We Were Young and Carefree

by Laurent Fignon

  I had had to stand tall to have any chance of earning a defining place in cycling history, but an athlete with true talent can always come back, or so they say.

  There was one small detail. On the evening after I had won the race in Florence, Guimard came to have a word with me: he looked even more worried than usual. He wanted to talk one-to-one and it was important, even though all I was thinking about was celebrating my triumph. He was already concerned about July and looked me straight in the eyes: ‘LeMond will be up there at the Tour.’ I didn’t hide my amazement. LeMond had been nowhere for the three weeks of the Giro but had ended the race by taking second place in the final time trial.

  We all know what happened in July 1989.

  CHAPTER 27

  * * *

  POKER FACE

  Monsieur ‘Eight Seconds’: just try to get your head around the weeks that followed my defeat in the 1989 Tour de France. Imagine the mocking remarks from the people who didn’t like me. Think of all the shocking, over-the-top stuff that was said and written. Winning and losing are never easy, whatever the conditions, but it can be worst of all if you lose in certain circumstances. After the maelstrom of words and feelings died down, as the feeling of eternal injustice subsided a little, I had to get some distance and bring the 1989 season to a close: it had still been exceptional, and there were two more major wins to come, first the Tour of Holland and then the Baracchi Trophy with Thierry Marie. Back then this two-up time trial in Northern Italy was still a kind of institution; Coppi, Merckx and Anquetil had all inscribed their names on its roll of honour and winning it had enhanced all their reputations. A victory there was another way of dragging a bit more respect out of people; winners of the Baracchi were following in a tradition that had been marked by all the greats. So that was done. And being outside France gave me the chance to get a bit of peace and quiet, away from the media, away from the fans.

  I still approached cycling like a free spirit, carrying out my trade without any major constraints, biting into life with the same appetite; sometimes gorging on it. When it came to the public and the press, I never sold my soul and never tried to be placatory. Some fans remonstrated with me for sometimes failing to sign enough autographs. But I would write them. I actually wrote rather a lot. But that was not the only thing in my day’s work, as anyone should know. And there was no way I could sign them for everyone. So should I have worked harder at it? Obviously I should. But should I have been untrue to myself just to keep people happy? What would I have gained by that?

  Double-dealing had never been part of my make-up and I had enough experience to keep directing my anger, my spirit and my strength towards the next challenge without worrying about what anyone else thought. I was not like other cyclists. That goes without saying. I had never been a rider like all the rest. Kelly, Mottet, Duclos-Lassalle and Bugno were riders with whom I spent a great deal of time. They all practised their sport in a quasi-religious style according to principles that had been laid down by their forefathers. My way was to assert my right to be different, to be independent, to keep a grip on my integrity. But there was an element within the public and within the media which obstinately refused to recognise that I had the right to be myself. They wanted to force me to conform, to bring me into the fold among the nice guys, the easy ones to deal with – the lambs. Or the sheep which merely wanted to follow the flock. It would have been the crowning glory.

  I’ve never liked buddying up to people. That applies to everyone and I’m actually rather proud of that trait. I’ve always behaved according to my principles and my conscience, never to please one person or another. For example, just before the 1989 Tour de France, at the national championship, Antenne 2’s star journalist of the time, Patrick Chêne, was determined to set up an impromptu interview with me. But he arrived very late, so I apologised to him and said I could no longer talk with him. I had something else that I absolutely had to do. He was unhappy about it and came out with this amazing expression: ‘So this is how it turns out after everything I’ve done for you.’

  I was astounded. What I was witnessing was the worst possible manifestation of hubris from a journalist who had let success go to his head and with it any sense of reality. A fairly nice man had been transformed into a show-biz star because of the minor degree of celebrity he enjoyed thanks to television. As a result he had confused his role – that of a journalist – with the relationships he believed he had with certain sports stars. I was so amazed by what he said that I couldn’t help taking the mickey. ‘I had no idea that you had helped me win all those races.’

  He immediately understood that he had gone too far. ‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ he added at once.

  ‘No, but that’s what you said,’ I replied. ‘Now leave me alone.’

  At times like that I could be very curt and I didn’t always think through the consequences of how I reacted. We never spoke about it again: such are the tribulations of professional life.

  Since 1985 and the long fight against injury which provoked a good many controversial articles, I’ve protected my private life and my internal life. I didn’t open my door as easily as before. It was as if I had put up a barricade around my life and placed everything that related to my personal existence under lock and key. I only gave interviews that I thought might be useful. It worked so well that by the end of the 1980s there appeared to be two very different Laurent Fignons in existence. The first one was a straightforward chap who said loud and clear that he didn’t like answering questions from journalists. The second was no less direct but he tended to lie low and didn’t give away a great deal. He was a secretive individual: the private Fignon that no one ever really got to know.

  Generally speaking, in spite of the carefree attitude I adopted in my early years as a pro, I would say that the second Fignon is my real persona. I may have been made to be a champion cyclist – I have no doubt of that – but I was absolutely not made to be a public figure.

  We had come to a tipping point. This was the time when we began to live in a society dominated by celebrity culture. That in turn forced journalists to become either flattering or destructive, without it being at all clear why they went from being one to the other. The only clear guideline was the need to be buddies with people.

  A champion sportsman only exists through what he does, not through the role that he plays in front of a microphone. But that is of little consequence. Journalists can end up like giants in fairy tales: they acquire a taste for human flesh. And when the meat begins to go off they go in search of other prey.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  YES, I DID IT

  I don’t take things lying down. Nor do I believe in supping from the bitter cup. Too often we scan our memories so we can dream up a wanted poster with a picture of some guilty party or other. We are often our own worst enemies and if what we see in the mirror is only a reflection of ourselves, it’s often our worst side.

  Here then is something which I did that was wrong. Very wrong. It has been verified and placed on the record. And I admit it without omission or hesitation. ‘Positive for amphetamines’. At the Grand Prix de la Libération in Eindhoven. Me, Laurent Fignon. This time it was true. I recognise the error I made. What I did wrong. But at a time when suspicion of doping is everywhere and doping overkill has killed dreams and made words lose their meaning, where just about every barrier of what is acceptable and what isn’t has been broken, how can you explain without making excuses? Let’s just spell out the facts.

  Looking back at the affair in a superficial way, I could actually claim that the person who was indirectly at the root of it was Alain Gallopin. He will bear witness to that. His wife was on the point of giving birth and I was in the middle of my build-up to the Grand Prix des Nations, for which Alain was putting me through some pretty nasty training sessions. A lot of kilometres, huge numbers of sprints and hill intervals.

  Ten days before the race, one Wednesday, we had arranged to do a se
ssion of intervals behind the motorbike. The phone rang. Alain’s wife was in labour and he had to go to hospital for the happy event. There was no more to be said, except that I was left alone with my bike, my morale in my boots. I had absolutely no desire to hurt myself on my own and I can still see myself now, completely undecided whether I would even put my leg over the saddle. It was that bad.

  It was just me, alone with my stupidity: to get myself going I took a spot of amphetamine. Not simply to help me get out of my front door, but mainly so that I could get in some extra kilometres; to make the ride hard and useful. It was called a ‘pot’. The only difference was that back then ‘pots’ were only amphetamine, with nothing added, in contrast to the ones that were on sale a lot later, for example, at the end of the 1990s, in which all kinds of drugs were to be found.

  It was a mindless thing to do. I had heard that this kind of amphetamine was flushed quickly out of the system and didn’t leave any traces in your urine after forty-eight hours. Well, the Grand Prix de la Libération didn’t take place until the following Sunday, four days later. So I told myself that there was no risk. I felt so unconcerned that I actually raced on the Saturday as well, at the Grand Prix di Lazio, near Rome. My mind was completely untroubled.

  So when it came to the anti-doping control I went and peed in the jar without an iota of concern. I’d already forgotten what I had done on Wednesday. ‘Positive’. When I learned the news I was astounded but well aware that it was entirely my fault. The official confirmation didn’t take long in coming: the Dutch laboratory stated that they had found ‘amphetamine residues’ which predated the day of the test. So there was no doubt at all of my guilt. What more needs to be said? Nothing, apart from the fact that I felt rather pathetic; a bit dirty. Time moved slowly around me. And there was not a lot of point in saying to myself, ‘Come on, a bit of amphetamine isn’t actually all that much.’ The distress at what I had done was still there inside me. It was a feeling of shame at my own weakness, at the reason behind the misdeed rather than the act itself. It was so derisory, so stupid.

  Not long afterwards I raced the Grand Prix des Nations, with more motivation than I had ever felt before. I had been thinking about nothing else for weeks and weeks. On the Thursday I had gone a bit too far with the partying and Gallopin had warned me: ‘Laurent, you’re messing about.’ But he knew better than anyone else that I had prepared properly and as for me, in a muddled way, without admitting it to myself, I felt that 1989 would be one of my last chances to win it. If I could manage it, I wanted people to remember this one. Until then, Charly Mottet had held the record for the course on the backroads inland from Cannes. There were no half measures: I lowered the record – which everyone thought was unbeatable – by 1min 49sec, at an average speed of 45.6kph. But who remembers today quite how tough that circuit was?

  Looking back at it, with many years’ hindsight, I now feel that on that day there was such a level of physical violence in the effort I produced that truly perceptive observers might have felt it was a kind of swansong, the last vestige of authentic heroism in an exceptional champion living at the limit of his pride and natural ability. That day, my power was everything I had. There was no dividing line between the champion and the man inside: they were as one, in a final show of strength. But I was unaware of any of this. Alain Gallopin said to me that evening: ‘When you are in form, you can do anything, you know.’ I ended the season at number one in the world rankings.

  I’m not entirely sure that everyone was happy about that. During the six day at the Bercy stadium in Paris, I was an actor in a rather pathetic media storm. The sports minister, Roger Bambuck, had just put through a new anti-doping law which permitted random, unannounced drug tests. During the six day all the riders suspected that there might well be one of the tests – there was no problem about that – but we were outraged when a camera crew from television station TF1 appeared in order to film the actions of the federation doctor, Gabriel Dollé, who had been appointed to carry out the tests. The pictures were being taken without the riders being aware of it but with the support of the minister who doubtless wanted to get the publicity. For the first time in doping history television cameras were going to be allowed into the medical room to film a drug test being carried out; it was a violation of the riders’ privacy. We were disgusted and made up our minds that something had to be done.

  In passing, I should mention that I didn’t have a cosy relationship with Bambuck. It was based on what each of us had said in the press about the other. After I had tested positive at Eindhoven, the sports minister had spoken about it and referred to me as ‘the poor lad’. That hurt. And in keeping with my character I responded: ‘If you don’t know the full story, keep your mouth shut.’ Of course he should have kept his mouth shut, even though he was the minister of sport, rather than giving lectures that were barely worthy of primary schoolchildren.

  I’ve never liked spite. Or voyeurism. What’s more, Jacques Goddet himself, who was the director of the Bercy Palais Omnisports, where the race was held, had protested virulently against the presence of cameras enticed by the scent of piss. Goddet had told the TF1 journalists: ‘This is a private place. With or without authorisation from the minister you will not transmit any pictures of what the cycling federation doctor is about to do. You are welcome here to take pictures of anything else. But as far as this is concerned, it’s a firm, definite, “no”. You will not make a spectacle of the riders.’ There was no getting round Goddet. His words settled the issue.

  It was almost 1 a.m. On the track, the riders were still racing a Madison. I had been leading since the start of the session. Along with nine other riders including Urs Freuler (my teammate at the six), Mottet, Etienne De Wilde, Doyle and others, I was requested, the instant we got off our bikes, to go to the medical room in the basement where Gabriel Dollé had set up shop. The television cameras had decamped under the joint pressure of the cyclists, Goddet, and the French Cycling Federation president François Alaphilippe.

  We were all given an hour to turn up at the test. As you can imagine, I didn’t turn up until the very last minute of the sixty. To be precise, it was 1.50 a.m. by the time I opened the medical room door. In the chamber decorated with fine old posters, Dr Dollé tried to talk but I just immersed myself in a paper I had brought along for the purpose, and kept my mouth shut. I had decided to give myself all the time in the world. And a bit more: I was prepared to drag it out to the end of the night, pretending that I was not ready to piss in the bottle.

  Well after 3 a.m., Dollé began to sigh. As soon as I saw him nodding off, I yelled, ‘Stay awake or I might flick the control.’ It was very late – or very early – when I decided to fill the little flask. Dawn was breaking as I went home.

  I had absolutely nothing against the random test, but it was more than I could manage to endure this pathetic media circus. It was not a matter of prevention but repression for show. The fight against doping didn’t justify absolutely anything. But we had seen nothing yet, either in terms of doping practices or ways of fighting the cheats.

  CHAPTER 29

  * * *

  THE LEADER AND THE DOORMAT

  Years of bizarre goings-on were now stretching out in front of me. I was not aware of it, or rather I didn’t want to know. I refused to allow myself to be convinced of it. I don’t have any particular memories of the process of ageing, of the gradual decline of the exceptional athlete who had just got over a sports injury which would have killed off many men’s careers. Nonetheless, the gradual descent to the ‘end of my career’ had begun. I was certainly well aware of that.

  There was no great upset at the end of our partnership with Système U, who had been working with Cyrille Guimard and me for four long years. We had been fully aware that a change was on the way, and well before the start of the 1990 season the incoming sponsor, Castorama, was already part of the furniture. We knew who our new backer would be before the 1989 Tour had even started.

  As for
Système U, its directors had plenty to be pleased about. In 1986 the recognition figure for the firm was zero: back then, everyone had believed they were a make of glue not a supermarket. By the time our time together ended, the figure had gone up to forty per cent. The impact on the company’s image had been massive and the sponsors had no complaints about deciding to put money into cycling.

  In the build-up to the 1990 season we dreamed up a jersey design together for Castorama that resembled a set of overalls and was cunningly similar to the outfits worn by the shop assistants in France’s leading DIY chainstores. The idea behind the jerseys was something that would be copied elsewhere in cycling. The Castorama head Jean-Hugues Loyez was in ecstasies: what’s more, sociologically, this was a perfect time to promote the concept of DIY among French homeowners. In a few months, Castorama had a huge breakthrough in public awareness. We were the finest team in France. I was still number one in the world rankings. And the Fignon–Guimard tandem was still drawing media fire.

  However, there was one unfortunate episode which cooled our relationship – initially a fantastic one – with M. Loyez. Officially, we had sold Castorama all of the display space that was available on our racing kit. Or at least that was how they had interpreted our discussions. Cyrille Guimard decided that it wasn’t quite like that. The day when we showed them the jerseys and shorts, you should have seen the look on the Castorama representatives’ faces when they discovered that we had, of course, maintained our working relationship with Raleigh, whose name figured on the shorts. Guimard had never informed them. I’m not sure that he had dared take the risk. It was crazy. This was playing with fire.