However, I remember that the day before the start I suddenly thought of a phrase I’d whispered a few months earlier in the ear of my masseur and confidant, Alain Gallopin: ‘You know, 1989 will be the last year I’ll be able to win the Tour.’ I’d said it well before my win in the Giro, aware that I was nearly twenty-nine. Physically I was not over the hill – let’s not get carried away – but I sensed this was the final flowering of my physical ability. It was as if I’d had an early warning that the swansong wasn’t far off and that I had to use to the full what I had left before the swans tuned up in public. Saying that to Alain, I’d had a sudden flash of awareness.
After several years of structural crises, I knew that my team was completely behind me for the big test. With Cyrille Guimard as directeur sportif, the Super-U team could still be considered one of the best in the world and often was the best. Or at least I was convinced of that, deep inside. Even though I didn’t know what actually went on in other teams, in spite of whatever the guys who had left us might say, I felt that Guimard was the best manager to work with. He had retained the capacity to adapt as new generations arrived, at a time of massive upheavals within cycling, which we could all feel was mutating irrevocably into something else – but what? Cyrille put together personal training plans and all he needed was to see a guy on his bike at a training camp or even just a simple training ride, to know what the rider’s form was, how he had worked in the weeks before and what he needed to turn the pedals quicker. Guimard had that awareness in his eyes. He could analyse things rapidly, and if something had escaped him, he would rectify the situation.
This all meant that we could get going quickly at the start of the season, usually earlier than much of the opposition. And even though some of the guys in the team believed that we weren’t as strong as before – largely because they had heard themselves saying it – our spring results in 1989 soothed any nerves. The team relied too much on me, but it was the collective effort that everyone looked at. That year, we were as good as we were held up to be. And as for me, I was still going strong after being given up for dead at least a hundred times.
Before the Tour’s grand départ in Luxembourg, we all went through a fine training camp in the Pyrenees. I felt my form was great, and the rest of the team could see it. I was dying to get the kilometres in. And for the Tour, I had a well-knit, highly competitive team: Gérard Rué, Vincent Barteau, Thierry Marie, Pascal Simon, Dominique Garde, Christophe Lavainne, the Dane Bjarne Riis and the Swiss Heinz Imboden.
First came the prologue, 7.8km and won by the Dutchman Erik Breukink. After going absolutely flat out, I came second in the same time as the American Greg LeMond, which suggested two things that would prove to be correct in the next three weeks. Firstly, my form was perfect. Secondly, the man to beat would probably be LeMond, who had shown very little since his serious gunshot wound during a hunting party in 1987. The man to beat would certainly not be the defending champion Pedro Delgado, who was the author of an unimaginable blunder before the race even began: he arrived at the start nearly three minutes late. Victory in the Tour was already a distant memory for him.
I can still remember it all. Before and after the prologue, the photographers were going berserk around me. I was still radiant with the reflected glory of the Giro’s pink jersey, so I’d again become salesworthy in the eyes of the press. Pictures of the likely winner shift a newspaper or two, as we all know. It was quite a spectacle. There were dozens of them in a glutinous mass all round me, popping away like machine guns, elbows all over the place, shoving me if need be. I almost had trouble keeping my mind on the job in hand. As I usually did, I grumbled at them a bit. I can’t have come across very well. What can you do? Not only do you have to concentrate on the day’s work, you have to give them what they want and then they expect you to be happy with the pressure, do they?
In the second stage, a team time trial over forty-six kilometres around Luxembourg – too short for my taste – I was in sparkling form. Apart from a few fleeting moments, on the final part of the loop no one was able to share the pace making with me. I could feel the power inside me, the power that was there on my best days. I could simply pound the pedals without worrying about the consequences. It was almost ecstasy, knowing that I had come back to the level of the very best like this, knowing that I was (almost) back to what I had once been in the Tour. Even so, I didn’t feel we were going that fast. Guimard had come up to tell us we were in the lead: not only did we win the stage but along the way we gained forty seconds on Greg LeMond’s ADR team, who weren’t exactly in sparkling form. As for Delgado, now more than seven minutes behind, from that day on we viewed him as being definitely out of the battle for overall victory, even if you took into account what he could do in the mountains.
There was only one name to reckon with: LeMond, winner in 1986. Since the Tour of Italy, Guimard had been very worried about him. After lurking deep down the overall standings for the whole Giro he had finally broken the surface by taking second place in the final time trial. In Guimard’s eyes that was a sure sign. And LeMond was to prove him right in the fifth stage of the Tour, an individual time trial over a colossal seventy-three kilometres between Dinard and Rennes. Because of his lower overall placing, LeMond started about an hour before me and had more helpful weather; I had to contend with a few showers and a lot of headwind. The American won the stage from Delgado, who was 24sec back and I conceded 56sec in third. That might seem like a vast gap, but it needs a little explanation.
Firstly, as everyone knows, LeMond was unrivalled as a time triallist, much better than me when it came to riding alone and unpaced. In addition, he was using a very special bike equipped with handlebar extensions with elbow rests, giving him a far more aerodynamic position and four support points – pedals, saddle, bars and elbow rests – which was totally revolutionary but also strictly against the rules. Until then, the referees had only allowed three support points. For reasons that still elude me, Guimard and I didn’t make a formal complaint . . . and the idle commissaries shut their eyes. The rules were being bent, and the consequences would be way beyond anything I could have imagined.
LeMond was now in yellow, a handful of seconds ahead of me, and there was no chance he would take the slightest risk: that was not his style. The first Pyrenean stage, from Pau to Cauterets, was as expected: he sucked the wheels as best he could and made it obvious he was just going to be a spectator. As I’ve already said, he didn’t have a strong team at his side but even so he had the physical ability to control a race on any terrain. But no: he was barely willing to defend his jersey. When Delgado’s Reynolds team sent their men on the attack, putting Delgado at the front and dispatching the young Miguel Indurain towards the stage win, LeMond didn’t blink. I was the one who was forced to keep them within reach. All he did was sit tight and take advantage of the work I put in. To be honest, it was extremely frustrating.
The tenth stage between Cauterets and the finish climb at Superbagnères, was a special day. The Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde cols were on the menu: the stuff that epics are made of. While up ahead Charly Mottet was trying – vainly – to turn his race around by attacking a long way from the finish, taking with him the day’s winner, Robert Millar, I felt as if I was having a massive off-day, particularly on the Tourmalet where the attacking was brutal and I had no answer. Rather like the day before, for some reason I couldn’t work out, I was going nowhere. But as I put on a bit of a show as I went along, and didn’t give any sign that I was in trouble, my rivals didn’t notice my real state.
In any case, if I remained with Greg LeMond there wasn’t much to worry about. 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. A few kilometres from the finish Steven Rooks and Gert-Jan Theunisse attacked together. I looked at LeMond to see if he
was going to react. I didn’t even try to follow them: physically I just couldn’t do it. But 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, pushing myself far beyond what I felt capable of at the time. I gained all of twelve seconds on him, in other words enough for me to take the yellow jersey by seven seconds: our hand-to-hand battle had begun.
In any case, I was happy to pull the maillot jaune over my shoulders; it had been so long since the last time in 1984. And I was happy to have officially taken over responsibility for controlling the race, and was ready to take it on: LeMond refused to do so. At least there was no question about it now. In front of the media that evening, I stuck to the way I liked to do things, and said openly how much LeMond’s behaviour annoyed me. ‘He complains that he had trouble with Hinault during the 1986 Tour, but he should take his share of blame. He was called a wheel-sucker at the time and the guys who said that weren’t wrong.’ Having said that, anyone can be on the receiving end. A spectator on the roadside yelled as I went past: ‘Less talk, more racing!’ and clearly he was right. That’s how I’ve always seen it.
Of course, a few perceptive onlookers pointed out to me that LeMond had been clear that the weakness of his team prevented him from riding more ambitiously. There was no way he could dictate events. I had to go into some detail in my answer. ‘Perhaps his team isn’t up to the job, but the way he behaves is not acceptable for a maillot jaune. On the Col de Marie-Blanque, we were both on our own, without a teammate to help either of us, and he agreed that we would share the work. What happened? Nothing. He made the pace a bit on the Aubisque, but after that, it was all over. He didn’t ride on the front once. Today, he let me do all the work. When Rooks and Theunisse attacked at the bottom of Superbagnères – and they weren’t pushing too hard – he didn’t react. I had a go at him, and promised that I’d get him off my wheel.’
The morning after I’d said all this, LeMond came to see me in the village-départ. Now it was his turn to have a go: ‘You shouldn’t say that stuff!’ His image had been tarnished, and he didn’t like that. LeMond is someone who has always paid attention to his popularity with the public and the press. He always rubbed along with them quite well, and his relations with journalists and fans were as chummy as could be, permanently flirting with them. I’ve never been able to do that. What’s the interest in it? What’s the point? I’ve always preferred to be myself. I’d rather shut up than just tell them what they want to hear.
Relatively speaking, the race quietened down briefly as far as the Alps. We watched each other for every single minute of the race. From the team’s point of view, the stage to Marseille was a joyful high point. I was still in yellow but on 14 July 1989, the day of the bicentenary of the French revolution, Vincent Barteau won a prestigious stage that would stick in everyone’s minds. Red, white and blue; champagne.
On the fifteenth stage, an individual time trial from Gap to Orcières-Merlette, Rooks led the way and we both lost time: LeMond was fifth, I was tenth. That round went to the American. Over the thirty-nine kilometres I was fifty seconds slower; he had an overall lead of forty seconds. It was not over, but I knew that I had to go on the attack in the Alps or defeat was inevitable. That turned a war of attrition into an epic battle. He was climbing less well than I was, but was time trialling more strongly. It was a simple equation, and it would be valid all the way to Paris.
The next day took us to Briançon, over the Col d’Izoard. At the summit, the ‘roof’ of the Tour, I couldn’t hold the wheels and was trailing behind Theunisse, Mottet, Delgado – and LeMond. I threw myself headlong down the descent towards Briançon but it was a forlorn hope and I crossed the line fourteen seconds behind. Now both LeMond and I vaguely understood that every second had to be contested with no quarter given. As far as the fans and press were concerned at the time, the fourteen seconds didn’t seem a great deal given that we had been racing for nearly three weeks. If only they had known.
On the morning of the seveteenth stage between Briançon and l’Alpe d’Huez Cyrille Guimard and I talked it all over, without keeping anything back. We both knew we wouldn’t have many more chances to turn the race round. So I came up with a plan: wait for the start of the climb to l’Alpe d’Huez and put in the most vicious attack I could, at the very first hairpin. That meant really attacking, as if the finish was only 100 metres away. I had no option, but I was happy with it; I wanted to do battle, no matter what the price might be.
The gap between us was so tiny that there was no point in making a move on the Galibier or the Croix de Fer where LeMond and I would simply cancel each other out. Once we got to the Alp, I could set the fires of hell ablaze.
On the first hairpin bend, as I’d decided, I attacked. LeMond stuck to me. I went for it again, at once. He came back, faster than before. He had hardly even got to me before I put in another one, even more brutal than before. Bent over his bike, he ripped himself to bits to get back to me again. Then it was his turn to attack, churning a massive gear. I managed to squirm up to him, but my legs were on fire, and I went again, full bore, finding strength from I don’t know where. But a few seconds later, he was back up at my side. It was a draw. And we were both unable to take another breath or put any weight on the pedals.
It was life or death.
For anyone who witnessed it close to, it must have been an amazing spectacle, but to our great surprise live television showed barely any of the cut and thrust, blow and counter-blow. There was no one near us. The only thing was that after all our efforts neither of us was going anywhere. Neither of us had given way, but I couldn’t have any regrets: it was this, or nothing. To overcome LeMond, one of the world’s great followers, you had to harass him mercilessly, force him over his limit as quickly as possible so that later you could start again if you could.
So now neither of us had any strength left. Our lungs were hanging out, and we watched each other, almost at a standstill, gasping like a pair of crazy young puppies. So obviously, a few riders came back from behind us: Rondón, Delgado, Lejarreta, Rooks.
Then, about six kilometres from the top, Guimard drove up alongside me in the team car to tell me: ‘Attack, he’s dying.’ For the first time since we had set out to seek our fortune together, Guimard wanted me to attack on l’Alpe d’Huez. And of course, there was no way I could. I had to mutter to him ‘Can’t, I’m wasted.’ That was the way Guimard could see a race: the eye of the master. Remember he had nurtured LeMond when he was young, and knew him by heart.
I went on as best I could. But Guimard’s words stuck in my mind. Once we’d got past the five kilometres to go sign, the speed lowered and I felt a bit better. Like the old diesel I was, I was getting on top of it again. I decided to give it another go four kilometres out. One acceleration, and LeMond, flattened over his bike, couldn’t come with me. In less than four kilometres I took 1min 19sec out of him, and that’s bearing in mind that the last bit of l’Alpe d’Huez is by far the least difficult part. Guimard had called a race right, yet again, and it should be noted for posterity: if I’d gone for LeMond at the moment when he had told me to, the Tour would have been won. No question. Because LeMond was completely blasted. I was putting about twenty seconds per kilometre into him.
How could Guimard have realised that LeMond was out for the count? I’ve never known for sure. But I believe he noticed that he was showing his physical exhaustion by riding in a lopsided way. When he was suffering LeMond certainly used to sit strangely in the saddle.
On the evening of the finish at the Alpe, I regained the yellow jersey with a twenty-six second lead. I knew that this wasn’t enough to guarantee the win in Paris, with a final time trial still to come over 24.5km for a unique finish, on the final day, on the Champs-Elysées. So I wanted to strike while I had the psychological upper hand and next day I didn’t let LeMond get a grip on the race between Bourg d’Oisans and Villard de Lans. My legs had suddenly begun to feel like th
ey used to when I was younger, and on the Vercors plateau, I attacked three kilometres from the top of the Côte de Saint-Nizier while Rooks and Theunisse and the PDM team were setting a searing pace, with no idea that I was about to be the beneficiary. I caught everyone napping and although LeMond and Delgado worked together they couldn’t keep up. It was an example of my favourite tactic: use a situation in the race to take my opponents by surprise.
My lead climbed to fifty-two seconds on the descent: I was putting in every ounce of talent I had. But an unpleasant surprise was waiting once I got over the hill 26km from Villard de Lans: a blasted headwind. There was a new twist every day in the plot of this race; every last line would count when the tale was finally told. Behind, there were four or five chasing: LeMond, Delgado, Theunisse, Rooks. It was these last two who did the work for LeMond. Yet again he was unwilling to push the pedals any harder than necessary.
I weakened slightly as the finish approached, losing half my lead, but I ended up with the stage win and a twenty-four second lead at the finish line. That made fifty seconds in hand in the overall standings. That evening at the hotel there was a feeling of euphoria. I was sure I had won the Tour.
The next day, en route to Aix-les-Bains, going over lesser climbs such as the Granier and the Col de Porte, I felt as if I had wings on my feet. On the Col de Porte, each time I led the string of riders round a hairpin I gained ten metres. At one point I barely seemed to accelerate but no one managed to follow. I kept going, and was away. After a few hundred metres, I sat up and waited. Guimard wasted no time in driving up to talk to me. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m flying, Cyrille, that’s all.’
‘Then go for it!’
It was a tough one. After a few days of intense attacking racing the risk of hitting the wall is huge. There were seventy kilometres to the finish with three cols to cross and a section in the valley with a headwind to get to Aix-les-Bains. I ended up saying to Guimard: ‘I’ve got enough of a lead to win the Tour. I’m afraid I’ll blow. It’s a pointless risk. I’ll sit up.’
We Were Young and Carefree Page 2
