wimps and allowed him to slap us around!' His pride wouldn't allow him to go to the police. His pride would drive us apart.
During the winter of 1989, after I had announced my decision to retire from cycling and return to Dublin, one of the last days we spent together was to shift the furniture from his apartment in Vizille to his splendid new residence at Notre-Dame-de-Message. His son, Joris, had just been born, his career was taking off and we promised to keep in touch and visit whenever possible.
The following summer I returned to the Tour for the first time as a journalist. Rough Ride had just been published. The first indication I had that Thierry wasn't pleased was an interview he gave to L'Equipe: 'After all I did for him, he sneaks behind my back and betrays me, betrays us all,' he said. A few days later, I was sitting in the village depart, reading a newspaper when he suddenly appeared before me. The venom of his words almost knocked me over. I wanted to explain: 'Look Thierry, I haven't betrayed you; please wait until the book is published in French before you jump to any conclusion.' But my tongue was welded to the roof of my mouth and I couldn't say a word. I just stood there and took it. It was the last time we would meet face to face.
If the book had upset him, it certainly didn't show in his performance in the Tour. A week after our confrontation he won his first ever stage with a brilliant ride through the Alps to Saint-Gervais. A year later, he won another tough Alpine stage at Morzine and for the first time in his career he began to earn good money. Suddenly, he could look to the future and life after cycling with confidence; he would soon have enough saved to buy the Cafe de la Gare.
Retirement can be hell for most professional sportsmen. What other job makes retirement compulsory once you reach your mid-thirties? And what use are the skills the sportsman has acquired in civilian life? Try programming an Apple Mac with courage. Try selling a race-winning sprint to corporate finance. Is it any wonder that most pros hanker for the old days when they find themselves adrift in this strange new world? Is it any wonder that some can't let go?
Clavet was an exception to the rule. In the five years between the moment he retired, and the moment he died, he never looked back. 'Non, je ne regrette rien' could have been written for him. In Clavet's world, you made your bed and you slept in it; what's done, was done. He began his new life in business by transforming the interior of the brasserie into a shrine. Framed mementoes of his life in cycling were nailed to the walls; a yellow jersey from the Dauphine; his polka-dot jersey from the Tour; a French jersey from the World Championships; the cups, the medals and largest of all, a huge signed portrait, a reminder of the day he'd made a legend of the Tour suffer: 'To my friend Thierry and all the clients of L'Etape – Miguel Indurain.'
At first, this new life proved everything he'd expected. But soon the things that had once appealed to him – the old-timers dropping by to chat about cycling – began to grate. What L'Etape really needed was an injection of youth and vitality, some dancing to liven things up. It was his first big mistake. The music cost money; the youths were dealing in drugs; and the locals just weren't interested. L'Etape wasn't the Lido and it was never going to be. Thierry was forced back to the drawing board. But the damage had already been done. Having been shown the door once, the old clientele were reluctant to return. Thierry began drinking. His debts to suppliers were mounting. There was friction with Myriam at home. It was all turning sour. As a racer, there were so many things he had failed to notice about the bar: the clients who puked and shat regularly all over the toilet floors; the drunkards who never had enough; the early starts; the late finishes; seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. But no regrets. There was no turning back. He would make it work.
The lottery win couldn't have come at a better time. He sold a share of the business, used his winnings to plug the black hole in his accounts and determined to make a fresh start. But soon the problems were exactly as before. A bouncer he hired to patrol the undesirables, an illegal immigrant from Zaire, couldn't produce an identity card after a disturbance one evening. Thierry was brought before the authorities: Didn't he know about this? How was he paying this guy? What about the taxman? He was prosecuted and fined.
The nightmare was only beginning. A month before he died, at 11 p.m. on Friday, 13 August, he left his home at Notre-Dame to close up for the day. The descent of the Cote de Laffrey is as spectacular as its ascent and as his BMW gathered speed, he cut the corner on
to the bridge and collided with an oncoming car. The driver of the Renault 19 – a Breton holidaying with his family in the region – was seriously injured. His fourteen-year-old son lost an eye. Thierry was arrested immediately for dangerous driving. He had been drinking.
A week after the crash, Jean-Claude Colotti called to see him at home. 'I had never seen him so low,' Colotti told me. 'He knew he was facing a prison sentence. "I'm finally going to pay for all of the fuck-ups I've made these last few years," he said.' Jean-Claude visited him again at L'Etape three days before he died. 'His morale had improved and in many ways he seemed the same old Thierry, but you know what he was like – he'd never tell you anything. When I was there, a supplier walked in and started shouting at him to be paid. That set him back a bit. "Why," he said, "does it always have to happen in front of my friends?"'
When I say that we never saw each other again after that day on the Tour in 1990, it's not strictly true. Eight years later, during the winter of 1998, I had an interview in Grenoble. I decided to drive to Vizille. It was after ten when I arrived and the village was dark and deserted. I parked my car in the square opposite L'Etape. I could see Thierry clearly behind the bar. For the next fifteen minutes, I sat and watched. There were only two customers; a cleaning lady was mopping the floor. I thought about going in. The four years we spent together are an important part of my life and I was prepared to forgive and forget but I couldn't do it; I couldn't leave the car. I was sure Thierry would have rejected me again. His pride would have insisted.
Pride was his greatest attribute when he was racing; it drove him on. But it also helped him to self-destruct. I'm not sure what was going through his mind when he decided to take his life but I can make an educated guess. He would have thought: 'My name is worth nothing anymore. I have destroyed a family's life. Tomorrow the police are taking me to jail. What will my children drink of me? A prison sentence will not restore my reputation; it won't give that boy back his sight.' There was one way for Thierry to salvage a fragment of self-respect from the wreckage. At 3 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, 7 September, he made his choice. He wrote a note to Myriam, listing his instructions: no funeral, no flowers, no friends; his remains were to be cremated. And his jerseys and trophies were not to be removed from L'Etape. This was his only other request.
Last summer I returned to Vizille for the second time since he died. Myriam had sold the bar and moved back to Grenoble. His trophies and jerseys were gone from the walls. The paint with his name had finally faded on the Laffrey. Regrets? I had a few.
TOUR 2006: PLUS ÇA CHANGE . . .
For sixteen years now, since the publication of Rough Ride in the summer of 1990, I've had this love/hate relationship with the Tour de France; I love the event/I hate the people who have destroyed it.
When I became a full-time journalist I abandoned cycling for other sports: the 1990 World Cup, the Barcelona Olympics, the 1994 World Cup, the Atlanta Olympics, the Ryder Cup, the Sydney Olympics, the British Open, the Masters, Formula 1, tennis, horse racing. Every summer the Tour would come around and I'd think about going back and every summer I would remember how the sport treats those who 'tell the truth' and change my mind.
A few months ago, Alex Butler, my boss at the Sunday Times, called me into the office for a chat.
'I'd like you to cover the Tour this year,' he said.
'I'd rather go to the Open,' I replied.
'I want you to go to the Tour,' he insisted.
'I went last year,' I replied.
'Yes, you stayed for three days and wrote a story about drugs. Why not cover the race from start to finish?'
'Three weeks?'
'Yes.'
'That's a lot of drugs stories.'
'You don't have to write exclusively about drugs,' he said. 'How many times did you ride the Tour?'
'Three.'
'Well, what if you were to write a personal diary about how it feels to go back?'
'Because I'd rather write a personal diary about the Open.'
'You never played in the Open.'
'I'm working on my handicap.'
'Think about it,' he said.
But I was adamant (or as adamant as you can be with your employer). I wasn't going back. A few weeks later a funny thing happened: I'd been planning this bike ride in the Alps with my three brothers and some friends for months. We caught a flight to Geneva, hired a small mini-bus and drove south to Grenoble and the Route Napoleon from Vizille towards Gap. As we exited the village and began the long steep climb of the Cote de Laffrey, my mind started flooding with memories of what seems another life . . .
'You know,' I announced, 'when I rode the Tour I was still with the leaders when we came up here in 1987.'
'You know,' I said, 'when I rode the Tour the stage was a little bit different to the one we're going to ride tomorrow.'
'You know,' I said, 'when I rode the Tour the race was 400 kilometres longer and we had only one rest day.'
'You know,' I said, 'when I rode the Tour we were given just five pairs of shorts and five jerseys to get us through the three weeks and I had to hand-wash my kit after every second stage.'
It didn't take long before a white flag was raised. 'Listen mate, no offence,' my friend Harry grinned. 'But I think we'll have to put a limit on the number of times you can say "When I rode the Tour" tomorrow.'
'Fair enough,' I conceded. 'How does a hundred sound?'
Next morning we were up early and everyone was buzzing as we pedalled out of Gap on a truly glorious day. Three hours later, sweating and exhausted, we crested the summit of the Col d'Izoard (2,360m), one of the Tour's most fabled climbs, and it was time for a break. Harry had been an amateur international but he had never experienced anything like the Col d'Izoard.
'Christ,' he said, 'that was brutal.' And then he put his arm on my shoulder: 'Listen, you can say "When I rode the Tour" as much as you like from now on. Respect.'
The rest of the group nodded in approval: 'Yeah, respect mate.' I laughed and tried to brush it off but there was suddenly a lump in my throat and I felt deeply moved. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about my life as a professional cyclist and I was reminded that there is much more to the Tour than the race for the yellow jersey. And at that moment, I knew, I had to return . . .
Dublin, Monday, 26 June: THE SEARCH FOR THE NEW ME
I read a quote from Greg LeMond a few years ago where he admitted that he still dreams about the Tour. I don't. I stopped dreaming about the race a long time ago. I keep the videos of my three Tours in a cardboard box in the attic and this morning, when I opened it up, it had been gathering dust since 1989. Maybe if I had won the race three times like Greg it would be different. Maybe if the sport had loved me as much as I had loved it, I would dream about it all the time.
I shove a recording of the 1987 Tour into the video player. It has been running for almost an hour when my son lifts his head from his Harry Potter book and glances at the mayhem on the screen. A number of cyclists have crashed on a gravel-strewn descent in the Pyrenees; one has plunged twenty metres into a ravine; two others are lying in the gravel on the edge of the precipice.
'That's you Dad, isn't it?' my son observes.
'Yes it is,' I reply.
'What happened?' he asks. 'Why are you lying on the ground?'
'Well, the Italian rider in front of me crashed and I couldn't avoid him.'
'How did he crash?'
'He was braking too hard and his rims overheated and his front tyre exploded.'
'Why was he braking so hard?'
'Because he didn't want to crash.'
'But he did crash.'
'Yes, I know but . . . Okay, this is what happened. A couple of riders attacked as we crossed the summit of the climb and the descent was very fast. The faster we descended, the more we had to brake. The more we had to brake, the hotter the rims of the wheels became, increasing the risk that your tyres were going to explode. And that's what happened: the Italian's front
tyre exploded and we couldn't avoid the crash.'
