We Were Young and Carefree

by Laurent Fignon

  But most often, who were the real ‘cheating bastards’?

  CHAPTER 34

  * * *

  ON A STREET CORNER

  The 1993 season bore no resemblance to what I had planned. It was even more distressing than that. Who now recalls that my last professional win came in the Ruta Mexico? I’m the only European pro to have won that one.

  When I started in the Tour de France, at Puy du Fou in the Vendée I had already come down with the beginnings of bronchitis which might have been enough to keep me out of such a demanding race, had circumstances been different.

  The beginning was as bad as it could have been: I was sixty-seventh, forty-three seconds slower than Indurain. It was a worrying situation. Four days later the team rode a team time trial that ended up being a parody of a proper collective effort. It was an eighty-one kilometre stage where you needed to keep a cool head. Gianni Bugno was by far the strongest among us but he was completely unable to cope with his own strength. As a result, he set a pace that was too much for most of his teammates, all of whom were rapidly worn out so that less than fifty kilometres into the stage, the team blew to bits. Bugno definitely had no idea how to ride; this was simply not the way a team leader should behave.

  One little episode now seems very significant. One day, when the peloton was a very long way from the finish and an early break of no importance had escaped, the whole bunch accelerated suddenly. In a few minutes the whole peloton was riding at 50kph in single file, with everyone pulling out the stops as best they could. I’m not sure now, but there must have been three or four hours’ racing to go. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. So I went up to the front of the bunch as best I could, and was greeted by a mind-boggling sight.

  Sitting at the head of the string was a hardworking French rider who had emigrated to one of the biggest teams of the day. The fact that this guy was on the front of the peloton wasn’t remarkable in itself. He’d been there before. No, what was brainblowing was the way he was turning the pedals. That was all.

  He looked as if he was barely trying but he was riding at more than 50kph on his own, his hands on the top of the bars in a three-quarters headwind. I was astounded. I yelled, ‘You know there’s still a hundred kilometres to the finish? Do you know how fast you’re going?’

  He just said, with his distinct northern-French accent, ‘Pah, they’ve just said to ride, so I’m riding.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The poor lad had no idea what he was doing. It wasn’t his fault: it was a product of his time.

  Whatever was happening, it was for real.

  The very next stage, en route to Amiens, was also ridden at an insane speed: 50kph average. The whole peloton was chasing flat out. And it wasn’t as if they were on their knees. It was incredible.

  One day followed another and my amazement at what was going on just grew and grew. Nothing seemed ‘normal’ any more. In every stage I kept alert to every move, and given that I had no lack of experience, I tried to slip into a breakaway group, but I simply couldn’t manage it. It was impossible. I always lacked a little something, the final surge that might have made the difference. The spectacle that was unfolding around me each day seemed almost unreal. I was wandering like a soul in torment, lost in unknown territory.

  Then the scariest episode of all took place: the one that definitively sunk any illusions that remained to me. In the Alps, between Villard-de-Lans and Serre-Chevalier, where we had to go over the Galibier, I had decided to attack on the Télégraphe. I was no danger overall and naturally I was permitted to open a gap. To be honest, I was ticking over nicely. For a second or two, a gentle breeze, the sweetest kind of daydream, blew kindly on my back. It was a delusion. That was all. Because well before the summit, while I was pressing on as I used to on my best days, or so I believed at least, I saw a vast group of riders come up to me. There were at least thirty. Or forty. Not one of them seemed to be pushing it, but I couldn’t stay with them. To say that it played hell with my mind is an understatement.

  It stopped me in my tracks. It was something that went beyond mere humiliation. It was a death blow. I realised that I was being deprived of being my old self. I could no longer see a place for myself there. I was annihilated. Destroyed.

  It was the death knell for my career in cycling. As I went over the summit of the Télégraphe I said to myself, ‘It’s over. I’m going nowhere. I have to put a stop to this.’ Because in front of me now there were not merely the best riders but plenty of others, some of my own generation, who I had never seen match me in the high mountains with such a worrying lack of effort.

  Nothing seemed normal. Even ‘normality’ had no meaning for me any more. And nothing shocked me now. So much so that on the Galibier, as I rode at my own pace, who did I catch up? Gianni Bugno, no less, who had completely fallen to bits. The Tour was over for him. As for me, my career had tottered a little but was now definitely dying in the majestic silence of the Alps.

  I knew that it was all over for me. But there was not a single second when I said seriously to myself: ‘It’s because of EPO.’ That might now seem bizarre and incomprehensible. But I still would not face up to it. I had pretty much all the information that I needed to analyse the situation clinically. But I didn’t. When I lost races, I would never put it down to doping. So now I just thought: That’s it. Your day is done.

  That evening, I was quite relaxed about it all. The ageing cyclist was hiding behind the mature man. But he wasn’t going to hide from the decision that had to be made.

  The next morning, on the road to Isola 2000 we climbed up the Col d’Izoard and then the Col de la Bonette, the highest pass in the Tour. I can remember it very clearly. I rode up the whole climb in last place. Because I wanted to. I put my hands on the top of the bars and savoured it all to the full. I was breathing deeply as I lived through my last seconds in bike racing, which I had thought would never end for me. This col was all mine and I didn’t want anyone to intrude. Climbing up over 2700m above sea level like this gave me a host of good reasons to appreciate everything I had lived through on the bike. I had plenty of time to let my mind wander. It was a poetic distillation of the last twelve years. A little fragment of my being, breathed in and lived to the full, at my own speed. It was total harmony.

  I pressed gently on the pedals, admiring distant views, weighing each second as if it were a tiny shard of a time that had taken flight, glimpsing amidst the horizon of blue sky and mountain peaks a whole new universe that was opening up before me, and a different way of seeing what lay ahead.

  Cycling would go on – without me. Life would go on – but I would be part of it. Was there any reason to feel sorrow and nothing more? It was a genuine moment of sadness and grace, intermingled.

  Before the final climb to Isola 2000, which I could have ridden up, although I would have been outside the time limit, I decided to get off my bike. All that now remained was to take responsibility for the end of my story, be aware of what it meant and look calmly at its breadth and depth.

  It was no tragedy. I quit. Just like that. On a corner somewhere. As if I was throwing myself into a void, headlong.

  CHAPTER 35

  * * *

  YOU CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT THEY ARE UP TO

  To a great extent, cycling had lost its way. Any points of reference I used to have had been lost in a fog of EPO, a substance which I did not know how to use and whose abuse had effects which I could not understand. Was it possible to refer to an ‘EPO generation’? Probably.

  When I climbed off my bike for the last time during the 1993 Tour de France, announcing that my career was about to end, I was not quite in touch with reality. I had no idea how dark it was. Of course I had become aware of this new substance. People had begun talking about it in the newspapers and behind the scenes, but, in spite of what I had experienced in Italy, I had not understood the extent to which its use was becoming universal. And there was something else that I refused to acknowledge: its amazing
efficiency. With EPO, all physical obstacles were blown to bits. And I had still not managed to resign myself to the notion that a lot of the cyclists who were racing alongside me were fuelled with this substance.

  So the day after I quit the Tour – and after a certain amount of thought – I still came to a conclusion which seemed perfectly obvious to me: I was simply not able to keep up the pace. You have to understand that my thought process at the time could only refer back to cycling in the 1980s and what had emerged from it. The idea that a drug could ‘create’ a champion or permit (almost) certain victory in a given race seemed completely far-fetched. I was convinced it was nonsense.

  Some people will be astonished when they read these lines and will think: ‘He must have known what was going on.’ Let’s be clear: I understood certain things, let’s say the broad sweep of what was happening, but not the details. And my attitude was this: I didn’t give a monkey’s what the other guys were doing. It had no interest for me. The only things that mattered were how my form was building, the work I did, and my results. Nothing else.

  Alain Gallopin certainly warned me. ‘You know, Laurent,’ he would say, ‘there’s some crazy stuff going on out there. The guys are going over the top. You cannot imagine what they are up to. Some of them have lost their minds and will do anything.’

  There were certain facts that simply didn’t sink in: it was as if I had gone through a barrier and the rest of the peloton was on the other side. It was as if I was already elsewhere. The last few races I started were deeply dull and merely added to my feeling of being apart from it all. Racing was less fun, less alive, more tightly controlled. The guys were racing in ways which I simply did not understand. A lot of riders who weren’t very talented seemed to be playing lead roles: it wasn’t a game for me any more.

  The period after the Tour was reasonably quiet. People gave me looks that were both compassionate and already indifferent. I had moved on and everyone began to be aware of it. I left the bike in the garage as the days went past and then one morning in August I went out training. Up to that day, thoughout my career I had always used the big ring to train: 53x16 or 53x15. That day I set off as usual, in tip-top form. And then, after I’d covered a few kilometres I felt worn out and put it on the little ring: 42x18. I said, ‘It’s over, Laurent.’ And that was it. I didn’t want to ride my bike any more. I had swept away the final few threads that still connected me to bike racing. I was no longer a cyclist. I had been prepared for this, but living through it in reality was bizarre.

  To gear down for the following tax year and avoid paying too much, I didn’t ride a single criterium. Then I announced that my last race would be the Grand Prix de Plouay, in mid-August, and I set off for the start with a spring in my step. The atmosphere was special: before the start, people came to say ‘thanks’ and to wish me ‘a fair wind’. There I was. It was all about to end.

  I desperately wanted to finish the race, but the speed was high and I was low on kilometres; I really couldn’t keep up. So I made my way to the front of the bunch to say ‘adieu’ to them all, with my voice cracking. Marc Madiot yelled, ‘Look everyone, make sure you look at this: this is the last time you will see Laurent Fignon on a bike.’

  A great surge of emotion welled up inside me. There was a lump in my throat. My muscles stiffened up and I got off my bike. There is no going back once a new dawn has broken.

  Gianluigi Stanga left me in peace. Not long afterwards the sponsor announced that they were ending their investment in cycling. My contract was watertight, so I leapt at the opportunity and said that actually I had wanted to go on for another year. It was a windfall: they paid my third and last year. So in 1994 I was paid as if I were a bike rider when I actually wasn’t. Why should I be ashamed about it? For two years I was their ambassador in France, I just did it for a third year but not on the bike.

  That was the beginning of a period of intense reflection. I had been fully aware of what I was doing when I called time, and I had no regrets, but it wasn’t as straightforward as I had imagined. Whatever kind of cyclist you are, whether you were a great champion or an also-ran, when you turn the page the passion that has governed your life comes abruptly to an end. That is what had just happened to me. Being ready mentally wasn’t enough to soften the blow. For all of us, cycling is more than a mere profession: it’s an all-consuming mistress.

  So I was left in a hole. I had nothing concrete ready and waiting. I had no idea what to do with the days, or with the rest of my life. More worryingly I was incapable of pinpointing what I really wanted. Being idle isn’t my strongest suit: I needed to think fast. But I was incapable of it. In the months that followed my retirement my whole being was still that of a racing cyclist. My biorhythms, my habits, my way of being and even my reflexes: everything still reacted to daily life just as it had done for so long.

  It took the passing of the winter for things to change. One morning at the start of 1994 I realised that the other cyclists, every single one of them, had begun training again, and were probably in camp. The first races were on the horizon. And what had I done? Nothing. I was just an ex-cyclist. This time, my body finally figured out that it wasn’t just on holiday, waiting to return to its prime function. The break was irreparable. The others had begun again, without me.

  I can see myself now on one particular day. It was the day I panicked. I was sitting on a sofa at home and I felt a huge void in front of me. A sort of terror gripped me. An insidious fear that gnawed at my stomach and ran up and down my spine. I stood up, swaying in a gust of anguish, as if I needed to take a deep breath. I sat somewhere else. It all looked the same. I really couldn’t think straight. And the more ridiculous I thought I looked, the more the panic gained momentum.

  I couldn’t let the chaos take over, so I thought in a logical way, taking things one at a time.

  Money? I had no shortage, given that the previous year I had been sensible and paid off all my debts so that I would have no worries. At the end of my career I was paying 1.5 million francs in tax, about sixty per cent of my emoluments. At the end I had been earning 500,000 francs a month, so I wasn’t lacking cash. Back then I had about 2 million francs, to which should be added a few properties. Just a quick reminder: all this was nothing compared to what the best footballers, tennis players and golfers were earning.

  What was I doing with my time? I was actually playing quite a lot of golf. It was a sport that gave me something to focus my mind and get to know another side of myself, which was rather disconcerting. I was also taking part in various adventurous activities which took me out of my comfort zone and helped me keep in decent physical form. And the journalist Patrick Chassé had called me in to commentate on races for Eurosport. I was keen on the idea, so I went for it. But I have to be honest: it wasn’t anything like building for the future. The more I reflected on it, the more I became aware that outside cycling I didn’t know how to do a great deal. Should I go into business? Why not. But what, exactly? Property? It didn’t turn me on. I finally realised that I had no other ‘specialist areas’. And, more worryingly, I didn’t have any particular desire to do anything.

  Was I a victim, in my own way, of the inevitably stupefying nature of professional cycling? I had not stopped reading, I had kept informed and I had kept myself in touch with what was going on in the world. However, even for someone like me, in order to be a cyclist you are obliged to live in a bubble that floats above everyday reality. But I was clearly the sort of person who was inclined to be interested in things; even so, professional cycling consumes everything. It monopolises your life. Compared to a professional footballer, for example, being a cyclist takes up all your time and reduces to a strict minimum any chance of leisure interests. Training sessions are long and racing days are numerous.

  In some ways, I regret the fact that those years were a bottomless pit. It had an effect on me later on: I was aware that I missed out on fifteen years of normal life. I was out of the mainstream, a long way from everyth
ing, my mind absorbed by cycling, rarely directed at the rest of the world. Real life passed me by. I was in a world of my own. I’m well aware that it was impossible to do it any other way: sport at the highest level demands a high level of concentration and calls for your exclusive attention. As I learned throughout my career, the second that I let daily life worry me at all, in particular issues stemming from my private life, my attention wandered and my results suffered. Living cycling one hundred per cent was an obligation. It was regrettable but there was no alternative.

  It was when I emerged from this infernal spiral that I became fully aware that my cosy, closeted universe was actually like a prison, albeit a golden one. There was a sense in which you were locked into that bubble. That isolation is one of cycling’s great problems. You live on the margins, cosseted in your own little world, and you end up believing you are a superior being. You believe that the cycling world is the real world while in fact it is merely a distortion of real life. With hindsight I’m astonished to think of the day-to-day activities that I never did, or only rarely did. Just going out for a walk with your wife, browsing antique shops, window-shopping. Not recommended. Too tiring. There was always a good excuse.

  Having got these regrets off my chest, if I had to draw up an objective balance sheet, I would still consider that the cycling life had more good sides than bad. How could I regret it all? How could I suggest that it was anything other than joyful, ecstatic? We were free men. We could jump into a team car in the middle of the night to go and see a girl. We could drive two hundred kilometres just for a date and come back in the small hours then ride the next stage: do you think that’s an option today? It certainly wasn’t part of the general culture, but it was part of the life. I’ll make a confession here: where the diet side was concerned, I never really set many limits. I was careful, but that was all, except sometimes when certain major objectives were pending. That was because in the middle of the 1980s we were only just becoming aware of the importance of power to weight ratio. I had a few good blow-outs, although I didn’t take myself for Anquetil, who made living cycling his own way into what amounted to an obligation, a real way of life. Sometimes I went over the top, and there were times when I cracked and I probably should not have done. I was definitely not a child of diet and programming, and I’m glad of it.