No matter, we weren’t going to change our ways. That very evening we said: ‘We’re not going to get anywhere overall, but we can show what we are made of!’ And we got in the front group every day. I decided to take the best climber’s jersey, and held it to the finish. And even in the time trial up Mont Faron, the climb up above Toulon, I had the time of my life. I started just ahead of Joop Zoetemelk and I knew that he would catch me early on, because he was one of the better time triallists, and he’d be going flat out. That’s precisely what happened, so I got in his slipstream, although just far enough away to avoid a talking to from the referees, and I stayed with him easily. And guess what? On the climb up to the finish, I caught up with him, overtook him and left him behind. The great Zoetemelk had been having a real go at me. ‘Get out the way!’ he kept shouting. And so when I went past him I said: ‘Come on, then, get on my wheel.’ He didn’t like it all. But he was still second in the time trial and I was sixth, so we both got something out of it.
Let’s be sensible here: I was a good new professional in 1982, but nothing out of the ordinary. Except that a few days later I won the Grand Prix de Cannes, only my sixth or seventh race with Renault. To tell the truth, I didn’t expect to put my arms in the air so soon. It was a Saturday, and the Monday afterwards it happened again, in La Flèche Azuréenne, another one-day race which finished in Nice. And that was a bit special. I was at the front all day, getting in amongst the others as usual, attacking all the time. But, at a certain point, four riders just took off one after the other. As if he was laughing at me, or was simply surprised that I wasn’t counter-attacking, Raymond Martin began teasing: ‘Come on, Fignon, you star, this is the time to move, not all those other times.’ I looked at him, stood on the pedals and said: ‘Oh, all right, I’m off then.’ And away I went. And suddenly thirty kilometres from the finish there were five of us in the front: Pascal Simon, René Bittinger, Charly Bérard, Marc Madiot, and me. Bérard and Madiot were Renault teammates of mine, so we were there in numbers. I expected Bérard to be the one we worked for at the finish, because he was from Nice and was a decent sprinter, but, surprisingly, Guimard drove up alongside us and said, ‘Laurent, you take it easy. You others, you ride for him.’
My blood froze. I was only a new pro. I heard myself saying: ‘Non, Monsieur Guimard.’
It was too late. He retorted: ‘That’s how it is.’ Guimard had spoken, he had made up his mind; there was no comeback. Madiot and Bérard gave it big licks, and I sat in behind them. No kidding, I was shivering with fright, literally wobbling with the weight of responsibility. I was terrified I might let Guimard down. And the bunch was coming perilously close: a minute, 50sec, 35sec. But we held out.
By the time it came to the finish sprint, Madiot and Bérard were wasted. We had to beat Bittinger and Simon, good strong riders who had been around the block. My legs died a kilometre from the finish with the fear of it all. It was the stress coming through. The feeling was shocking and completely new for me: I’d never felt like this before. And then, Simon launched the sprint, with Bittinger on his wheel. And then, I don’t quite know how, I stamped on the pedals and found the mental strength and the speed I needed. The panic attack was over. I came up alongside them with no difficulty and left them standing. They were twenty metres behind as I crossed the line. It was a fine, decisive win; more importantly, it was probably then that I managed to channel the anguish you feel at a major event, to master the tension and turn it into an asset.
Guimard, who barely ever expressed his feelings, came over to talk to me. He looked in my eyes and rather than congratulate me for the win, he explained: ‘You were the rider in form. You needed to keep on winning.’ He had made the correct decision and no one would have argued. What’s more, I had won. I had shown that I could cope with responsibility when a decision was made.
A few weeks later after my first ride in the Tour of Italy, Guimard, a man of knowledge and intuition, stated: ‘Laurent Fignon? A very good stage race rider for the future. He’s rock solid. He’s surprised me with the stamina he shows when he has to ride day after day. He’s quick enough, he knows where to ride in the bunch, and he can climb. When he attacks fifteen hundred metres from a race finish, he is fantastic at keeping going right to the line. He eats a lot, he sleeps well, he recovers quickly, he never complains and he fits in. He’s a good team rider. We’ll hear about him again, in the 1983 Tour de France.’
Although I was a first-year pro, I had finished fifteenth overall, totally devoting myself to Hinault. I’d become convinced that if I was to ride for myself I could easily finish in the top five of a major Tour. That was clear. A few days before the finish I said, with a smile on my face ‘Hinault’s lucky. If I hadn’t been in his team, I’d have just kept attacking him.’ A lot of people felt that was pretentious, but there was no doubt in my mind.
I was not the kind of person who let others say what I felt. I just put everything out there. This was a time when cycling could show us as we truly were. This sport could take off all the wraps and expose everything about us to the world.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
BACCHUS RAISES HIS HEAD
Getting to know what your body can do can be a joyous affair; nothing beats personal experience if you want to understand the deepest things. Sometimes you end up finding out just how complex your system is. In March 1982, at the Tour de l’Armor, I had my first taste of partying with the pros. There was nothing to brag about, but no reason to hang my head either.
Bernard Hinault was performing on home soil and was utterly determined to win this race in front of his fellow Bretons. We had an excellent working relationship: you could say I was a loyal, devoted teammate and the Badger never had any cause to complain about me. During this race, however, Hinault was so stressed out and so obsessed with winning that he was rarely his normal self. His eyes were so full of desire, popping out of their sockets; we ended up wondering if he was actually sleeping at night.
In the midst of it all, I did begin to sense something that felt like tension between Hinault and Guimard. Of course, we were kept well away when they had any disagreements, but we could feel it like gangrene, slowly letting its poison into the team day by day.
On the evening after the stage to Saint-Brieuc, Hinault had gone back to his house but told us all: ‘After dinner I’ll come back with a few bottles. We’ll toast Brittany.’ We were always up for a party so were overjoyed that our leader was pushing the boat out, given that he was usually fairly disciplined and austere. The Breton air was obviously doing him a world of good.
Night fell and Hinault kept his word. He came in with his arms loaded with cases of wine. The only problem was that most of the team staff had disappeared. Either they weren’t up for a drinking session with the Badger, or perhaps they just had better things to do. Sometimes, back then, depending on how important a race was, people just melted away in the evening.
For the first time in my life I saw Hinault lose his temper. He was raging mad and yelled whatever came into his head. ‘The bastards, you can’t rely on them for anything,’ he shouted up and down the corridors, ‘and that shit Guimard, he’s never around when he’s meant to be.’ When he was in a state like this, Hinault was terrifying: he exuded primeval anger and power. Then, still beside himself with rage, he added, ‘What the hell, we’ll just knock them back ourselves.’
So we began drinking. A lot. Right away, Hinault calmed down and his anger metamorphosed into affable pleasure. It was a good night. I couldn’t say how many bottles we pulled out of the cases: ten, twelve, more? The most surprising thing was that there were only a few of us. Jules, Philippe Chevalier, Hinault, me, maybe one or two more, but I can’t remember. Chevalier was a sight: glued to a chair, unable to stand, eyes wandering, muttering incoherent phrases. We were pouring it down our throats.
Up we went to our bedrooms. Marc Madiot had had a crash during the stage and was lying in his bed like a mummy, bandages from head to foot, with r
oad rash all over him. So we thought it would be a good idea to stand his bed on its end. He screamed like a stuck pig. Raging drunk, we chucked empty bottles out of the windows, rampaged up and down the corridors singing fit to bust. It was a riot.
As you might expect, the hotel manager poked his nose out of his bedroom to ask us to quieten down a bit, and threatened to report us to Renault. ‘This is my turf,’ the Badger replied and told him where to go in no uncertain terms. We fell about.
The trouble was that we weren’t the only riders staying in that particular hotel. There were quite a few other teams spending the night there. We ended up in bed at 5 a.m. so we didn’t get a lot of sleep, and neither did the others. They had all paid the price for the night’s festivities and it barely needs saying that they were all hell-bent on paying us back for the sleep they had lost.
Next morning, as soon as the start flag dropped, bang! Two or three teams had agreed that they would try to make us bring up everything we’d drunk, which was kind of them, as we were probably well over the limit. It was a rough old day. We had to keep Hinault in the race, although he was as hung-over as we were, and so we had to bring back every attack. Guimard hadn’t said a word. But he had probably thought a thing or two. We had to prove to him that the night’s activities hadn’t made any difference to our willpower, or to our ability to control the race. Julot and I kept the flag flying. The winey vapours dissipated with the manic speed of the race and no one got away from us. And guess what: Bernard Hinault ended up winning that Tour de l’Armor, as he so wanted to do. We just celebrated his latest win a bit prematurely, that was all.
Let’s think it through. However it might look, this little party wasn’t alcoholics binging. We had had a fright – because this sort of thing isn’t good for your health – but in this case it was a joyful one. The drinking session hadn’t prevented us from doing our work, and it hadn’t affected our desire to explore life’s outer limits. On the contrary. The partying – which fortunately didn’t always have quite the same outcome – strengthened the bonds between us and welded us into a solid unit. We were living through stuff together, and not just on our bikes. We got to know each other. We were willing to work for each other. And when we had to make a superhuman effort to bridge a gap in a race, we weren’t just doing it for a leader or a teammate, but for a friend, a brother in arms, a fellow craftsman. Self-sacrifice made much more sense, and victories had more meaning for all of us.
That’s not all. A character like Hinault never forgot anything: we had had a big evening together and together we had helped him to win; we had made ourselves hurt on his behalf and he was put in a situation where he could judge our abnegation and our friendship. Because on that stage you needed huge willpower to work your guts out like we did. Deep down inside I knew that Hinault was an honourable man, and indeed, five days later, he repaid me selflessly by helping me to win the two-day, three-stage Critérium International. I was up with the big names.
How many riders today would dare to have a party with no holds barred during a stage race? How many would take the risk of missing a night’s sleep without paying the physical price? At least we had bodies to match our personalities.
You needed a strong mind. Because during that fairly epic Tour de l’Armor I learned something else: even though amphetamines were detectable in urine tests, they were still very common in the peloton. The older guys had become experts at using them and had changed their ways to fit the rules, which themselves have changed a great deal since then. You have to understand that on the last day of a stage race only the first two finishers on the stage and the first three in the overall standings would be tested. I won’t say that this was a direct incentive to keep pockets full of speed – as yet I hadn’t heard about any other drugs – but there was low risk and that was a factor. After taking a good look, I ended up being fairly sure that there were plenty of guys who saw it like that, without either aspiring to win races or become team leaders. In their dreams.
After a little pestering, other riders explained that it was possible to get round the controls. In spite of the scandal at l’Alpe d’Huez during the 1978 Tour de France when Michel Pollentier was expelled from the race for trying to cheat a control with a bulb of clean urine, there was still widespread use of the ‘urine bags’ he had unwittingly advertised. When I look back now I’m convinced that I’ve lost races to riders who were amphetamined up to the eyeballs then managed to dodge the tests. Even so, I never once said to myself: ‘That guy cheated and that’s why I lost.’ I never looked for excuses or culprits. If I didn’t win a race, I was to blame, it wasn’t down to someone else’s (possible) use of some kind of drug. I didn’t know what they did, I didn’t want to know; I wasn’t interested. Of course, you can claim that this means there was a measure of acceptance on my part. But that is how it was. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t complain about it. There was no reason to complain: up until then amphetamines and other drugs had not shaken up the natural order of things. That happy time wouldn’t last, as everyone now knows.
At the start of the 1980s what is casually referred to as ‘the doping system’ looked rather like the process of doping did: it was limited and no one felt it was important. This has to be understood. A lot of people considered that all they were doing was following the rules of the profession, that this was a step that had to be taken to fit into the milieu. That is how it was. That context drew guys into crossing the threshold. It wasn’t cheating for the sake of it, but cheating without the awareness that it was cheating. One thing has to be made clear: drugged up or not, a great champion in form was unbeatable. Drugged up or not, an average rider couldn’t beat a champion. That was the law of cycling. That was the reality of doping at the time.
CHAPTER 10
* * *
THE CODE OF HONOUR
Cycling is timeless. Cycling has history. Sometimes, alas, the history isn’t epic.
Let’s not beat about the bush: the only reason criteriums exist is to create a spectacle. The organisers pay the riders to take part. The racing follows well-established ‘rules’, that have changed little in the past forty years. The best-known riders of the time have to be kept ‘on show’ all the time. The public isn’t fooled. They come for that and they like the way the racing is simulated. It’s not one hundred per cent arranged in advance but the conventions stipulate that the two or three big names in the bunch contest the win at the end.
At a criterium in 1982, shortly before the Tour of Italy, Bernard Hinault was absent because he had fallen out with the organiser. I’d won the Critérium International – and was what amounted to the leader at Renault. Also, there was another leading French rider. He was a bit of a rare bird because he had been up and down the ranks: he’d turned pro, then gone back to being an amateur before coming back up to the elite. He’d had an up-and-down career. I’d met him when I was an amateur: he was welcoming, smiled a lot, he didn’t keep anything from us and sometimes invited a young rider or two into the combines. And then, shortly after winning a major French professional race, he changed completely. He didn’t merely keep himself to himself, but he adopted a completely different attitude towards the younger riders.
For this criterium he had teamed up with another recent winner. You could say that they were the two ‘stars’ of the day. Anyway, that was clearly how he saw it. He came to see us and said in a tone that suggested there was no arguing about it: ‘You Renault guys will ride behind us when we get away.’
Hinault wasn’t there so I didn’t want any trouble but Pascal Jules didn’t like this guy’s attitude and muttered in my ear: ‘Hey, you won the International, you deserve to show yourself out front as well.’
After some tense negotiation the ‘boss’ of the day finally made a concession: I was to be allowed to take sixth place, among the best. That was the best I could get out of him: it was not good enough.
A few weeks later the whole marching band got together again at another criterium. Whose home
turf? The same opponent’s, of course. A lovely lush place in the middle of the countryside. There was just one problem: it was in the Île-de-France, which was chez moi as well. This time, Hinault did turn up. My rival went and talked to him: ‘I want to win’. The Badger said, ‘OK.’
‘Not OK with me,’ I said. ‘It’s my turn.’
My rival was livid: ‘Don’t fuck with me.’
I pointed out: ‘Last time we went along with what you wanted. But this time, it’s not your call.’
What was in it for me other than a bit of trouble? But I couldn’t restrain myself. I didn’t like unfairness and I felt that what went around should come around. I saw my boss Hinault draw in his chest: he didn’t want to argue; deep down he found this deeply embarrassing. I can still see the other cyclist trying to talk it through with Hinault – but the Badger simply didn’t want to get involved. Which meant that I had carte blanche. My rival was raging mad. All through the race he kept furiously doing deals left right and centre to convince most of the big names to ride with him. At one point he came alongside me and said: ‘I’m winning, it’s all sorted.’ So I replied: ‘No, you aren’t winning.’ I would remind you that I was still a new professional. Even Jan Raas came to ask what was going on. I told him to get stuffed: ‘Nothing to do with you, this is a French thing.’ So this rider and I spent as much of the race swapping insults as actually racing. As it reached its height, I told him what I really thought: ‘What were you before you became a champion? Not a lot. So now you’re going back to what you were before: not a lot.’
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